Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: The Church Year

  • Monday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    So the disciples are waiting for Jesus to come down the mountain after the Transfiguration.  They have attempted to cure a man’s son from the hold of a demon, but they were apparently unable to do so.  This seems to have led to an argument between them and the scribes.  You can almost feel Jesus’ exasperation.  Both the disciples and the scribes should have been able to do something for the boy, but they couldn’t.  Why?  Because instead of praying, they argued about it.  “This kind can only come out through prayer,” Jesus tells the disciples when they ask why they were ineffective.

    I often wonder, with more than a little fear, how many demons I could have cast out – in myself and in others – if I had a little more faith, if I prayed a little more than I do.  There are, of course, all sorts of demons: demons of illness, demons of cyclical sin, demons of impure attachments, demons of homelessness, poverty, and marginalization, and so many more.  Think of all the demons we could cast out if we just had more faith, if we prayed more fervently.

    Sometimes, when we are trying to overcome some problem, the last thing we think to do is pray, when it should absolutely be the first.  The disciples were guilty of it, the scribes were, and we are too sometimes, if we’re honest.  And all of us should know better.  I know that I myself can think of a number of problems I’ve tried to solve all by myself, when it would have been so much more effective to first turn them over to our Lord.  We can’t just cut God out of the picture and rely on our own strength; that never works – our own strength is so fiercely limited.  We have to turn to the tools we have been given: faith and prayer.  And we can start by saying with the boy’s father: “I do believe, Lord; help my unbelief.”

  • Saturday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.”  The writer of the letter to the Hebrews sums up for us this notion of faith, which can be so difficult to wrap our minds around.  What I love about the definition of faith that comes to us in this passage is that it seems to be telling us what we at some level already know: faith is a heritage.  The passage speaks of the faith of Abel, Enoch, and Noah, all stories we can readily read in our Old Testament, stories of men who had to really take a leap of faith because what they hoped for was unseen.  Only God could fulfill all their hopes and longings.

    The same, of course, is true for us.  We are living in difficult times.  There is uncertainty in the world, with wars being fought almost everywhere we can think of, and especially our own men and women fighting in the middle east, and in countries all over the world.  Our state and nation have political issues to the point that it’s hard to know which politicians are honest and which are not, and we almost hate to turn on the television and what’s happening today.  We have our own personal family uncertainties, maybe loved ones are sick, or are suffering from depression.  Maybe relationships are strained.

    For all of us who live in these uncertain times, Jesus offers us hope.  We get a glimpse today at what we hope for and cannot now see: Jesus is transfigured before Peter, James and John.  This is a foretaste of the glory of the Resurrection, a glory that Jesus knew when he rose from the dead, and a glory that we yet hope for.  It’s not pie in the sky: we know that our promise in Christ is greater than any of the difficulties our time can bring us.  We know that faith is our heritage, and that that faith has led all of our forebears through times as difficult or more difficult than this.  Today, we have the promise of things hoped for and evidence of things unseen: Christ is our hope, yesterday, today and for ever.

  • Monday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    We’re still in the opening chapters of human history in our first reading, and in these opening chapters we see some of the less beautiful parts of human nature. The first reading reads like an exposition of deadly sins, and these sins have continued to plague humanity ever since.

    We start with envy, as Cain laments that his offering was not accepted with the same favor as was his brother, Abel’s. We move from envy to murder, with Cain committing the very first fratricide, killing his very own brother. From there, we go to apathy, as Cain rejects the opportunity to be his brother’s keeper. And then we meet false witness, as he lies about the murder that he committed. And if all of that isn’t enough, Cain then complains about his punishment as if it was something he didn’t deserve. If he’d only tried repentance, or expressed sorrow for his sins, or even accepted responsibility for what he’d done, maybe things would have turned out differently.

    But, in this opening act of human history, we see God’s mercy. God does not remit the entirety of Cain’s punishment, but promises that even his death would be unacceptable. Maybe we should think about that in regard to the death penalty: if even God doesn’t condone the murder of a murderer, then who are we to do that? So God marks Cain, as we all are marked with God’s presence at our baptism. So even in this very early story of our history, we can see that baptism was always intended for our salvation.

