The 40 Days for Life wrap-up event took place March 28 at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre with Father Larry Lynn, pro-life chaplain of the Archdiocese of Vancouver, andΒ Father Mark McGuckin, pastor of St. Francis de Sales in Burnaby. Father McGuckin made the following remarks, which have been slightly edited. He then led a Litany in Response to a Culture of Death that he composed.
Friends, thank you for being here today. We offer thanks to Almighty God for everyone who stood witness at any point during these 40 days β sometimes in the cold, sometimes in the rain, often when no one seemed to be watching.
We lift up prayers and thanks for all who could not be physically present but who prayed faithfully from home, from adoration chapels, from busy households, and from quiet corners of daily life.
We give thanks to God for all those pro-life prayer warriors who came before us and who really set the foundation for all this work. This campaign is sustained not just by those who are seen, but by countless acts of prayer, sacrifice, and love offered quietly and faithfully. God sees it all.
We all know what we are up against. The society we are living in is not drifting aimlessly; it is being shaped, in large part by the choice of death over life. Itβs not hard to see that the Culture of Death is not contracting; it is steadily expanding.
What makes this struggle especially challenging is that it is often entwined with authentic, good human desires. Choices being promoted today are framed as acts of mercy or compassion, as responses to suffering, to fear, to the exhaustion of carrying too much alone. People want relief. They want burden to end. They want something β anything β that feels manageable when the road ahead looks impossible.
It could be a single mother facing an unplanned pregnancy β afraid, isolated, unsure how she will manage tomorrow.
It could be a senior in hospice care, surrounded by discouragement, pain, and subtle messages that their life has become a burden to others.
These are not abstract situations. The stories are growing exponentially. These are real people. These are sons and daughters of the Father. Many feel as though their backs are pressed against the wall, rushed toward a hasty decision, encouraged to choose what is presented as quick and merciful relief.
And yet we know, because we have seen it again and again, that when relief comes through the pre-emptive termination of human life, it ultimately serves no one. Not the child whose life is ended before it can begin. Not the mother or father who must carry that loss. Not the elderly or sick person who is quietly told that their life no longer has value. Not families. Not communities. Not society itself.
In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, Pope St. John Paul II wrote, βA society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members; and among the most vulnerable are the unborn and the dying.β
That is not a political slogan. It is a moral diagnosis. And it calls each of us β not just governments, not just institutions β to responsibility. How we respond to the vulnerable reveals who we truly are.
Standing here, it would be easy to grow discouraged. Some days it feels like the momentum is against us. Some days it seems as though the influencers operating in the darkness have a better organizational structure, louder voices, and more confidence than those who walk in the light. This is precisely where our faith is tested, and where hope must not be extinguished no matter what heaviness we or others may be feeling.
We cannot give up. We cannot give up praying and looking for ways to be good helpers to those desiring relief. We cannot give up witnessing. We cannot give up being present in places where human life is most threatened and most forgotten. Every genuine renewal and uplifting of human dignity begins with small groups of people who refuse to be silent, who choose fidelity over winning the popularity vote, and those who trust that God is working even when the results are hidden from view.
So as this 40 Days for Life campaign comes to a close, let us not think in terms of an ending, but of a deepening β a deepening of compassion, a strengthening of courage, a renewal of trust that God is at work β often far beyond what we are permitted to see. Every life welcomed, every burden shared, every act of faithful presence is a victory.
Thank you for refusing to give up and for steadfastly witnessing to the sanctity of every human life.
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