Mark Devereaux found the photograph by accident.
He had opened the bottom drawer of his late mother’s desk looking for an old insurance form, but instead pulled out a small, worn envelope with his name written in her handwriting. Inside it were two things: a hospital bracelet and a black-and-white sonogram image, dated decades earlier.
At first, he didn’t understand. The date confused him. The name on the bracelet made no sense.
Then the realization hit him.
The bracelet wasn’t his.
It belonged to someone who never made it home from the maternity ward.
Someone who never took a first breath.
Someone who could have been his older sibling.
His mother had never spoken of it. Not once. She wasn’t secretive by temperament; she was simply quiet about sorrow. And there in his hands lay a sorrow she must have carried her whole life.
That night, Mark sat alone at his kitchen table with the envelope beside him. Outside, the wind shook the eaves. He looked at the image—at that tiny, grainy silhouette—and found himself whispering, “I didn’t know. I never knew.”
For the first time, the pro-life conviction he had always held in the abstract became something visceral. Personal. Eternal.
That small life—barely begun, never seen, never held—suddenly stood before him in a strange light:
not as a tragedy of biology,
not as a story cut short,
but as a soul.
A soul known by God.
A soul his parents had loved for the few weeks they had it.
A soul that had touched eternity before ever touching earth.
He felt both sorrow and awe.
A few days later, Mark visited the cemetery where his parents were buried. He brought the envelope. He wasn’t sure why. The winter grass was brittle underfoot. In the quiet, he felt a prompting—gentle, insistent—to speak aloud.
“Lord,” he said softly, “was this child…with You all along?”
The answer wasn’t a voice, but a certainty—the kind that settles into the bones.
Life does not vanish.
Souls do not disappear.
Every life—however brief—is eternal in consequence.
He stood there a long time.
Eventually a memory surfaced, one he hadn’t thought of in years: his mother kneeling by his bed when he was little, praying the simplest words, “Bless our family, on earth and in Heaven.”
Now he finally understood what she meant.
As he walked back toward his car, Mark passed an elderly man struggling to climb into the passenger seat of a sedan. His daughter was helping him—patiently, gently. The man’s hands trembled as he reached for the doorframe.
A few months ago, Mark would have hurried past, preoccupied with his own schedule. Not today.
Today, the trembling hands looked sacred.
Today, the daughter’s patience looked sacramental.
Today, frailty itself looked like an invitation to reverence.
He offered his arm. The man accepted it with gratitude that embarrassed him with its sincerity. When they were settled, the daughter smiled through tired eyes. “Thank you,” she said simply.
Mark nodded and walked on.
He felt something new waking inside him—a clarity he couldn’t quite name. A recognition that every person around him carried an eternal weight. Not the weight of burden, but the weight of glory. The weight of destiny.
Every life mattered because every life was going somewhere forever.
That night, he placed the sonogram in a small frame. He set it beside a candle. Not to memorialize a tragedy—but to acknowledge an eternal truth:
A soul had existed.
A soul had mattered.
A soul still lived in God.
Mark prayed a quiet prayer for the sibling he never knew and added a second prayer:
one for the courage to see every human person—every prisoner, every elderly neighbor, every unborn child, every refugee, every stranger—as someone who also bore the same eternal stamp.
The next morning he did something strange, impulsive, and wholly uncharacteristic: he printed out a small card and taped it inside his front door. It read:
“Every soul you meet today is an eternal opportunity.”
As he stepped outside, he tapped the card lightly with his fingertips, the way a soldier might touch a medal before marching.
He wasn’t trying to change the world.
He was trying to see it.
We measure the value of many things—careers, possessions, achievements, but when it comes to life itself, our culture often falls short. Is life only valued when it is strong, useful, or desired? Or does every human life, from the first heartbeat to the final breath, possess a worth that cannot be measured at all?
The life God gives to each of us—through parental love— is nothing less than an eternal opportunity: the chance to be with Him in His eternal present, that timeless “now” of which St. Augustine wrote in Confessions Book XI, on God’s eternity as the changeless “now” that neither comes nor goes. Each life is the one opportunity given to every soul to reach eternal communion with God. In that divine perspective, every life, however brief, broken, or burdened, matters infinitely, because it exists within the gaze of the Eternal.
Each January, the Church invites us to remember this truth: to be pro-life is to be pro-eternity. The culture of life is not merely about extending earthly years; it is about defending the eternal destiny of every soul.