    The Psalmist this morning says that we absolutely cannot profess God’s commandments and sing his praises, without also accepting God’s discipline and following God’s word. A sacrifice of praise is a life lived with integrity, and that is the sacrifice that God wants of us in every moment.

  • The Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings
    Today’s homily is lectio brevis because our parish mission speaker presented the first of his talks at Mass today.

    Today, very briefly, I want to talk to you about our need for repentance, reconciliation, and forgiveness.  Jesus makes it very clear in today’s Gospel that the spirit of the law is worth focusing on, because it is that spirit that will get us into heaven.  This, quite frankly, is a frightening Gospel reading, because in it, Jesus raises the bar.  We can’t just skate by if we’ve never murdered or had an abortion, and we’re liable if we have hated or refused to forgive.  Even if we think we’re okay because we’ve never had an extramarital affair, every occasion of lust in our hearts has made us unfaithful.  And just because we’ve lied under oath, we’ve still broken that commandment if we haven’t stood for the truth and made it our care to be known as an honest person with utmost integrity.

    The grace is that we’re not lost in despair, even looking at these daunting rules.  Living the Gospel is possible because of grace.  Forgiveness is possible because of the Paschal Mystery.  All we have to do is repent, to turn back, to seek forgiveness in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and to pray for the grace to be lovers of the Gospel.

  • Thursday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings 

    “Blessed are those who fear the Lord,” the Psalmist tells us today. And today as our example of those who fear the Lord, we have two women. And we begin with the creation of the first woman. God has created all the creatures of the earth: land, water and air, yet none of these are found to be a suitable partner for him. And so it takes a new creative act of God, putting the man to sleep – putting things on pause for a moment. The only suitable partner for the man had to be someone who was made of his same flesh, and so one of his ribs is taken to form the basis of the woman. How significant it is that his partner is made from a bone right next to his heart! And only with this astounding new creation is all of creation complete. In the present, the work of creation goes on all the time, of course, largely because man and woman were created to participate in that creation together with their Creator.

    The second woman we meet today is the Syrophoenician woman. She is a woman of great faith – persistent faith, even! Not only does she want Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter, but she is convinced that he is the only one that can make it happen. Her faith and her persistence give us a model for our spiritual lives. For us disciples, a strong faith in Christ means never questioning his ability to act for our good, and never letting anything – not even the technicalities of a perceived mission – get in the way of acting on that faith. We too are called to steadfast faith, and persistent prayer.

    The Nuptial Blessing from the Rite of Marriage prays for the bride: “May she always follow the example of the holy women whose praises are sung in the scriptures.” There are many such wonderful examples, of course, and today’s are just two of them. They give all of us a shining example of what our faith should be like. May all of us – women and men! – follow their example.

  • Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Over the past two days, we have heard, once again, the wonderful story of the creation of the world.  It’s not meant to be a science textbook or a timetable of events, of course, but instead delivers the message that all of creation was set in motion by our God, and that all of creation was created good, and created for good.  That’s something we tend to forget, at times, and when we do, it causes things like pollution, environmental disasters, and so much more.  We were given the earth to use and to care for, and we have to be diligent in caring for it.

    Pope Francis has been outspoken in his teaching on caring for God’s creation, which has long been a pillar of Catholic social teaching, and is based on the very reading we’ve heard the last two days.  He even called care for creation a work of mercy, expanding on the themes of his first encyclical, Laudato Si’.  “We must not be indifferent or resigned to the loss of biodiversity and the destruction of ecosystems, often caused by our irresponsible and selfish behavior,” he said. “Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence. … We have no such right.”

    When we abuse creation, we also cause problems for other people, most often the poor.  Francis has gone on to say, “When we mistreat nature, we also mistreat human beings. At the same time, each creature has its own intrinsic value that must be respected.”

