Pro-life homily

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  Behold love.  Behold the one who offers himself as a gift so that we may have life and have it abundantly.  That is the definition of love.  And great saints have been imitating the love of Christ for 2,000 years.  They realized that love is sacrificing one’s own comfort for the good of another, and they imitated that love.  That sacrificial love of the Lamb of God is the Good News.

You and I are also called to imitate that sacrificial love.  Parents daily make sacrifices so their children may have life and have it abundantly.  There is nothing more beautiful.

But there’s bad news today.  Love’s opposite runs rampant in our land.  Some who get the news they are parents ask the child to sacrifice her life for the comfort of the parent.  On this Respect Life Sunday, we acknowledge that this is the opposite of love.  And it has been legal in our country for 41 years.  And it happens over 3,000 times a day.  Meanwhile married couples waiting to give sacrificial love through adoption continue waiting.

Today the words of Isaiah from our first reading have special meaning.  “Now the Lord has spoken who formed me as his servant from the womb.”  The Lord formed all of us to be His servants from the womb.  All of us have a unique task to serve the Lord and each other, no matter if we are wanted or unwanted in the womb.

No reason will ever justify taking the life of the child in the womb.  Some may say:  The mother is poor.  She can’t afford a child.  We don’t fight poverty by killing born people who are poor.  So we can’t fight poverty by killing unborn people who are poor.  It can’t happen anymore and we are the ones who have to stop it.

It is up to us to actively change the culture of death into a culture of life.  We can’t be shy about speaking up about the beauty of sacrificial love.  We have to get engaged in the battle for God’s most precious gift of life.  If we don’t know what to say, we have to find out what to say.  We can ask someone engaged in pro-life work how to get trained.

We have to let our politicians know we are pro-life, and killing the unborn is not acceptable.  It is our duty to let them know with our voice and with our vote. 

Now is the time to pray and act.  Please pray for our youth groups who are traveling to Washington for the March for Life on Wednesday.  I’m taking 21 students from Fenwick with 4 other chaperones.  These students will brave the severe cold to give a voice to those whose voice cannot yet be heard.  These students will make a sacrifice so that others may have life.  Their love encourages me.  More importantly, pray for the healing of those who suffer the wounds of past abortions.  Many of them were told lies.  Many of them were convinced they had no choice.  The burden of regret is becoming more well-known for both men and women.  Nobody needs to carry that burden.  The Lord will bring them to healing through his Church.