OUR INABILITY TO GIVE OR RECEIVE PERFECT TRUE LOVE

Jesus was asked, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.”[1]

To be a follower of Christ, the Lord asks us to totally surrender our lives to Him and be willing to accept whatever that means or where He leads us. It is so hard. That’s why most people only give their lives to Him when they have exhausted all other options, and their lives are in shambles. I was one of those people. By the time I’d made a complete train wreck of my life, I didn’t have much to give God, but I gave the shards of my broken life to Him. He accepted me. 

I could not fathom such love as what I experienced with that life-changing first encounter with Christ, on a cold Canadian January night in 1980. The warmth of His love took over my heart that was as cold as the frost on the windows,[2] My soul was filled to its brim and overflowing with a warm flood of His love and forgiveness of me and my litany of sin. I thought I would burst with divine ecstasy! It was (and remains) the same love experienced by billions of people throughout the centuries. Saint Clement 1 (35-99 AD) said, 

“Who can express the binding power of divine love? Who can find words for the splendor of its beauty? Beyond all description are the heights to which it lifts us. Love unites us to God,”.

There it was in the first century—unmistakable divine love of God, its beauty and power beyond description. I wept with primordial joy that existed, not from my birth, but eons before I was created in my mother’s womb. Is that the binding power of love Saint Clement wrote about? It create a bond not bound by time or place. 

Love for God and our neighbour is incomplete and faltering, at times halting, at times gushing, but always falling short of perfect love of Christ. Perhaps that is because we are incapable in our present state of experiencing the truest love of all: God. That will only be experienced in eternity. 

True love has certain characteristics. Saint Paul told us in 1 Corinthians 13. Saint Clement also addressed authentic love:

“[I]t cancels innumerable sins, has no limit to its endurance, bears everything patiently. Love is neither serval nor arrogant. It does not provoke schisms or formed cliques, but always acts in harmony with others.”

Pretty daunting with flawed human capabilities.  Saint Clement said it cannot be without Christ.

“By it all God's chosen ones have been sanctified; without it, it is simply impossible to please Him. Out of love the Lord took us to Himself because He loved us and it was God's will, our Lord Jesus Christ gave his life's blood for us — He gave His body for our body, His soul for our soul.” 

Therein lies the key to our ability to truly love our spouse, our children, our neighbour, our community, and our nation, but most of all to love God with all our heart mind and soul. Without Christ it is impossible. The light of His sublime Love will envelope His people forever.

Mark

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[1] Matthew 22:36-37. Cf. Deuteronomy 6:4-5, 10:12, Matthew 22:38, 1John 4:31.

[2] 1John 4:7-12.

WE SPOKE OF LIFE AND DEATH, LOVE AND HEARTBREAK ... BUT MOSTLY WE TALKED ABOUT LOVE (BOTH HUMAN AND DIVINE)

 

A number of years ago, my wife LaRee and I delivered an address to one of Calgary Alberta's largest churches, Centre Street Church. We were asked to speak about our lives together. We have experienced the full spectrum of Life issues: abortion, incurable illness, disability, euthanasia and end-of-life issues. It was an honour to be with our brothers and sisters in Christ at Centre Street Church. The congregation gave us a standing ovation. I hope you will also enjoy it.  

Sadly, four years later Canada legalized euthanasia. 

If you would like to hear what we said, click here or here https://cschurch.ca/sermon/the-sanctity-of-human-life

Mark

FOR THE SAKE OF OUR CHILDREN

 The HumanLifeMatters blog has enjoyed over 1,300,000 visits from people across North America and beyond. I’m going to put it all on the line with this post. If Google suspends or confiscates my blog, so be it. I may be silenced by censors at Google, Facebook and X, but I will not be silent, especially when it comes to the mental, physical or spiritual health of children.

Pedophiles are now trying to sanitize their perversion and develop an air of acceptance for their abhorrent and devilish predilection for having sex with children. They have developed a new euphemism to mask their sick deviancy and moral corruption: “minor-attracted.” They would like it to become part of our vernacular. No!