    But none of this is to say that creation isn’t for our use.  In today’s first reading, God is very clear: “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.  Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.”  But our use of God’s creation must reflect the gift that it is for us: we must also be able to hand that gift on to forthcoming generations.

    Just because we are unable to individually solve every environmental problem doesn’t mean that we aren’t important in the effort.  Every little thing we can do to protect creation means something.  As Pope Francis also said, “We should not think that our efforts – even our small gestures – don’t matter.  Virtue, including ecological virtue, can be infectious.”  And so every time we are in the presence of the beauty of creation, we should send up a prayer of thanks, along with the Psalmist today, who prayed: “When I behold your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you set in place—What is man that you should be mindful of him, or the son of man that you should care for him?  O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!”

  • The Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    One of my professors in seminary used to tell us all the time, “Brothers, Christianity looks like something, the Christian looks like something.”  His point was that if we are Christians, we needed to conform ourselves to Christ, to be more like Christ, to do what Christ called us to do in this life, so that we could have the possibility of joining Christ forever in the next life.

    When I was praying this morning, I was reading from a section of Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constituition on the Church in the Modern World from Vatican II.  The line that jumped out at me was this one: “Man’s worth is greater because of what he is than because of what he has.”  So the Christian doesn’t look like her or his possessions; doesn’t look like what he does, but rather what he is.  And what she or he is is what Jesus is getting at in today’s Gospel reading.

    Jesus gives us the images of salt and light, and I think those are very familiar images for us to grasp.  We all use salt and light every day, and it is interesting to hear Jesus say that that is what we are.  Anyone who cooks, or even anyone who eats, will tell you of the value of salt.  I like to watch the television show Chopped on the Food Network.  On that show, four chefs compete to make something edible of a basket of disparate and perhaps even bizarre ingredients.  Then three judges sample their dishes and decide who is not moving on to the next round; they are “chopped.”  At the end, one of them wins a bunch of money.  I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen on that show get “chopped” because they under-seasoned their food.  A teaspoon of salt might be what got between them and ten thousand dollars!

    So the Christian is salt for the world; we are called to season the world with joy and goodness and concern for the poor and genuine love, based on the Gospel.  But Jesus wonders what would happen if that salt were to lose its flavor.  Now I can’t imagine salt losing its saltiness.  In fact, I googled this one time and found a chemist who took this question on.  He indicated that salt, in its crystalline form, is pretty stable; it doesn’t lose its flavor.  So Jesus was using, as he often does, hyperbole to get our attention.  Suppose for the moment that salt could lose its saltiness: what would it then be good for?  Nothing, of course.

    Jesus seems to be saying that we, as the salt for the world, could lose our saltiness.  We could become under-seasoned by skipping Mass to attend a sports event or sleep in.  We could become under-seasoned by neglecting our prayer life.  We could become under-seasoned by watching the wrong things on TV or surfing the wrong sites on the internet.  We could become under-seasoned by holding on to relationships that are sinful.  And when that starts to happen, our ability to season our world with the presence of Christ is diminished, little by little.

    And then we have the image of light.  On Thursday, I had the school Mass for the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, which celebrates Jesus as the Light of the World coming into the darkness that we often experience.  I asked them how many of them are or ever had been afraid of the dark.  Lots of hands went up.  I think that’s probably true of all of us on some level; the darkness is a scary place.  There are all sorts of obstacles in the dark that could cause us to trip and fall, and you never know what might befall you on a dark and scary road.  All of us have had those experiences when we are in the dark, and it’s not a fun place to be.

    So what do you do when you find yourself in the dark?  Well, you turn on the light, of course. The light changes everything: you can see the obstacles over which you might have fallen.  Anything lurking in the dark will now be identified in the light.  Sometimes a quick look around with the lights on will assure you that that noise you heard was just the house settling, or the furnace firing up, or something similarly innocuous.  The light just makes you feel a little safer.

