(Fourth Sunday of Advent (C): This homily was given on
December 20, 2015 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond
Suriani. Read Hebrews 10: 5-10; Luke 1: 39-45.)
At the
National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C, on February 5, 1994, Mother
Teresa of Calcutta said these famous words:
I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?
And so
I’m sure that Mother Teresa, if she were still alive on earth in 2015, would
not be surprised at all by things like the terrorist activities of ISIS, and
the selling of fetal body parts by the people at Planned Parenthood—and the
warped journalists in the mainstream media who have the audacity to defend what
Planned Parenthood has done (all in the name of “science” of course!). Nor would she be startled by TV programs like
ABC’s “Scandal”, where, in last month’s season finale, a woman had an abortion
while “Silent Night” was being played in the background!
Talk
about blasphemy!
Nor
would Mother Teresa find it shocking that racial tensions are mounting in many parts
of our nation, and that violence against police officers is increasing. As she said in that same 1994 Prayer
Breakfast talk, “Any country that accepts
abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get
what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is
abortion.”
Writer Michael W. Chapman put it well in an article he penned
about a year after the Sandy Hook shootings happened in nearby
Connecticut. He wrote, “If it is okay to
kill babies, then why are we shocked over shootings at Newtown? About 3,000
children are killed by abortion in the United States every day, yet the
dominant media say … nothing. They instead demand gun control while the Planned
Parenthood mill down the street is killing children by the bushel.”
I mention all this today, not to depress you right before
Christmas, but rather to accent the importance of Christmas! As Catholics we stand for life—natural life and
supernatural life. ALL LIVES matter to
us, because all lives matter to God, who sent his divine Son into this world:
preparing a body for him (as it says in today’s second reading from Hebrews 10),
so that he could offer his life in sacrifice for our sins and make heaven
possible for every human person—including great sinners (like the doctors who
perform abortions and the people at Planned Parenthood who sell them).
Provided they
sincerely repent, even they can be
forgiven, even they can experience
eternal life in the Lord’s kingdom.
That fact needs to be emphasized, especially in this Year of
Mercy.
As Jesus said, “I have come that they might have life and
have it more abundantly.”
The “they” in that verse means “everyone”.
In opposition to the Planned Parenthood, pro-choice crowd, today’s
gospel presents us with two great pro-life women: women who, like Mother
Teresa, understood—and witnessed to—the sanctity of human life in its earliest
stages. I’m talking, of course, about
Elizabeth (the mother of John the Baptist), and Mary, our Blessed Mother. And don’t you find it interesting?—both of
these pro-life women had very good reasons to be otherwise; both had very good
reasons to abort their babies (at least that’s what pro-choice politicians and
the people at Planned Parenthood would tell us!). Elizabeth, first of all, was an old
woman. Don’t they tell us that the risks
of being pregnant increase as a woman gets older? And how were she and Zechariah supposed to
care for a little baby when, in their advanced years, they would obviously need
extra care themselves? And isn’t that
probably the reason why Mary went to visit her cousin in the first place? It was because she knew that Elizabeth would
need extra assistance just to make it through her pregnancy!
And how about Mary?
She was young, poor and unmarried: three of the most common reasons
why—according to pro-choicers—abortion needs to be kept legal in this country. They say to us, “Some women are too young to
bring children into the world, so abortion needs to be an option for them; some
can’t afford to raise a child, so we need to keep abortion legal and ‘safe’ for
them (even though abortion is never safe!); some aren’t married and have no
male support in their lives, so we need to provide them with a means of
terminating their pregnancies.”
Can you imagine how the death-dealers at Planned Parenthood
would have counseled Elizabeth and our Blessed Mother if they had had the
opportunity?
Thank God they weren’t around in the first century!
But you know what?
Even if they had been around, it wouldn’t have mattered. It wouldn’t have mattered at all! All the misinformation, all the lies, all the
clichés they would have shared with Mary and her cousin would have fallen on
deaf ears. These two women knew the
truth—they knew the will of God—they knew what was right—and they acted on that knowledge, even when it
involved doing things that were difficult (things like assisting an elderly,
pregnant relative when you’re going through a pregnancy yourself!).
Blessed Mother,
St. Elizabeth, Blessed Mother Teresa—great women of faith and life—pray for us. Pray that we will come to see the connection
that so few in our society seem to be able to see at the present time: the
connection between “the greatest destroyer of peace today”—abortion—and so many
of the other evils that are currently afflicting us in our country and world. And pray that we will act on that knowledge
by doing what the three of you did: by doing all that we can to show
respect for and
love toward the most innocent and helpless people among us: babies in the wombs
of their mothers. This we ask through
Christ our Lord. Amen.