Euphemisms are meant to hide or disguise something offensive or evil and make it sound innocuous or even altruistic. For example, to avoid the ugly word abortion, people who advocate it refer to reproductive rights, or the right to choose but avoid what the choice is between: The choice to kill one’s unwanted unborn child, or let the baby live. Canada's euphemism Medical assistance in dying (MAiD) avoids the repulsive words euthanasia or assisted suicide of sick or disabled people. Euphemisms hide monstrous actions or ideas behind pleasant words to placate and convince people to accept what was previously disgusting or unacceptable. Massage the message.

Pedophiles are using the template of the 2slgbtq2s+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, two-spirit, and additional people who identify as part of sexual and gender diverse communities). Pedophiles want to include their initials “m.a.” (minor attracted) with the alphabet crowd—identifying as part of the sexually “diverse communities.”

For the sake of preserving our children’s innocence and protecting their gentle hearts, souls and bodies from predators who would hurt them for their own sexual gratification, society must not allow any normalization of pedophilia. As parents, grandparents, and citizens we must aggressively and publicly oppose pedophilia and its acceptance.  

We must rise up at this desperate time because our previous great Western culture—the greatest in history— is crumpling. We must reclaim what has been lost and fortify what remains against the hidden and overt left-wing woke agendas of Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party, Justin Trudeau and Canada’s Liberal Party, and their toadies in the mainstream media. We must demand—in the streets if necessary—that gender ideologies in school curriculums be removed. They only serve to confuse children needlessly. For the sake of catering to a tiny number of genuinely gender-confused children, they attempt to confuse all children. The odd gender-confused child needs counseling therapy not affirmation or spreading a transgender message that has morphed into a social contagion. 

Citizens and people of good will! Demand that female-only safe places (like washrooms and change rooms) be safe places exclusively for biological females. The feminist movement fought for safe places for women. Now the most basic of safe places for women are being invaded by males pretending to be females. Stand with resolute determination to keep our women and daughters safe in places made for them only. Lobby to keep women's sports only for women. Stop drag queen story hours. They are intended to introduce normalize transvestism, men with sexual fetishes, and grammatically incorrect idiotic preferred pronouns. 

Stop this madness! Let’s return to some semblance of sanity and normalcy. Use your vote and influence with your families, neighbourhoods, and communities to oppose the sort of horrifying world we are barrelling toward faster than we could have imagined.

MDP

PROFILES IN CATHOLICISM: An Interview With Mark Davis Pickup

  

To read Profiles In Catholicism: An Interview With Mark Davis Pickup click here.

 

CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES AND AUTHENTIC COMMUNITIES

From 2006-2016 I was a columnist for a Canadian Catholic newspaper. In one of my columns, I wrote about children with disabilities and their authentic inclusion within the human community. I received a huge response from families with disabled children and people of goodwill who thanked me for writing it. The grandchildren I referred to are adults now and will have their own children. Maybe their great-grandfather will take them to a playground—except I will be walking. In 2018, God raised me from my electric wheelchair to walk again as an old man, after decades of paralysis. (It's strange: As a young man I needed a wheelchair, as an old man I walk. It should be the other way round)  Below is the column I wrote so many years ago. It was a long way from then to now and I'm happy to say that accessible playgrounds are everywhere.

________________________________________

It was a beautiful sunny day for a man to be at a playground with his preschool grandchildren. That’s exactly where I was. I took my grandson and granddaughter to a playground at a nearby elementary school; one child sat on my lap while the other stood on the back of my electric wheelchair as we whizzed our way to the playground. 

 

The place was packed with children of various ages having fun at afternoon recess. I had to watch from the safety of the grass because my wheelchair would get bogged down in the soft sand. 

 

“Look at me!” cried my grandson as he hung upside down from the monkey-bars. My wee granddaughter stood at the top of a slide waiting for me to look at her before she slid down laughing. Zoom! It was so good to be alive and breathe in the fresh April air; it was good to feel the sun’s warmth on my back after a long winter. To be surrounded by such childhood joy warmed my heart.  Joie de vivre!