    And so we are called to be light too.  We don’t need much time to think about how dark our world can be at times.  We see on television the news about war and crime and terrorism and new diseases and things we shouldn’t be eating.  We hear about children bullying one another and people stalking others on the internet.  A quick moment of reflection reminds us of our own sinfulness; the bad that we have done and the good we have failed to do.  Darkness in our world can be pretty pervasive at times, and it makes the world a rather frightening place.

    But we have the light.  We’ve been exposed to the light.  We have come alive in Jesus, the Light of the world.  As those gifted with the Light of the world, we become people of light.  We become light for the world too.  Jesus insists that our light should shine so brightly that we affect the darkness of our world, completely overcoming that darkness with the Light of Christ.  He insists that we are now that city, set on a hill, that cannot be hidden.  And we know how true that is.

    We may know the truth of that in rather negative ways in our Church’s recent past.  Our Church has been the city set on a hill affected by scandal, first in the United States, then into Europe and other places.  People saw what happened, it was set on a hill and could not be hidden.  We have been ashamed and grieving in the years since.

    And that’s what Satan wants for our Church.  He wants to see us set on a hill and ashamed.  He wants us to be seen by the watching world doing nothing, because we have lost our way.  But that’s not what God wants.  He still calls us to be the light for the world.  People do see us, and have to see us doing good in big ways and small ways, so that other people will see the way to God and take delight in the ways we have seasoned the world.

    St. Therese of Liseaux used to talk about doing little things with great love for the glory of God.  She found joy in her “Little Way” and it has inspired so many people ever since.  Our Liturgy today calls us to do little things and big things, all for God’s glory.  It calls us to be salt for a world grown bland with despair and light for a world dwelling in a very dark place.  In our first reading, the prophet Isaiah tells us how to do it:

    Share your bread with the hungry,
    shelter the oppressed and the homeless;
    clothe the naked when you see them,
    and do not turn your back on your own.
    Then your light shall break forth like the dawn…

    If neglecting our prayer life and our integrity causes us to lose our saltiness, if giving in to shame and despair puts out our light, then we can never do what we were created for.  But we have been given salt and light to season and light our world.  We are the city set on the hill for all the watching world to see.  Would that they might see us doing little things and big things, all for the glory of God.

  • Monday of the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    We could look at today’s Gospel reading as an interesting miracle story of Jesus casting a demon out of a long-possessed man. But I think we should dig a little deeper than that this morning. Because many of us, I think, have to tangle with the unclean spirit from the tombs that infests us from time to time. If you’ve been in that situation, you probably can relate to having chained that spirit down with mighty strong chains, only to have them smashed to pieces. Then that unclean spirit starts crying out once again and injuring us in the process.

    For some, that demon is some kind of addiction. Or perhaps it’s a pattern of sin. Maybe it’s an unhealthy relationship. Whatever it is, there is nothing we can do to stop it all on our own. None of us is strong enough to subdue it. It is instructive that, when Jesus asks the demon what his name is, the demon responds in the plural: “we are Legion.” Indeed, legion are the demons that can torment us, legion are the past hurts and resentments, legion are the sins, legion are the broken relationships. 

    When we find ourselves in that state of affairs, we have to know that human power is useless to subdue our demons. We have to do the only thing that works, which is to beg Jesus to cast those demons out. I often tell people in Confession that it’s okay to pray for yourself and that God doesn’t expect us to subdue our demons on our own. Jesus is longing to cast out our legion demons, all we have to do is ask. The voice of the psalmist today sums up the peace that can come from this Gospel: “Let your hearts take comfort, all who hope in the Lord.

  • The Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    We have a pretty late Lent this year.  Ash Wednesday is not until March 1st.  What is really nice about that is that it gives us a little more ordinary time in the winter, which we often don’t get.  Sometimes we rush from Christmas to Ash Wednesday and barely get to breathe.  So in this little Ordinary Time break, we get some nice things in the Scriptures, specifically the study of what the Christian life should be.  I think today’s Scriptures give us a look at the virtue of humility.

