Need to Earn Respect

Continuing in our reflections for life, we can see disrespect all around us.  Disrespect is the norm in our society, not the exception.  One of the great blessings of having a month of prayer focused on respect for life brings us to recognize true holiness.  We will come to the origins of how we are formed and made.  We did not make ourselves. 

In classic philosophy of the Dominican, St Thomas Aquinas, he said that grace was built on nature.   He spoke about the natural order moving into the divine order.  Often these are seen as separate from each other.  They are one—just as Jesus is true God and true man.  The divine and the natural are interconnected.  God has married the human family.  

We are taught respect as children.  Children are taught manners.  Manners are the foundation of respect.  This is the natural order becoming a foundation for the supernatural.  Having the social skills from the early years on, we are formed with the behavior of respect even if it is not respect that is from the heart or even from any values.  Have you noticed that manners and social skills have faded from the cultural landscape?  Language and behavior that is saturated in “thank you,” “please,” and “I am sorry” will be a great foundation in creating respect in our world.   We are most comfortable with disrespect in our homes, workplace and dare we say, even the political world.  

We often subscribe to the thinking that people need to earn our respect.  That may be the reason why we are where we are.  If respect has to be earned, how can it happen within the voicelessness of the womb? How does it happen with the chronically ill?  How does it happen with those who have no respect for themselves? How does it happen with the least among us?  We must cause respect and model respect.  We must make respect a non-negotiable of our daily lives.  People must not have to earn our respect.  Rather, our currency of life is spending time affirming, respecting, and valuing life.  We must respect those who do not know how to respect themselves.  

Beyond human life, how does nature earn our respect?  Respect is about relationships:  everything of the Creator’s work is worthy of respect.  Nature can take decades and centuries to speak, but respect is still needed.   Blessed John Paul II declared St Francis of Assisi the patron of the environment.   The youth were asked to see in Francis the harmony of nature.  Respecting our world is not an option but a necessity.   

Respecting life can be overwhelming when we witness so much destruction, irreverence, bullying, abuse, and disregard.   The call remains.   This month of October calls us to our roots of respect in our stewardship.  We are the caretakers of this world and all its peoples.  We have a divine mandate that causes us to be responsible.   We will be the happiest with ourselves when we cause and maintain respect in every part of our lives.