Aggressive Tenderness

Totus Tuus

            This January saw another March for Life in Washington D.C. marking the 41^st 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”