    Humility is the virtue that reminds us that God is God and we are not.  That might seem pretty obvious, but I think if we’re honest, we’d all have to admit that we have trouble with humility from time to time.  The deadly sin that is in opposition to humility is pride, and pride is perhaps the most common sin, and really the most serious sin.  We might think of all kinds of other sins that seem worse, but pride completely destroys our relationship with God because it convinces us that we don’t need God.  That was the sin of the Israelites building the golden calf in the desert, it was the sin of the Pharisees arguing with Jesus, it was even the sin of Lucifer in the first place, and it is the sin of all of us, at some level, at some times in our lives.

    Pride is pretty easy to recognize when it’s blatant: it is the person boasting of their abilities or their possessions or their accomplishments or status, claiming all the glory for themselves, putting others down in the process, and never even mentioning God.  So we might look at that and say, well, Father Pat, I’m not prideful.  But hold on just a second.  That’s not the only face of pride.  Another face of pride realizes that we are in a sorry state, but doesn’t want to bother God with our problems so we try to figure them out ourselves.  It never works, and so we continue to feel miserable, but we also offend God in the process.  A similar face of pride looks to accomplish something important, maybe even something holy.  But we go about it without immersing it in prayer and forge ahead with our own plans.  Again, we often fail at those times, and we certainly offend God.

    The only antidote to pride is the virtue of humility.  It is the prayer that admits that God is God and we are not.  It is the way of living that accepts the difficulties and challenges of life as an opportunity to let God work in us.  It is the state of being that admits that everything we are and everything we have is a gift from God, and spurs us to profound and reverential gratitude for the outpouring of grace that gets us through every day and brings us to deeper friendship with God.

    So today we hear the very familiar Beatitudes.  I know that when I was learning about the Beatitudes as a child, they were held up as some kind of Christian answer to the Ten Commandments.  I don’t think that’s particularly valid.  One might say, however, that the Ten Commandments are a basic rule of life and the Beatitudes take us still deeper.

    I also remember thinking, when I was learning about the Beatitudes, that these seemed like kind of a weak way to live life. I mean, who can live up to all these things anyway?  And who would want to?  Do you know anyone who would actively seek to be poor, meek or mourning?  And who wants to be a peacemaker?  Those people have more than their share of grief.

    So I think when we hear the Beatitudes today, we need to hear them a little differently.  We need to hear them as consolation and encouragement on the journey.  Because at some point or another, we will all be called upon to be poor, meek and mourning.  That’s just life.  And the disciple has to be a peacemaker and seek righteousness.  We will have grief in this lifetime – Jesus tells us that in another place.  So what Jesus is saying here, is that those of us undergoing these sorts of trials and still seeking to be righteous people through our sufferings are blessed.  And the Greek word that we translate as “blessed” here is makarios, a word that could also be translated as “happy.”  Happy are those who suffer for the Kingdom.

    So does anyone really believe that?  I mean, it’s quite a leap of faith to engage our sufferings and still be sane, let alone happy.  The ability to see these Beatitudes as true blessings seems like too much to ask.  And yet, that’s what we disciples are being asked to do.

    I think a good part of the reason why this kind of thinking is hard for us, is that it’s completely countercultural.  Our society wants us to be happy, pain-free and without a concern in the world.  That’s the message we get from commercials that sell us the latest in drugs to combat everything from indigestion to arthritis pain – complete with a horrifying list of side-effects.  That’s the message we get from the self-help books out there and the late-night infomercials promising that we can get rich quick, rid our homes of every kind of stain or vermin, or lose all the weight you want in just minutes a day.  That’s the message we get from Oprah and Dr. Phil and their ilk, who encourage us never to be second to anyone and to do everything possible to put ourselves first.  If this is the kind of message we get every time we turn on a television, or surf the internet, who on earth would want to be poor in spirit?  Who would want to be meek?  Who would even think to hunger and thirst for righteousness?

    Now this is an important point: Pride is just the way we live, culturally speaking.  We are always right, and if we’re not, we certainly have a right to be wrong.  We can accomplish anything we set out to do, and if we fail, it was someone else’s fault.  We don’t need anyone’s help to live our lives, but when we’re in need, it’s because everyone has abandoned us.  We are culturally conditioned to be deeply prideful people, and it is absolutely ruining our spiritual lives.

