Our People

Day of the Unborn Child 2007

Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord

By Most Rev. Julian Porteous
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
26/3/2007

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” [1].

These words reveal a wonderful reality. God knows each of us from the moment of conception. God knows us because we are far, far more than just a product of human reproduction. Our identity is more than what is determined by DNA. Our intimate existence is known beyond the awareness of our mother.

Each human being is the immediate creation of God. Every human person has an immortal soul.  The Catholic Catechism teaches[2] that the human soul is created immediately by God and not produced by the parents. Psalm 8 captures this reality as it declares that “you have made us little less than a god”[3]. The soul is that “image and likeness of God”[4] spoken of in the account of the creation of human beings in the Book of Genesis.

Each human being carries the spark of the divine. The soul is the foundation to a life of communion with God in the realm of the spiritual and the ground of an existence beyond human death.

The Scriptures are alive to the wondrous mystery of the human person. Psalm 139 says, “You created my inmost self, knit me together in my mother’s womb”[5]. The creative finger of God touches the conception of each individual.

No person exists who is not intimately known by God. Each person is loved by the God whose creative action brought them into being. Each person is destined for eternity and the God will draw them with “drawstrings of love”[6] to union with Him in heaven.

Today on this Day of the Unborn we proclaim the dignity of each human person from the perspective of what our faith reveals about their place in the mind and heart of God.

We commend each mother carrying a child in her womb that she will embrace this new life with love and nurture the child in her womb.

We turn to God the creator of life and beg from him a grace to move across the minds and hearts of citizens and governments that we will create a civilization of love and life, so that human life will be protected and respected from the womb to its last human moments.

Before the Blessed Sacrament, sign and reality of the abiding presence of the risen Lord in the midst of the world, we place our society here in Australia and pray that it will come to recognise the sacredness of human life, and so protect and defend it in all situations no matter how difficult or challenging.

Lord in your mercy hear our prayer.

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[1] Jeremiah 1:5.
[2] Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 366.
[3] Psalm 8:5.
[4] Genesis 1:26.
[5] Psalm 139:13.
[6] Hosea 11:4.