08/09/2026
Last Sunday, Fr Bernard reminded us of the importance of standing up and not being ashamed to share our beliefs, linking it to the March for Life.
We need to all be praying and writing to our MPs to stop the harming of the most vulnerable. 🧡✝️
Check out the full homily here:
There’s an almost annual moment now in the run-up to the March for Life. In the week before I go to London, the thought comes to me: is it really worth doing this? It’s a busy time, plenty going on, lots of people don’t go, and what real difference does the
whole thing make, never mind my participation at it. Perhaps it’s more of a London-based opportunity. If you’re in London anyway, you might go. So that moment this year coincided with my look at the readings of course in the run-up to this Sunday and there
it is in the first reading: “if you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked man shall die in his inequity, but his blood I will require at your hand.” So I felt corrected regardless of the above and of the things that so easily come to us: why me? Why am I supposed to be involved? Why do I need to get involved?
The Lord says unto us: We are watchmen for our society and for our communities because we all share, by virtue of our baptism, in the priestly, royal and prophetic office of Christ that’s what the church teaches us. We all share by virtue of our baptism in
that office and sometimes that office requires of us the duties of the first reading. We notice things that aren’t right. They can be different. In terms of the March for life, it’s obvious that statistic that now one in three pregnancies end in termination in the UK. One in three: it’s not normal.
It’s not normal either that, as a society, we are considering assisted su***de instead of caring with compassion for those coming towards the end of their life. We need to say this, to say it loud and clear, that the culture of death that we have embedded in our culture, in this society, threatens above all the most vulnerable in our midst: The poorest of poor; those who have no voice; the Lord’s favourite children. That’s a beautiful pairing with our second reading, we need to do all this as a humble act of loving
service, not us going around telling people their faults as if from high, as if we had none ourselves, as if we were somehow better than others. No, it’s not us that are better than others. But equally not to do it, is not an act of love.
If someone I come across comes towards me and is sort of hurtling at speed towards a cliff, then to say I don’t want to inconvenience them and not to warn them is not an act of love. If someone is about to do something that will damage them, it’s not an act
of love to say I won’t get involved because I don’t want to come across all judgmental. It’s not an act of love.
To love well is to do, as far as we can do, the good of the other for their own sake. The culture of death is good for no one, not even its most enthusiastic proponents. I sometimes think this of the people who come and do the counter protests that we get at
this occasion in London and how often they look really really angry and really it’s not doing them any good. I want to say that it doesn’t do them any good. “Love does no wrong to a neighbour”, our second reading says and that can include to say what needs saying in humility and in love as a fellow sinner.
The aim of it all is of course, as the Gospel reminds us, the reconciliation of all: the communal harmony which should mark out what a society is and does. It is not about victory in other words, not about defeating the other side, not anything of that kind,
certainly not a self-righteous telling off from some imagined moral high ground. But it is an act of humble obedience to our God, good nature, kind, loving in how it’s done. Nonetheless, clear enough to do the job, the job of a watchman. And of course it is how the March for life works but it’s not the only thing.
There are other areas where we are called to that same duty. They may be closer to home, amongst our families, amongst our friends, amongst our neighbours. They may be simpler things if we cannot get to places far away. When we ask people to be involved with contacting MPs about the Assisted Su***de Bill, that can be done from our homes. And it is to share in the prophetic, royal and priestly offices of Christ because we are his people his royal people.
When we come across something that we read, whether online or in the papers or anywhere that is a gross distortion of the truth, then we can be called upon to write in, in the nicest possible way and not starting a war in some point kind of shape or form and
I know that social media are a difficult place to do this well but it is part of what we do. We’re not doing anybody a favour when we’re not acting in love if we just let it be. Or perhaps the hardest amongst our family and friends, those closest to us, when
someone we love is about to do something that is not gonna be good that is damaging it’s hard to be involved. They know our clay feet, they know our own weaknesses. Who am I to tell you what to do and we have a history. But love asked us to do it anyway. Love asks us to say, ‘never mind your history, never mind how embarrassing it might be, never mind how much you may not be appreciated for it, you’re not loving somebody by just getting along with them in a harmonious kind of superficial way, you’re not loving
somebody if you don’t do this.’ It’s an act of love. So the readings today asked each one of us where are you and I called to be such a person and then to go and do it.
In his apostolic blessing for yesterday‘s March for life, Pope Leo XIV referred to his speech earlier this year to the Spanish Parliament and quoted part of it: “The defence of human life,” he says, “is neither a partisan issue not a confessional interest.
It is the goal of civilisation. Every human life must be recognised and safeguarded from conception to its natural end in every circumstance of its existence. When this certainty is obscured, the most vulnerable and the law loses its deepest meaning to serve and protect every piece. For this reason, the moral greatness of a nation is manifested above all in its capacity to accompany protect and love those whose lives are most fragile.” Perhaps, we should measure that even more than we measure GDPs and other things by which we compare the life of nations. So let us take these readings as a call on each one of us to do so each in our spheres of life and influence with humility, with kindness, with generosity, but above all with love.
“I have made you a watchman says the Lord.”
