If You Want Peace, Defend Life

If there is one thing we Venezuelans are crying out for right now, it is to live in Peace. One initiative just launched to help that longed-for peace reign in our nation is the “Week for Life” campaign run by the National Department of Family and Childhood Ministry of the Venezuelan Bishops’ Conference. The campaign began on March 12 and will run for several weeks, so that many families can put into practice the action plans it offers, whose main aim is for society to recognize and defend the value of human life from conception to natural death.

As the campaign’s leaflet explains, in substance, the family is the privileged place where each person is welcomed and given fullness of life. It gives not only physical life but also opens the way to promise and joy, so that each person can grow and develop and contribute to society. The family, it says, is able to preserve and defend life, each person’s history, family traditions, faith in life and the hope of building a better world.

That is an indisputable truth! Every time we read news of crime, hatred, murders, kidnappings and so on, we immediately think: what was missing there was family. A few days ago I got talking with two Baruta police officers at a newsstand about the state of the country, and I was very struck when one of them said: “Ma’am, the problem is that there’s a lot of lack of family here.” If a society does not have families that properly pass on the values of life, respect, love, solidarity and so on, it is impossible to have a healthy society at peace.

On the other hand, the leaflet notes, when the family generates life and puts its gifts to work, when it keeps the rhythm of daily life between work, celebration and rest, between affection and love, between commitment and generosity, when it overcomes conflicts and lives in forgiveness, when it tackles the problem and not the person, when it passes on human and Christian values, things begin to work well. Because the greatest gift that can be given to society is a well-founded family that can educate its members and pass on values to them, so that those values then radiate out to society.

The family is the perfect place to teach children that human life must be respected from the first moment it appears in the mother’s womb. The leaflet points out that when nascent life is attacked, abortion becomes the killing of an innocent human being and leaves serious scars on the woman, the man and the family, victims of the loss of a child through abortion. Just as life must be respected from its beginning, it adds, its dignity must also be recognized at every stage, especially in difficult or final moments: euthanasia applied to the sick or the elderly is a false way out of suffering, and the violence, robberies and score-settling killings that take people’s lives are a grave attack on human dignity. If life is a gift, no one can take it from us.

That is why, the leaflet concludes, the family is the first place of life a person encounters on coming into the world, and that experience is decisive forever. So it is important to care for and protect the family, so that it can carry out its specific mission as a community of life and love made up of husband and wife, parents and children and relatives, called to promote, welcome and defend life; a place where each person’s dignity is respected and valued, and where housing, food, health, work, education and security are not lacking.

We thank the CEV’s National Department of Family and Childhood Ministry for this campaign in defense of life at a time when our country so badly needs Peace. I hope every Venezuelan family realizes the important mission it holds in its hands. On this website you can find more information and the leaflet with practical actions you can carry out in your families, parishes or communities, so that you become multipliers of life and Peace: www.pastoralfamiliarvenezuela.org