 

Sweet inclusion

 

Something else made my heart soar. I noticed four children with visible disabilities in the middle of playful mayhem. One child had a withered arm, a second had cerebral palsy, a third with Down’s, and a fourth child was deaf.  It was good not to see “program” or “strategy” to include them. It just happened.  The children simply took each other’s differences in stride and played together.  

 

I sensed that what was unfolding before my eyes was the way God wants life to be—and children were leading the way! They didn’t need behavioral psychologists or experts to show them how to include children with disabilities. They just played. I also sensed that adults and experts need the children’s example more than the other way around. We all do.  

 

Some people are very good at ensuring special needs children are a part of their communities and included in normal childhood. The school I just mentioned is a shining example. Integrated schools are valuable vehicles to teach acceptance and inclusion of people with disabilities. The able-bodied children of that particular school seem to have incorporated this important life lesson into their daily lives. 

 

Why are so many adults such slow learners? Why do I still hear resistance to the integration of children with disabilities into public schools?  

 

Dichotomy of the age

 

At the same time as some children with disabilities were frolicking with my grandchildren at the playground, other children were dying at the hands of experts.  That’s the dichotomy of the age.  We can be so enlightened yet so savage toward children with disabilities.

 

Why are eighty percent of pregnancies involving Down’s children aborted? Nearly fifty percent of pregnancies involving babies with spina bifida end in abortion.  Why is that?  Why are pregnancies scrutinized—with a search-and-destroy mindset—for the slightest anatomical or genetic anomaly or imperfection? Disabled newborns are routinely denied nutrition and hydration in hospitals across North America. Why does modern medicine, and bioethics believe severely disabled children are worthless—so worthless they do not deserve life itself?  Tell that to the four children with disabilities I mentioned playing happily in the schoolyard.

 

I have actually heard some people say it’s unfair to bring a profoundly disabled child into the world.  Feminist icon, Betty Frieden, referred to disabled children in utero as “monstrosities.” She was wrong, so utterly, terribly wrong.

 

People are not monstrous, ideas are.  Deformity or disability can cripple a person’s body or cognitive function. But it is ideas, stone-hearted and brutal ideas that cripple human hearts. It is the logic of darkness and ignorance that stunts the development of character and denies any embrace of love and acceptance to the disabled, the handicapped, or the genetically flawed.  That may be the way of the world but it is not the way for followers of Jesus.  Those who have encountered the living Christ know that all humanity is imperfect, yet still loved by God.  God cares about each individual’s development within a larger common good.  

 

Transformation

 

Real inclusion is concerned with the development of each individual as an integral and indispensable part of a community. Authentic communities of concern understand that every person has something to contribute to the common good.  Sometimes that contribution takes the form of simply being present and being welcome.  

 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says this about the common good:

 

“In keeping with the social nature of man, the good of each individual is necessarily related to the common good, which in turn can be defined only in reference to the human person: … By common good is to be understood “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach there fulfillment more fully and more easily.” The common good concerns the life of all.” (Nos. 1905 & 1906)

  

Put another way, it’s liberty within social form and constructs. 

 

We must take care never to judge the worth of another human being! That is not our right. Humanity’s social nature calls each of us to take care never to close the door of loving acceptance of any human life, regardless of their physical or mental state. 

 

Pray for God’s help to transcend beyond self-focus to become other-focused. Seek to understand more than being understood.  Embrace even when your natural inclination is to repel. Be equally concerned about the common good as individual fulfillment.  Do this and you will begin to see, unfolding before your very eyes, the way God wants life to be.  I’m convinced of it.

 

CANADA'S CONSERVATIVE PRAIRIE LION

 

I was going through some old files and came across a note from Canadian Christian conservative icon Ted Byfield. Canadian Senator Paula Simons once called Ted the "godfather of Canada's modern Conservative Movement." Ted Byfield was my friend, as he was to my son and my father. Ted's wife Virginia died in 2014, after 65 years of marriage. It must have been like tearing off a limb. I don’t think he ever recovered from losing her. He responded to my wife's and my condolence card.

