Why Prayer Is At the Heart of Our Pro-Life Efforts

Yesterday, in the Roman/Latin Rite of the Office of Readings the 1st reading was taken from the OT Book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 9:7-21,25-29 is where Moses reminds the Israelites of what happenned when he was up on Mt. Sinai (Horeb) getting the 10 Commandments.

I think it is good for us to reflect on this reading today for several reasons.

1st of all, w/ today being the 37th Anniversary of Roe v Wade & Doe v Bolton we in the USA have sinned by condoning the depravity that is abortion. Our country has turned away from the direction God pointed out to us. & we deserve His wrath.

Why we haven't received the full brunt of that wrath is, IMHO, simple. It is because many people have been praying. People have come before God with prayers of repentance seeking God's forgiveness.

What we need to do is learn from Moses' example & continue to pray for our country. If we do, I think that we can not only avert God's wrath we will see more hearts changed & we will see an end to abortion.

The US Bishops have declared today to be A Day of Prayer and Penance for Life. Moses' prayer gives us a good template for asking God's forgiveness. Another prayer to consider is praying the Divine Mercy Chaplet. A special Rosary wouldn't hurt either. Some parishes are having exposition & Eucharistic adoration today. If your's isn't & there isn't an adoration chapel like we have in DBQ stopping in & praying before the Tabernacle (assuming the Church is open) is another good suggestion. & Mass if possible, as well. Esp if the priest follows the USCCB guidelines.Nor should our prayers be limitted to today. Today is a special day of prayer & penance. It is still not too late. & even if you don't see this until after the 2nnd, it isn't too late either.

Moses spoke to the people, saying:

“Bear in mind and do not forget how you angered the Lord, your God, in the desert. From the day you left the land of Egypt until you arrived in this place, you have been rebellious toward the Lord. At Horeb you so provoked the Lord that he was angry enough to destroy you, when I had gone up the mountain to receive the stone tablets of the covenant which the Lord made with you. Meanwhile I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights without eating or drinking, till the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone inscribed, by God’s own finger, with a copy of all the words that the Lord spoke to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly.

“Then, at the end of the forty days and forty nights, when the Lord had given me the two stone tablets of the covenant, he said to me, ‘Go down from here now, quickly, for your people whom you have brought out of Egypt have become depraved; they have already turned aside from the way I pointed out to them and have made for themselves a molten idol. I have seen now how stiff-necked this people is,’ the Lord said to me. ‘Let me be, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under the heavens. I will then make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’

“When I had come down again from the blazing, fiery mountain, with the two tablets of the covenant in both my hands, I saw how you had sinned against the Lord, your God: you had already turned aside from the way which the Lord had pointed out to you by making for yourselves a molten calf! Raising the two tablets with both hands I threw them from me and broke them before your eyes. Then, as before, I lay prostrate before the Lord for forty days and forty nights without eating or drinking, because of all the sin you had committed in the sight of the Lord and the evil you had done to provoke him. For I dreaded the fierce anger of the Lord against you: his wrath would destroy you. Yet once again the Lord listened to me.

“With Aaron, too, the Lord was deeply angry, and would have killed him had I not prayed for him also at that time. Then, taking the calf, the sinful object you had made, and fusing it with fire, I ground it down to powder as fine as dust, which I threw into the wadi that went down the mountainside.

“Those forty days, then, and forty nights, I lay prostrate before the Lord, because he had threatened to destroy you.

“This was my prayer to him: O Lord God, destroy not your people, the heritage which your majesty has ransomed and brought out of Egypt with your strong hand. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Look not upon the stubbornness of this people nor upon their wickedness and sin, lest the people from whose land you have brought us say, ‘The Lord was not able to bring them into the land he promised them’; or ‘Out of hatred for them, he brought them out to slay them in the desert.’ They are, after all, your people and your heritage, whom you have brought out by your great power and with your outstretched arm.”