In the Dioceses of our country, today is set aside as a day of prayer and penance on the anniversary of the Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion throughout our land. The Bishops ask us to pray for the full restoration of the legal guarantee for the right to life for the unborn. They also ask us to do penance for the violations to the dignity of human life that are committed through acts of abortion.
Pope Francis calls our culture a throwaway culture. We are also a culture that can be very narcissistic and self-centered. Having a respect for life means all of us making sacrifices and working together to create a society where the values that respect human life are an integral part of what we believe. One evening, I was driving home from the chancery office listening to National Public Radio. I was shocked to hear a story about the governor of California signing a law that requires all the campuses of the California state university system to offer abortion drugs to its students. The prior governor would not sign that law, saying that such medication was available off-campus, but the current governor said that this was not convenient enough, that they had to provide these abortion drugs to the students on campus if requested. I remember that when I was a public school teacher here in Mississippi, I could not even give a student an aspirin if he had a headache, but now a public university is offering a student a means to get an abortion directly from that school. What have we come to as a society?
In the ancient world in the time of Jesus, children were not considered to have many rights. Children were considered some of the most human beings in the ancient world. So when Jesus kept lifting up children as examples of faith and as worthy in the kingdom of God, it would have been a shocking message for people to hear. We are called to respect all human life as a part of the values of the faith, especially the most vulnerable. At Catholic Charities, one of our most successful programs is the Born Free program that provides services to women who are pregnant and who are battling substance abuse addictions. This program gives the women who are in residence there a chance to become clean and to birth to their babies in a safe environment, rather than enticing them to an easy way out, such as abortion, which is what some in our secular society would want to offer them. We here at St Jude have done outreach to help the women in residence at the Born Free program. It is important not only for us to live out the values of our faith, but to teach our children and youth the message of our faith, combating the “throwaway culture” message of our secular world.
As we pray today, we recognize the importance of protecting the unborn and the most vulnerable in society: those who are on the margins, the sick, those with special needs, those battling addictions and coping with mental illness, those who oppressed and marginalized in society, and the elderly. This also connects to the way we are called to be good stewards of all creation, taking care of the earth and our natural resources. All this goes together. Thank you all for coming to our mass today, either in person or in the virtual world. It is important for us to be in solidarity together and to life up our prayers for this special intention.
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