October 19, 2010 Thoughts of October: Month of the Rosary

Holiness is beautiful

As November 2, 2010, election day, approaches we should keep in mind the spiritual battle that is being fought right now outside of thousands of abortion centers across the country and the world by way of the 40 Days for Life Campaign.
What is the 40 Days for Life Campaign? It is a prayer vigil that is taking place in a record 238 locations in the US, Canada, Australia, England, Northern Ireland and Denmark. It started on September 22, 2010 and will end on October 31, 2010. Here is the link if you want to learn how you can participate, even for an hour of prayer, at a vigil near you Click here to get involved.
I spent a good 20 years as a robot Catholic, going to church because it's what I had to do. Then, starting around my college years, I was a fallen away Catholic. I had left the church as I was trying to "find myself" in the world. The irony is obvious. A child of Christ cannot find themselves anywhere in the world. We are called to be in the world but not of it. But I was so lost spiritually and emotionally that I did not know that my faith was where I would find myself.  I'm revealing all of this because in separating myself from my faith I thought I would find the truths of my life: my reason for being, what was really right and wrong. My separation led me to many lies that the media spoon-fed me and I took in as truths, the secular culture wanted me to participate in the culture of death...and I finally did. 
During that time, a friend of mine became pregnant and she decided to have an abortion.  I drove her to the clinic and waited while she had someone kill the child growing inside her. I didn't look at it that way then. Having a minor in Women's Studies in college, I "learned" that I was "helping" my friend choose for herself what she would do with her body. I pushed God, Jesus, Mary and the Communion of Saints who died preserving the sanctity of life right aside and made up my own rules outside of the Bible and all it teaches to opt for what felt right, what I had heard and read in books was "right" and "just". You could say I was culturally brainwashed. That's not an excuse, it's an accurate description of the wrong thinking that was so ingrained in my head after 6 years of higher education. If you don't have your faith as a frame of reference, as a moral compass for time at the university, you become indoctrinated in the secular culture's beliefs.  Now don't go there, I'm not downing the noble pursuit of higher education by any means, I'm just stating how easy it is to fall prey to the culture of death that lives in the ivory towers that are many of our universities.
Eight years ago I returned to the faith by way of my husband who became a living example for me of the pursuit of holiness, a call that our faith begs us to take up in our families, in our schools, in our churches and workplaces.  Recently, I confessed (yes, it took me that long to do so) my support for my friend that had the abortion. To my shock, but not really a total surprise, the priest told me that supporting abortion is just like having an abortion in terms of the level of sin that it is. He talked with me about what it was I had done and we discussed what the Catholic faith teaches about the sanctity of life. I left having been absolved of my sin, but my pursuit of holiness is now that much stronger to encourage other Catholics to defend life.
Recently, we participated in the 40 Days for Life prayer vigil as we went to an abortion clinic off of Powers Ferry Road here in Marietta, GA and prayed that the mothers would change their minds and save their babies. We prayed for the workers at the clinic, in particular the doctor doing the killing. It was more than an act of penance for me it was a liberation from the chains of the world that have held me captive for so long. I spent the first 40 years of my life living out my will and my needs and my desires and it got me nowhere but in and out of some expensive counseling for depression and anxiety.  The next 40 years of my life will be lived for God and to bring His light to the increasing darkness that the enemy is casting on believers, families, children, the weakest amongst us, the unborn.
I understand now that being Catholic means being pro-life and defending the weakest amongst us. There is no easy out from this stance.
However, according to a 2009 Gallup Poll, Catholics don't find abortion or embryonic stem cell research to be a moral problem any more than non-Catholics do. Embryonic stem cells are obtained from prenatals at a point very early in development. Obtaining these cells typically results in the destruction of the prenatal. The direct and voluntary killing of a prenatal is always a serious sin against God because prenatal life is developing human life.
According to Pope John Paul II, “Therefore, by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, and in communion with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral. This doctrine, based upon that unwritten law which man, in the light of reason, finds in his own heart (cf. Rom 2:14-15), is reaffirmed by Sacred Scripture, transmitted by the Tradition of the Church and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.” (Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, n. 57).
It's not too late to get involved in the 40 Days for Life; your heart and spirituality will be changed because of it.