What, then, will this child be?

So ask the people in today's Gospel (Luke 1:57-66, 80) on today's Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist.

The answer would be something wonderful. As our Lord himself would say, "Among those born of women, no one is greater than John." (Luke 7:28)

Tragically, the attitude of too many people in our modern world toward the prospect of children is more dread than expectation.

Children are contemplated as costs and inconveniences rather than long-term producers of great benefit and channels of blessings.

In the modern mind, the gift of new life is a problem to be limited, controlled, and even prevented.


Having and raising a child is a challenge, but the alternative may be far worse.

A recent scientific study published in the U.K. this past week opined how in vitro fertilization might be worth the cost because of the child's long-term benefits to society.

Its results also showed that society derives even more net benefit from children that are conceived naturally (without, I would respectfully add, the tinkering that conceives children in glass dishes and thereafter condemns most of them to death by deep-freeze or by abortion - using the euphemism of "selective reduction").

Societies that had embraced the contraceptive mentality are now looking at a darkening future. Those who minimized the value of children in the past may have no one to care for them in the future.

Life is a gift. To withhold that gift can be deadly.

We need to embrace God's gift of life - not recklessly, but lovingly - and rededicate ourselves to welcoming and caring for children as much as we can, so that we ourselves may be able to enjoy God's gift of life in the years, decades, and eternity to come.

What, then, will this child be?

What, thereafter, shall our future be?