The human soul is so valuable in God’s eyes that the Incarnate Word would have entered history, suffered His Passion, and died for a single soul.(cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q.1, a.2, ad 2) That is the true value each and every one of us carries—one beyond all earthly measure and understanding. The Incarnation reveals not only God’s power but His personal love—a love that calls each soul by name, as the Good Shepherd calls His sheep (cf. John 10:3). To defend life, then, is to defend the very object of Christ’s Passion. Every child (unborn or not), every elder, every prisoner, every forgotten one carries a worth so immense that Heaven itself once bled for it.
Life begins when God creates a soul out of nothing at conception, not when we decide it is convenient. “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5). From that moment, the Creator’s image is already imprinted—not potential, but presence (cf. CCC 2270). The unborn child, unseen yet infinitely known, stands at the threshold of eternity. To defend that life is to defend God’s creative act itself.
Yet protection must be paired with mercy—compassion for mothers and fathers who face the fear, isolation, or uncertainty of a pregnancy as heavy crosses. Where the world often condemns or abandons, the culture of life accompanies—reminding every parent that their child’s first heartbeat echoes in eternity, because every new life is not a burden imposed but an invitation offered by God into His eternal plan.
When strength fades and days grow few, the temptation arises to see life as finished. Yet in God’s sight, the elderly stand closer to the radiant door of eternity. Their suffering draws them more deeply into Christ’s own Passion.
One of the obediences of faith is to accept from God both the gift of life and the hour of death He appoints. Euthanasia and assisted suicide reject this obedience, claiming mastery over life’s final chapter. They promise compassion but deliver control. Yet one of the deepest acts of faith is to accept the death God’s providence has prepared for us, trusting that even our dying has meaning in His plan—an obedience praised by St. Alphonsus Liguori in Uniformity with God’s Will and echoed by St. Francis de Sales, who wrote in Treatise on the Love of God (Book IX, Ch. XIII) that “to die well is to die in the love of God—accepting death as He wills, when He wills, and how He wills.”
The culture of life sees age not as decline, but as deepening participation in divine life. To visit, listen, and honor our elders is to show reverence for souls standing at the threshold of the eternal “now.”
Even when society brands a life unworthy, God does not.
Justice may demand accountability, but mercy always seeks redemption. The Church upholds the sanctity of every soul—even the guilty—because each remains capable of conversion until the final breath.
Even in the shadow of guilt, God’s mercy waits. The repentant thief crucified beside Jesus was guilty by human judgment, yet grace found him in his final hour. Christ did not condemn him but forgave him and promised, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). That moment, at once terrible and tender, reveals that no life—no matter how marred by sin—is beyond the reach of redemption.
The same grace touched Alessandro Serenelli, the young man who murdered St. Maria Goretti. After years in prison, he repented deeply and sought forgiveness, even attending Maria’s canonization. His conversion stands as living proof that God’s mercy can bring resurrection out of ruin.
The culture of life extends even to prison walls, reminding the world that repentance can turn a cross into a door to Heaven. If repentance is to come, its hour must not be cut short by human justice. To pray for the condemned is to stand beside the Crucified Christ Himself, offering mercy where the world demands only judgment.
Our Lord hides Himself in those the world overlooks—the disabled, the poor, the mentally ill, the lawful refugee seeking safety and peace, and the unborn. “As you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to Me” (Matthew 25:40). The culture of life begins with vision—seeing beyond appearance, beyond mortal attributes, to the immortal soul within.
When we serve the hidden ones, we touch the mystery of the Incarnation itself, honoring God’s image—obscured but never erased.
What begins in the womb must be nurtured in the home. The first and most enduring sanctuary of life is the family. Within our homes, children learn reverence for the weak, respect for their elders, and compassion for the suffering. In the home, love becomes incarnate in the ordinary. Every act of patience, every word of encouragement, every meal shared with gratitude forms the heart in habits of eternity.
A home that protects life in all its stages, from conception to natural death, becomes a dwelling of the eternal present—a place where time is already touched by eternity.
Our age measures worth by productivity and independence, but God measures by love. And in the end, as St. John of the Cross reminds us, “In the evening of life, we will be judged on love.” (St. John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love, 64) To respect life is to see as He sees—every soul as an immortal mystery, every moment as a step toward eternity. The culture of life is not a campaign but a conversion—of sight itself, from the temporary to the timeless.
The life God gives us is that eternal opportunity—to love, to suffer, to repent, to prepare for the life that never ends. One day, time itself will cease, and what remains will be what and how we have loved in God. To love as God loves is to see every moment as preparation for eternity (CCC 1023–1024).
Let this January be more than remembrance. Let it be renewal—a turning of our hearts toward the Eternal Present, where all life finds its worth, its dignity, and its destiny in Him.
Life does not belong to us to rank or discard. It is entrusted to us so that eternity may be chosen, one soul at a time.