An Anniversary I Wish We Could Forget

2008 will see many milestone anniversaries of events that happened in my lifetime. Some are personal, 35th Anniversary of my HS graduation, 40 years since a tornado went through my home town of Oelwein, & 35 years since I made my TEC (Teens Encounter Christ). Others are of a much wider importance. 1 I will talk about some other time is the 40th Anniversary of Pope Paul VI's prophetic encyclical Humanae Vitae. Others are sad, the 40th Anniversaries of the assasinations of Martin Luther King Jr. & Bobby Kennedy. But there is 1 Anniversary that is probably the darkest event to have occured in my lifetime & 1 that I wish never happened. 22 January is the 35th Anniversary of the most tragic, heinous & infamous ruling the Supreme Court made in the 20th Century, Roe v Wade & Doe v Bolton that resulted in the legalization of abortion.

As usual there will be many events across America praying for an end to this abomination in our country. This will include the March for Life in DC on 22 Jan & the 4th annual Walk for Life in San Francisco.

& throughout the year many other events will take place. Some groups will regularly prayer & do sidewalk counciling outside abortion clinics. Groups like Priests For Life, Human Life International & American Life League will continue the work they are doing to put an end to this infamia. Almost everyone of us who is Pro-Life should be able to participate in some of these activities. & we all should financially support the national groups as well as our local Right to Life group, Birthright & other Pro-Life groups.

But there is 1 thing each of us should & must do each & every day. PRAY!!!!! Prayer is the most powerful weapon given to us in the battle. It is where we need to start, it is what we need to undergird the activies we participate in & without it we will never succeed.

I am firmly convinced that it is prayer that has enabled the victories we have seen in the past few years. Those victories include seeing abortion clinics close down, Norma Leah McCorvey (Roe) conversion as well as her & Sandra Cano (Doe) speaking out against abortion, laws banning partial birth abortion passing in states, etc.

But, there is still a lot more to be done before we see the end to this modern holocaust. & prayer, as I said, is the key to our success. HLI, Priests for Life, ALL encourage us to pray as well as be active.

In the Catholic faith I see some very powerful weapons we can use in this battle.

The 1st weapon we have is the Mass/Divine Liturgy. This is the most powerful prayer there is. What could be more powerful than offering up to God that very sacrifice on Calvary that won our salvation from sin? Every Mass or Divine Liturgy should have as 1 of its intercession an end to abortion.

Another weapon is the Rosary. Anyone who has read an honest history of the Battle of Lepanto (1571) knows that the victory was attributed to a Rosary procession held that day in Saint Peter's Square. I've talked about the Rosary before so I won't go into more detail here.

Another prayer weapon is the Divine Mercy Chaplet. This prayer is a powerful prayer of repentance & seeking God's mercy for our sins. This prayer can be used after the model of Daniel who stood in proxy for all Israel & sought God's forgiveness for his nation's sins. & we are called to do the same, esp for the sin of abortion.

God has given us some powerful intercessors in the saints. The 1st & formost is the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Theotokis. Mary is the Queen Mother like we see in the Old Testament. God has placed her in this role & just like the Israelites approached the queen mother to intercede before the king, God wants us to approach Mary in the same way. Under the title of Our Lady of Guadelupe she has become the patronness of the Pro-Life movement. Some of the symbolism in her image on St. Juan Diego's cloak is clearly Pro-Life in its meaning. As an aside, during the Battle of Lepanto, Andrea Doria kept a copy of the miraculous image of our Our Lady of Guadalupe given to him by King Philip II of Spain in his ship's state room. This ties in with the Rosary.

Another saint we need to call on is St. Joseph. God called him to be the protector of the Theotokis & her son Jesus, the Messiah. There is an old saying, actions speak louder than words. In Joseph's case this is especially true. Not a word of his is recorded in Scripture, but his actions clearly speak of what was in his heart. In Joseph we see a man who was prayerful & obedient to God. He was willing to obey God's will no matter the cost. This included taking Mary as his wife, protecting her on the journey to Bethlehem, being willing to take Jesus to Egypt at a moment's notice to protect Him from Herod. His role as foster father of Jesus makes him another powerful intercessor.

On 28 Dec, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of the Holy Innocents, those male children 2 years old & under killed by Herod in his attempt to kill Jesus. They have also come to be patrons of the Pro-Life movement. I am sure they are in Heaven joining their voices with the millions of children murdered by abortion praying for an end to its practice.

Then there is Blessed Margaret of Castello who has also been proposed as a Pro-Life movement patron. Born blind, a hunchback & lame, she was rejected by her parents just as the unborn murdered by abortion are rejected by theirs.

Prayer is the starting point. For most of us it will be the foundation for the actions we take. But there are some out there who by reasons of age or health cannot take a physically active role. For you, being a prayer warrior is your role that God is calling you to. Those of us need your intercessory prayer to equip us & support us as we go out. Never say that you are just praying. What you are doing IS just as important as what the rest of us are doing. Maybe more so.