The year is drawing to a close. The days of bloodshed, the days of pain will not dance away at midnight on December 31. With hope slung over our shoulders, we will have to face the future, find ways to turn sorrow into joy, the impossible into the doable, the unattainable into the reachable. For us, for our children, and in the name of the right to life, we must go to the front line, strengthen the positions of those already there. The fight against death and suffering will be waged by awakened consciences, by people who are alert and determined to forge the future—with rage, with ingenuity, given the immensity and complexity of the task. The scavengers of corpses, fork-tongued tricksters and prestidigitators of every stripe will not retire. They have been, and will always be, on the chessboard. With them, the banquet in the cemetery has found a grim normalcy. We must not harbor illusions.

2026 will be difficult, painful. But each day of the coming year will test convictions and offer opportunities—opportunities to engage in the effort of national rescue, in the effort to be better in our relations with others, in kindness, in beauty. Those who wallow in the posture of spectators of the national tragedy, of their own tragedy, will face their responsibilities, the inquisition of their conscience. The regret of not having tried is often the heaviest to bear.