Totus Tuus
This
January saw another March for Life in Washington D.C. marking the 41st
anniversary of the Roe v. Wade court decision, legalizing abortion in the US. Every year Catholics from all over the
country gather at the nation’s capitol to try and bear witness to the sanctity
of life. Our witness, however, needs to
be more then a one-day affair; it needs to be our very lives. We must wage a war of love for life.
The war for
life will not be won through polls, political candidates, or violence; it will
be won on the battleground of individual hearts, one person at a time. Politicians cannot give value to life or take
it away; one must come to see its value as self-evident. As Catholics our passion for life must go beyond
just a political policy, it must be rooted in the Person of Jesus Christ. How are we to fight this war for life? By living a life of faith, convicted of the
fact that every human being is created in the image and likeness of God. If we are to love those who are yet to be born,
we must also love all those we encounter everyday with the love of Christ. We must be the light of the world to the rest
of the world showing what true Christian charity looks like by the witness of
our lives. Pope Francis is calling for the
Church to live out the aggressive tenderness of Jesus. We must be disciples who possess the joy of knowing
Jesus and following Him everyday. This
is not a mandate for popes, bishops, priests, monks, or nuns; it is our
privilege as baptized Christians. We
must be a people living with the aggressive tenderness of Christ.
The reason
abortion always stirs up such a strong reaction is because it causes so much
pain. Why do people get upset at the
Church? Its not like priests are going
to show up at somebody’s house and arrest them because they had an abortion. No, definitely not. The Church is that last voice of conscience in
the world, refusing to bend or just shut up.
I think of a Band-Aid over a nasty cut that is pulled off whenever
someone who has been affected by abortion is reminded of it. It’s painful.
We cannot bend on our stance for life so we must be a people of God’s
aggressive tenderness, embracing that pain.
People do not choose abortion seeing the evil that it is; they have been
lied to. People think abortion will
bring about healing and help them to get on with their lives, whatever their
circumstances may be, but all it does is cause pain, terrible pain. They choose what politicians and businessmen
dress up as a neat solution to what they call the problem of pregnancy. We cannot view the beautiful gift of a woman’s
fertility as a disease that needs to be cured through contraception and abortion;
a woman’s dignity is so much greater than that.
In our world that’s hurting so much, the only healing will come through
Christ’s aggressive tenderness.
“Christ’s triumph is always a cross, yet a cross, which is at the same
time a victorious banner borne with aggressive tenderness against the assaults
of evil.”
-Pope Francis, “The
Joy of the Gospel”
