The Biggest Loser

Because of my schedule, I don’t get to watch television very often. When I do have a few moments, I usually try to watch the news so I can catch up with what might be going on in the world. As a result, I am often like a fish out of water when people refer to current popular shows.

The other day, for example, some of our seminarians were talking about “The Biggest Loser.” I felt like the “biggest loser” because I didn’t have a clue what they were taking about. Then they filled me in.

As many of you probably know, “The Biggest Loser” is a reality program on NBC. It’s a contest involving people with serious weight problems. With the help of trainers, contestants work to shed the excess pounds and at the end of the season the one who has lost the greatest percentage of weight wins a big cash prize.

I channel-surfed the show and found it interesting. The trainers stress that it’s a combination of exercise and diet that takes the weight off but, even more, it involves changing the way we think, the way we live, the way we approach our lives. In a sense, that is even more important than the treadmill and eating healthy.

What brought on this discussion between the seminarians and myself is the recognition that some of us need to shed some pounds — especially myself. And so toward that goal, six of us have engaged in “The Biggest Loser” effort to see which of us can lose the most weight by the end of this semester. One of the seminarians and I have “shook hands” on trying to lose a big 50 pounds! — a goal I certainly need to take seriously. Please pray that I succeed!

We need a conversion

It is my intention to be with our seminarians and thousands and thousands of others in Washington for the annual March for Life on Jan. 22. I’m writing this just before my departure for the capital, and I look forward to taking part in the vigil Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on Jan. 21, as well as concelebrating the Mass at the youth rally the next day after hearing confessions several hours before the Mass. The schedule calls for us to then meet with all the marchers for the main gathering at the National Mall at noon on Thursday. Coverage of the annual march will be in the Jan. 30 issue of the Pittsburgh Catholic.

In thinking about the march this year, I was reminded of “The Biggest Loser.” Over and over again the trainers tell the contestants that to shed weight — and keep it off — they need a conversion. They have to “shed” those habits and those ways of living that put the weight on.

It’s what our society needs as well. Pope John Paul II often said that the modern world is trapped in a “culture of death.” He meant that the more we see death as a solution to the ills that plague us, the more impossible it becomes for a society to survive at all. Life is the answer, no matter the question. Only a society that embraces life has hope.

In the coming year we need to shed all the pseudo-rationales that have become our excuse for the culture of death. At a time when we are painfully realizing that our economic structure cannot be based on ignoring the dignity of real work, we have to come to the understanding that our society cannot be based on anything that compromises the sacredness of human life.

We have to shed the rationale of an unwanted unborn child. There are no unwanted unborn, just living unborn who don’t need permission to be alive, to be fully human.

We have to shed the rationale of a “right to choose.” When the choice is death, there is no right to choose it for an innocent soul.

We have to shed the rationale that life is secondary to scientific research. No benefit accrues to humanity when the sacredness of life is sacrificed in the lab.

We have to shed the rationale that life can be qualified and quantified. The sacredness of any human life, the value of any life, is never dependent on its utility.

We have to shed the rationale that economics dictate whether we can accept a new life. Life does not come with a price tag.

We have to shed the idea that marriage is just another human relationship. Marriage is sacred because it is rooted in the creation and nurturing of new life.

We have to shed the rationale that capital punishment solves anything. State-sponsored killing only teaches killing.

We have to shed the idea that the elderly have a duty to die when their lives become inconsequential. There is no such thing as an inconsequential life at any point.

God’s absolute gift

We are in need of conversion; we are in need of shedding all the assumptions and presumptions that have allowed us to embrace the “culture of death.” If not, truly “The Biggest Loser” will be our very understanding of what it means to be human, what it means to be a child of God.

We can do this. We can beat this “culture of death” by embracing life as an absolute gift from our life-giving Creator, from the first moment of conception to the last breath of natural death.