Today, the Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, is also known as Respect Life Sunday.  There is a wonderful story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on September 9, 2011 that is worth revisiting in this regard. It is the story of a courageous young girl, Bayza Weeks, and the compassionate support of Principal Barry Lieske and De La Salle High School in downtown Minneapolis, which makes real and genuine what it means to respect life.

She sat outside the principal’s office at DeLaSalle High School in Minneapolis, embarrassed and alone on a cold day in what had been, for most of her life, a cold world. She shook and cried.

A diligent student, she played first chair clarinet and sang in the a cappella choir.

Several months pregnant at age 15, she faced a dilemma. Abort the child, leave school, or maybe both.

Her father’s words had been harsh: Keep the child, ruin your life.

The principal took a deep breath. Pregnancies were rare at the Catholic school. He spoke: We believe in life. We believe in education.

She heard something different: We believe in you.

Please read the rest of the story and see the short video here. The story of this now accomplished woman and her son, himself a freshman this year at De La Salle, is beautiful. In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that my youngest son Sam attends De La Salle. From my own experience, It is precisely this respect for all people in all stages and positions in life which reverberates down the school’s halls and which make it a model Catholic institution.

John W. Martens

Follow me on Twitter @johnwmartens

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.