What Makes a Pro-Life Prayer Warrior?

Dear Prayer Warriors,

Today I would like to share a reflection with you, if you do not mind. It is on what makes a “prayer warrior”. What makes people pray and fast, totally unseen in the privacy of their homes for the sake of lives and souls? What makes others donate money or supplies so that pro-life campaigns can occur? What makes people stand in a very prominent public place at a Planned Parenthood in the sun and heat, rain and wet, snow, slush, and cold? What makes folks give of their time with no remuneration? What makes a college student stop by to pray in between classes? Or a tired business person come by after a long day at work? Or a young mother who bundles up her little ones to come out to pray when even the presence of the little children does not stop rude remarks? What makes folks give up a morning or afternoon weekly for weeks on end or drive a great distance? What makes a pretty lady, the mother of six, stand in all weathers and often alone in front of an abortion mill, calling out for the women to come and talk to her? Is it because she knows the pain of the ‘choice’ these women are making? Or the mother who was given up for adoption herself and knows that all children are really wanted children? Or what of the man who buys pro-life books and materials at his own expense to give to whomever will accept them? Or those ones who come all year round with no reward but perhaps to learn years later that the calling out of “Mom, you don’t have to do this!” saved the life of a little boy?

Two passages for ALL these good Christians come to mind:

Your Father who sees in secret will reward you…lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven…for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Mt 6:18, 20-21)

My commandment is this: love one another as I have loved you. (Jn 13:34)

I submit to you that they do this out of love. Love for God, love for Jesus who laid down His life to redeem us and so these sacrifices are made: in a way to also lay down our lives for the sake of others. This is not done for money. A TRUE prayer warrior who enters into the spiritual battle does not do it for human respect or praise or attention or self-seeking. For if done for those reasons, then they will have their reward on this earth. But rather when they are alone perhaps in the heat or cold with the ‘slings and arrows’ coming their direction, they return a blessing and a prayer for those from whom those things come. They come for the love of souls, for the love of the unborn children and their parents; they come for the staff and for the hired killers. They come knowing that the Father who sees in secret hears their prayers and somehow, someway lives and souls are benefitting as the sacrifices they make are joined to the sacrifice of the Son. They come to enter into conversation with those who have not fully considered what “pro-choice” means and its repercussions. They stand in the gap to intercede for those affected by abortion.

For all those who have helped in ways seen and unseen in this 40 Days for Life campaign, I can only pray that you will one day hear those long awaited words from our Heavenly Father:

Well done, good and faithful servant. (Mt 25:21)

For the full measure of love is heaven for the beloved.

May God reward you and give you His peace.

Life is Precious

“America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts -- a child -- as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign."

Blessed Mother Teresa

Slaughter of Innocents

Slaughter of Holy Innocents: then and now


We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents Of Bethlehem by King Herod. Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Prayer to end abortion, the present day slaughter of Innocents:

O Almighty God, Creator of Heaven and earth and all things, You create today millions of human beings who are never permitted to see the light of day because of the sin of abortion. Grant to mankind the wisdom to respect human life at every stage of development.

You infuse souls into innocent babies even while still in their mothers’ wombs, their temporary homes. Grant that no one deprives your most innocent ones the privilege of your holy Baptism whereby they may be born again to Your supernatural life by grace. One soul in Your eyes, Almighty God, is of more value than the whole created universe.

Accept the precious blood of Your Son Jesus Christ, present on our altars and in our tabernacles, throughout the world in reparation for the sins of abortive murder. Even before Your Divine Son was born of Mary, dear God, when Your holy Mother greeted Elizabeth shortly after the conception of the Divine Child. Elizabeth asked, “How am I worthy that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?” Long before the birth of the Divine Child the Holy Spirit inspired Elizabeth to call Mary “Mother” and the unborn Child, her “Lord.”

Almighty God, remove the scourge of abortion from the face of the earth. Amen.



PRAYER FOR THE HELPLESS UNBORN CHILD:

Heavenly Father, in Your love for us, protect against the wickedness of the devil, those helpless little ones to whom You have given the gift of life.

Touch with pity the hearts of those women pregnant in our world today who are not thinking of motherhood. Help them to see that the child they carry is made in Your image – as well as theirs – made for eternal life.Dispel their fear and selfishness and give them true womanly hearts to love their babies and give them birth and all the needed care that a mother alone can give.

We ask this through Jesus Christ, Your Son, Our Lord, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever, Amen

As we enter into Advent

A Long Absence: Computer Challeged

Being somewhat computer illiterate, I could not get into my own blog for some time! But finally I cracked it!



We are about to begin the 40 Days for Life fall campaign which runs from September 22nd-October 31st. This is a strong and powerful prayer campaign that also combines sacrifice, penance, public witness, and community outreach for the sake of Defending Life.

