The Other Side of Death

 Mr. Putin's war continues to shock and disgust most of the world. I try, from time to time to consider things from his point of view. He seems to believe that the land and its resources which currently comprise Russia are not enough for his people, or his ego, or both. That Ukraine should exist in its own right as an independent country with its own history, cultural, and westward tending ways, is a reality he cannot seemingly comprehend. He is blinded by evil disguised as nationalism, anti Nazism, pride for Russia.

But it is evil. And in the name of this evil his soldiers, who have been fed a diet of dehumanizing words against the people of Ukraine... they are pigs, let's wipe them from the face of the earth... have responded with the worst of human behavior. They have senselessly brutalized a people they could barely acknowledge were people at all. They have even gone after the dogs.

It is often said that in order to fight in a war, you have to be hardened to your targets in order to take aim at them and try to shoot them before they shoot you. We all understand this as a deplorable, but sometimes necessary part of fighting in a just war, though what constitutes a just war in today's world remains to be seen.  Certainly, for Ukrainians, defending themselves against Russian aggressors is a just activity. And if they must focus on the worst behavior of Russian soldiers in order to convince themselves that they must kill, then the world understands.

Mr. Putin doesn't have a point of view, if by that you mean a set of ideas which can be freely debated and countered in more or less rational terms. What he has is a lust for power that is uncontrolled, the reasons for which will be debated by historians in years to come after this mess is a distant memory.

I pray for Mr. Putin, because I know that no power on earth can change his mind. Only God can, and so I turn him over to the Lord of all creation who is perfect love, and whose love embraces every evil to the point of death, death on a cross. Putin and his crazed soldiers will always have the freedom to ignore the offer of love, but that offer will never be withdrawn. And that gives me comfort. When there is a great evil in the world, Saint John Paul II once said, it can only be met by an abyss of love.

I thought of this recently in quite another context. I was talking with a friend about the Catholic view of contraception, and whether it makes sense, especially if the goal for society is to reduce abortion. It would seem that providing contraception to couples could easily prevent the need for an unwanted pregnancy, and then an abortion, an outcome that is another form of disregard for human life.

But what if there is another way to counter abortion? What if the impulse to cherish every human life were to begin with the act of sexual congress itself, so that the very possibility of a human life resulting from that congress is thought to be a gift to be preserved. 

As I watch the terrible pictures emerging today from Ukraine, pictures of the torture, rape and murder of innocent Ukrainians, I think about the beauty of a witness which is the polar opposite. It is the witness of a love for human life which begins even before conception, which welcomes human life and seeks to cherish and preserve it until its natural death. This love is stronger than all the Putins of the world and all his lost soldiers. It points to the abyss of love, which is divine, but which can be hinted at in the actions of each of us, if we dare to try. It is not pragmatic love. It is the wide open all- embracing love that each one of us hopes to receive from our creator, and so it is the love that we pass on to others as best we can. Contraception has been reduced to a medical act that might have a positive effect on society, but looked at another way, it is measure that narrows and limits the outer boundaries of love, the abyss of love that the world so terribly needs. 

It is hard to speak of these things, and to speak clearly. But I am trying because against all reason I know that there is a love that is greater than death and destruction, a love that I want to witness to because the alternative is to drop bombs on Putin and his minions and wipe them off the face of the earth. Love can creep into every human activity if we allow it to. And that includes our sexual activity. In fact, a witness against the use of contraception speaks to me of a powerful love, unwavering in its trust that every single human life, even those that exist in the form of possibility as sexual expression occurs, is unique and beautiful. It is, if you will, the other side of death.

 Deo, dicamus gratias.