 

 

 

The suffering he referred to was me enduring 30 years with aggressive MS. But that fire I went through would pale in comparison to losing my wife, LaRee. We are both 71 and have been married for over 50 years. We are one, just as Ted and Virginia were. Ted's gone now: He died at his home on December 23rd, 2021. He is with Virginia and our Lord, the Creator of love and marriage.

 

In 2022, a biographical book about Ted Byfield’s life, written by Jonathon Van Maren, was published with the title Prairie Lion(available on Amazon here). The inside cover of the book dust jacket says:

 

“For more than half a century, Ted Byfield was one of Canada's
most significant public Christians, and his life's work included the founding of a religious order, the formation of several Christian boarding schools for boys, a series of influential magazines, laying the groundwork for a political movement, writing books, and serving as editor on a magnificent 12 volume history of Christianity, THE CHRISTIANS: Their First Two Thousand Years. He gave voice to western alienation when there were a few others who would, and help create the consensus that resulted in the first Conservative majority government in decades." 

You can purchase one or the 12-volume set here or here.  (My son Dean Pickup was the art director for the series.)

 

Now, nearly three years after his death, an evening to honour Ted Byfield will be held in Edmonton, on September 25, 2024. Speakers include former Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, Albertan Premier Danielle Smith, Canada’s Leader of The Conservative Party and Leader of the Official Opposition in Ottawa, Pierre Poilievre, and a keynote address by Preston Manning.

 

For tickets click here  

 

SHE OPENED A DOOR FOR LOVE AND RICHNESS

 

“And what do you do for a living? I am frequently asked. “Well, umm, … I’m a stay-at-home father with a severely disabled daughter.”  “My, … you must be an amazing man, I could never do what you are doing.” 

Nothing puffs me up more than to be amazing, except with the realization that I am not. However, something is amazing to me. It's amazing to me that I have been blessed with the privilege of caring for my disabled daughter for 29 years.

From the beginning, as new parents, my wife Caroline and I were counseled by professionals to give up our child because a disabled child is a great burden and a huge financial commitment. We were encouraged to place her in the care of professionals so that we could “get on with our lives.”

There were two crucial considerations that we as parents that we think about. First was that healthcare professionals did not have a clue how to care for our child. Within days of Nancy's emergency caesarean birth, exasperated nurses handed our seizuring daughter to us because they were unable to feed or calm her.  It was evident that professionals didn't know any more about what Nancy needed then we knew, as young, inexperienced parents. We learned that after hours of cuddling, Nancy was relaxed enough to breastfeed.

The second consideration was that there were no professionals who could love Nancy like we did. Nancy is the product of love between my wife and myself; she is God's creation. Whatever Nancy was or would become, she was part of us; she was a member of our family. 

As Nancy’s father, my number one responsibility is to love and care for her even though I would be required to make sacrifices. I chose to honor God's instruction in Ephesians 5:28, “Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies”; because I knew that a strong marriage would equip us to be a strong family. Some days I felt cheated from time with my wife because Nancy's care came first. Other days I felt like a failure when my efforts to calm Nancy seemed useless. 

The love chapter (1 Corinthians 13) speaks about love and I took this command to love my wife, my child and my family seriously. I was reminded, “Love never fails.” Whenever anger welled up in me and my feelings of inadequacy bore down on me, these thoughts renewed my focus: 

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” (verses 4-7).

Nancy taught our family a love lesson; We have learned that sacrifice and difficulty are made bearable by faith in Jesus Christ through the practice of love as defined in first Corinthians 13. While Nancy is not able to communicate and is totally dependent on those who love her, she has blessed me immensely. My wife and companion of 35 years passed away two years ago. Nancy continues to live with me and I love and care for her. What I have not achieved in my life because of my devotion to Nancy has been exceeded by blessings I could never have imagined. She truly is God's gift and she has opened the door of love and richness that I could have never imagined. God does all things well!

David P., Alberta Canada