In my town we have 7 Churches, 2 Protestant and 5 Catholic, as well as two university campus ministries banded together in prayer for this effort. We will also take turns praying at the local abortion provider, conveniently located across from a university campus. We pray for conversion of hearts.

Also there is prayer needed for the one state that has a Personhood Amendment on its ballot and that is Colorado. Being the first state to legalize the taking of the lives of the unborn, it would only be justice for it to be the first state to rescind that practice.

Let us pray!

Culture of Death: Attack on Both Ends of Life

A community that gets rid of someone—a community that is allowed to, and can, and wants to get rid of someone when he no longer is able to run around as the same attractive or useful member—has thoroughly misunderstood itself.


Fr. Alfred Delp S.J.'s Timeless Message Against Euthanasia
(November 2, 1941)

We celebrate All Souls' Day, and the meaning of that day is the spiritual companionship of human beings and all humanity to each other, all the way beyond the stars. It is not a camaraderie, however, that simply shields man, and acquiesces to everything and permits things to happen. Rather it is a camaraderie among those doing penance and reparation, and having the desire to help one other to attain salvation and perfection.

And we celebrated All Saints' Day, whose meaning expressed the goal, the interior purpose of man ... As I was reading the Gospel for All Saints' Day and reading the eight repetitions: "Beati estis, blessed are you when..." (Mt. 5:3ff – Sermon on the Mount, Gospel for the Feast of All Saints), I asked the question: What is meant by this word "blessed"? What is meant by this happiness that is promised to people here? ... Beati estis – eight times we proclaimed those words to mankind for All Saints' Day.

This past week I went to see a film here in Munich, a film that, day after day, for weeks now, has been giving people a sermon about human happiness, too. In this film, too, there is much talk of happiness and redemption and the meaning of existence...I am talking about the film, I Accuse. Many of you will have heard of it. It has do with a happy family life: two people made for each other; an intimate life together; growing together from one success to the next. A happy life and happy atmosphere and happy hearts. And then like a bolt from the blue in the midst of this, comes the wife's illness, the incurable, progressive paralysis. First of all, the couple's rebellious reaction and their attempt, by any means possible, to defeat this demon. However, they reach the limits of their strength, and then comes just the right solution: To "let her go". You cannot do this to a person, cannot let her suffer like that, so you—let her go. This human being dies before bearing out the term of her suffering.

That, too, is a message about happy people. Here, too, a "beatus" is expressed, a beatus, not as a promise, but as an end in itself: Man should be happy and make others happy. When he can no longer do this, then life begins to lose its meaning; and what is meaningless is basically untenable and unjustifiable, and it dies.

We have to inwardly confront these things from our viewpoint of the value of human life, and of the eight repetitions of "beati". This has to do with the ultimate foundations. This really concerns the ultimate attitudes and decisions and, with them, there is no such thing as an interim solution. "I Accuse!" This film accuses an order of life that "forces" people to go on living and—through every pore—it accuses a God who lets something like this happen.

What do we have to say to these proposals, from our holy mountain, from the viewpoint of our holy message? The details of the film are not so important to us; lots of films are shown that are trash. But here, there is an intention and an attitude behind it. And this whole attitude is, first of all, deception. Deception is the prerequisite, the space, in which the monstrous illness breaks in. This cultivated happiness, people wandering from one joyous moment to the next... Actors can play it, but look and see if life is really like that. The deception that you should spot in the background is the idea that without the monstrous illness, this life would always be on the way to this seductive total happiness here in this world.
That is the first deception, and with it, the prerequisite itself is wrong on which the whole discussion is based. And the second deception is the manner and method in which – pardon the expression – a soothing appeal is made to the tear ducts of the audience, so that sympathy removes the strength to seriously question these things. That is the second deception. The third deception is the endless discussion of love and letting go, the eternal termination of all difficulties and precepts and everything lasting, for the benefit of – indeed, for the benefit of whom? Basically, for the benefit of the more comfortable solution...

A community that gets rid of someone—a community that is allowed to, and can, and wants to get rid of someone when he no longer is able to run around as the same attractive or useful member—has thoroughly misunderstood itself. Even if all of a person's organs have given out, and he no longer can speak for himself, he nevertheless remains a human being. Moreover, to those who live around him, he remains an ongoing appeal to their inner nobility, to their inner capacity to love, and to their sacrificial strength. Take away people's capacity to care for their sick and to heal them, and you make the human being into a predator, an egotistical predator that really only thinks of his own nice existence.

The arguments in the film go like this: "This woman is no longer the same as the beautiful wife whom I loved." And from the wife's side: "My husband cannot love me anymore if I am ill and ugly; tired and wasting away." What kind of a marriage vow was it that applied only to sparkling eyes and beautiful cheeks, but did not apply to the loneliness, to the distress, to standing together all the way to the finish! Some like to call these arguments "the greater love": Rather, it would be the greater cowardice that pulled back here. Pulled back to escape from the responsibility, from the innermost attitude of commitment to another human being. It is escape. It takes away from man the last chance of his existence.