    Jesus is the One who had the most right of anyone to be prideful.  He is God, for heaven’s sake – I mean, he really could do anything he wanted without anyone’s help.  But he chose to abandon that way of thinking so that we could learn how to live more perfect lives.  He abandoned his pride and in humility took on the worst kind of death and the deepest of humiliation.

    So what if we started to think the way Jesus does?  What would happen if we suddenly decided it wasn’t all about us?  What would happen if we decided that the utmost priority in life was not merely taking care of ourselves, but instead taking care of others, trusting that in that way, everyone – including ourselves – would be taken care of?  What would happen if we were not completely consumed with ourselves and so did not miss the opportunity to come to know others and grow closer to our Lord?  That would indeed be a day of great rejoicing and gladness, I can assure you that.

    And I’m not saying you shouldn’t take care of yourself.  We all need to do that to some extent, and maybe sometimes we don’t do that as well as we should – I’ll even speak for myself on that one.  But when we consume ourselves with ourselves, nothing good can come from it.  Maybe this is a kind of balance that we could spend these weeks leading up to Lent striving to achieve.

    Today’s Liturgy of the Word calls us to a kind of humility that remembers that God is God and we are not.  It is the only real antidote to the destructive, deadly sin of pride that consumes our society and us on a daily basis.  This isn’t some kind of false humility that says we are good for nothing, because God never made anything that was good for nothing.  Instead, it is a humility that reminds us that what is best in us is what God has given us.  As St. Paul says today, “God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.”  If we would remember that everything that we have and everything we are is a gift to us, if we would remember that it is up to us to care for one another, if we would remember that being consumed with ourselves only makes us feel worse than ever, if we would but humble ourselves and let God give us everything that we really need, we would never be in want.  Blessed, happy are we; rejoice and be glad!

  • Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children

    Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children

    Today’s readings

    Today we observe the Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children.  This is a day that we cannot take lightly, and it is good that we begin it by celebrating Mass.  We all know the issue: so many children have been legally put to death since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, millions of them, in fact.  Who knows how much our world is impoverished right now because those people never got to live?

    Any confessor worth his salt will tell you how devastating abortion is on people.  Not just on the aborted baby; that goes without saying.  But it absolutely destroys the life of the mother, and very often the father as well.  As Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta has said, “Abortion kills twice. It kills the body of the baby and it kills the conscience of the mother.  Abortion is profoundly anti-women.  Three quarters of its victims are women: Half the babies and all the mothers.”

    Abortion is not just one issue among many.  It is an issue of tremendous impact, because it has torn down the morality of our great country.  Listen again to St. Teresa on that issue: “But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself.

    “And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.

    “By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems.

    “And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion.

    “Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”

    That’s quite an earful.  She delivered that address at the National Prayer Breakfast in 1994, an occasion at which, I’m sure, then-President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary probably wished they were someplace else.  Any place.

    Some object that we can’t just have anti-abortion sentiments and call them pro-life.  Their point is well-taken.  Sister Joan Chittister, O.S.B. has said: “I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”

    But we can’t take that too far, either.  As Catholics, we don’t believe in either/or morality, it’s most often both/and.  We must pray to end abortion and take action to make sure the poor are taken care of.  Pope Francis would say the very same thing.

    Jesus says words of parable in the Gospel reading today: “But no one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property unless he first ties up the strong man.”  We are strong men and women, and if we let ourselves get tied up by the enormity and the rhetoric, our house will be plundered.  We won’t get tied up of we pray.  And so today, we must pray to end abortion, we must pray for the healing of mothers and fathers who have had abortions, we must pray for forgiveness for our societal sins that allow abortion to be commonplace, we must pray for all children, especially those in poverty, and we must pray for that one mother who right now is considering abortion because she has no one to turn to in her fear and doesn’t know how she could ever care for a child.