July 18, 2017
Tuesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 390
EX 2:1-15A
PS 69:3, 14, 30-31, 33-34
MT 11:20-24
We often villainize the other until they are no longer human to us. The Pharaoh’s daughter heard a baby crying while out bathing in the river. Even though this baby was of the Hebrews, a slave race, she was moved to pity at the sight of the child. It does not escape me that we in our modern society tend to prevent the children from crying so that we don’t have to deal with the emotions that come from that experience. We instead claim them to be non-human, a blob of cells, simply a “part of the woman’s body.” How many of these abortions would be prevented if the mother were to hold the child for a moment, alive outside the womb? Likely most of them.
I often say something to people when I notice that haven’t been coming to Mass, and I say it with all sincerity: We are more complete with you. As members of the body of Christ, we cannot do things alone. Each of us performs a unique function that no one else can fulfill in the same way, with the same thoughts, with the abilities that God has given you and only you. You make us better. Instead of realizing the vast damage we have done to the whole of humanity by removing the uniqueness of millions of lives before they could be born into the world, we celebrate our own selfish interests and laud a world in which the Pharaoh’s command to destroy the children of an entire race is perpetuated and held up as the golden cow.
I often imagine Jesus speaking to each of us as he says in today’s Gospel: “Woe to you! If you had seen the miracle going on around you, you would long ago have repented.” The miracle of life. The miracle of the Eucharist. The Miracle of freedom from sin. The miracle of God becoming a man. How many miracles have we missed because the one whose faith would have prayed for them had been aborted? Hillary Clinton famously asked Mother Teresa why she thought we had not had a woman President yet in the united states. Mother replied, “Maybe you aborted her.” Maybe we have indeed.
It is the time we as a nation, and more especially as a Church, “turn to the Lord in our need, and we will live.” We cannot remain silent about the blatant sin that goes on in our society. The sacrifice on the altar of progress, the declaration that the only way a woman can be free is if she sacrifices her children for her own career, success, and personal feelings. The demonic notion that a father is only a seed donor and can walk away free leaving the mother to care for, or discard the children into the river of Pharaohs hate. We must stand up for the family. Without that basic unit of society, this nation which many of us still love will crumble and die. Some would declare that a good thing. How many innocent lives will be lost in the process?
It is the time we as a nation, and more especially as a Church, “turn to the Lord in our need, and we will live.” We cannot remain silent about the blatant sin that goes on in our society. The sacrifice on the altar of progress, the declaration that the only way a woman can be free is if she sacrifices her children for her own career, success, and personal feelings. The demonic notion that a father is only a seed donor and can walk away free leaving the mother to care for, or discard the children into the river of Pharaohs hate. We must stand up for the family. Without that basic unit of society, this nation which many of us still love will crumble and die. Some would declare that a good thing. How many innocent lives will be lost in the process?