On January 19, 2018 the 45th March for Life took place in Washington D.C. with over hundreds of thousands of participants from all over the nation. For our Religious Family this March for Life is the perfect start to this year’s IVE Winter Youth Festival theme: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).
In his homily at the Vigil Mass for Life, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York exhorted marchers to be “apostles of life” armed with love and joy “to advocate and give witness…to fight the heavy temptation to discouragement” and “to pray!”
President Donald Trump also shared words of encouragement and support: “You come from many backgrounds, and many places, but you all come for one beautiful cause, to build a society where life is celebrated and protected and cherished….because you believe that every life is sacred, that every child is a precious gift from God.”
May we continue to labor, as St. John Paul the Great appealed in his encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, to “offer this world of ours new signs of hope, and work to ensure that justice and solidarity will increase and that a new culture of human life will be affirmed, for the building of an authentic civilization of truth and love. (EV, 6)
