Video Affirms "There's Always a Reason to Live"

MADRID, Spain, MARCH 18, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Scenes of a young couple in wheelchairs and an elderly bedridden father rejoicing with his son at Spain's World Cup victory poignantly affirm that "there's always a reason to live" in a video produced by the Spanish Episcopal Conference for this year's pro-life campaign.

The campaign centers on the March 25 Day for Life.

The bishops' Sub-commission on Family and Life launched the campaign with a statement that laments a "darkness that leads to not appreciating the grandeur and beauty of each human life loved eternally by God."

They said that many people fail to discover the goodness of life "when it is accompanied by serious illnesses, psychic or physical disabilities, times of poverty, loneliness, weakness that accompanies the passing of the years or at the moment of the end of one's life."

"When society is unable to give meaning to pain or to human fragility and abandons persons to loneliness," the statement added, "the members of the Church feel urged to respond with the love of Christ and to generate hope in persons who, on feeling that they are loved and supported in their suffering or loneliness, can overcome deceptions and sorrows, that is, they can find the reason to live."

The video is a novelty in this year's campaign. 

In less than three minutes it presents four stories: that of an elderly man in the hospital with his son; a sick child who receives a gift from his family and friends; two disabled persons who show affection for others and for each other; and a grandmother who reads a story to her grandchildren.

The Web site has a section that invites viewers to give their own reflection, asking: "There's always a reason to live. What's yours?"

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