W. Corsari has written a book, The Man without a Uniform, which tackles the same problems: Doctor or human being? Is it permissible for a doctor to "let someone go" someone by killing them? The doctor does it and is ruined by it. One patient escapes him. After fifteen years, he meets her again, crippled, ruined, sclerotic. "Well," he asks her, "would you have wanted to die, at that time?"

"Yes, perhaps, at that time. But not today. Not anymore. What these fifteen years of conscious suffering have revealed to me about inner values, and what I have learned to understand and to comprehend, that makes up for everything else."

Because one is fleeing from what is hard, one takes away a human being's last chance of maturing, of persevering, of proving himself. That is why the whole thing is not only a lie and an escape. It is a rebellion. It is an outrage. It is an encroachment on rights that must stand inviolable if the entire cosmos is not to fall apart. It is an outrage against the Kyrios, the one and only Lord of life. Where God, the Lord, has not set aside the right to existence, that right stands inviolably under His love, under His fidelity, and under His punishment. A nation that lets a human being die, even a human being in the most extreme situation, will die itself. It is an outrage against the human being who, through his birth and his existence alone, already has rights that no one can take from him, and that no one can touch without disgracing humanity, and disgracing himself, and despising himself.

That is the view of life from our holy mountain. When we hear "beati estis, blessed are you", then it is always connected to a promise, to a trial: When you hunger and thirst...When you suffer persecution...When you persevere...When you remain in [God's] order...When you stay faithful...When you carry on with life as it stands, rather than wanting to remodel it out of personal right, and personal might, and personal authority ... As His own image and likeness, God released man into life and promised: "Your reward will be great and glorious in Heaven"
+++
Father Delp was known for challenging his parishioners with words that also could be a call to our own consciences today. Father Delp's listeners knew well the events to which he referred.Those who worried about his safety were right – he would be with them only three years before his arrest and eventual martyrdom. They would remember him as a "voice calling in the wilderness", a "prophet" whose message was timeless.
http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2009/adelp_euthanasia_may09.asp

The Anniversary of a Prophetic Encyclical: July 25th

July 25th: The Anniversary of a Prophetic Encyclical

Ave Maria Meditations
In our present world where the embracing of intrinisic evils, which are the compromises with the devil, are becoming more and more mainstream and even mandated, a courageous voice spoke out in 1968. He was publicly denounced for this even by high ranking clergy. Society was warned but did not heed the warning and never has human life become so cheapened and the dignity of a human being so debased. The consequences of the embracing of moral evils has yet to be fully realized. God help us.

ENCYCLICAL LETTER
HUMANAE VITAE
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
PAUL VI
TO HIS VENERABLE BROTHERS
THE PATRIARCHS, ARCHBISHOPS, BISHOPS
AND OTHER LOCAL ORDINARIES
IN PEACE AND COMMUNION WITH THE APOSTOLIC SEE,
TO THE CLERGY AND FAITHFUL OF THE WHOLE CATHOLIC WORLD, AND TO ALL MEN OF GOOD WILL, ON THE REGULATION OF BIRTH
some excerpts from the Encyclical Letter which can be found at:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html
Honored Brothers and Dear Sons,
Health and Apostolic Benediction.
The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator. It has always been a source of great joy to them, even though it sometimes entails many difficulties and hardships.

The fulfillment of this duty has always posed problems to the conscience of married people, but the recent course of human society and the concomitant changes have provoked new questions. The Church cannot ignore these questions, for they concern matters intimately connected with the life and happiness of human beings.

Faithfulness to God’s Design

13. Men rightly observe that a conjugal act imposed on one’s partner without regard to his or her condition or personal and reasonable wishes in the matter, is no true act of love, and therefore offends the moral order in its particular application to the intimate relationship of husband and wife. If they further reflect, they must also recognize that an act of mutual love which impairs the capacity to transmit life which God the Creator, through specific laws, has built into it, frustrates His design which constitutes the norm of marriage, and contradicts the will of the Author of life. Hence to use this divine gift while depriving it, even if only partially, of its meaning and purpose, is equally repugnant to the nature of man and of woman, and is consequently in opposition to the plan of God and His holy will. But to experience the gift of married love while respecting the laws of conception is to acknowledge that one is not the master of the sources of life but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator. Just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, and with more particular reason, he has no such dominion over his specifically sexual faculties, for these are concerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God is the source. “Human life is sacred?all men must recognize that fact,” Our predecessor Pope John XXIII recalled. “From its very inception it reveals the creating hand of God.”

Consequences of Artificial Methods

17. Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings?and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation?need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.