Sacrificing the Most Innocent

10-23-2022From the Pastor's DeskMonsignor Ellsworth R. Walden

It is amazing to see parallels in history. I just finished reading “The President and the Freedom Fighter” by Brian Kilmeade, subtitled “Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Their Battle to Save America’s Soul.” After much thought and reflection President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 which freed the slaves in the “rebellious states” but left it legal in union states and southern states under northern control. Frederick Douglas was a runaway slave who got his freedom and dedicated his life to publicly speaking about the injustice and evil of slavery. Slavery as a whole was finally ended legally in our nation with the passage of the 13th Amendment on January 31, 1865. Obviously slavery is evil because it allows one human being to own and use another. Besides all those poor souls who lived and died as slaves, the Civil War took the lives of more than 620,000 soldiers, adding the losses of both the North and the South together. Americans fought and killed Americans. That number of fatalities is more than all the Americans killed in battle in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Viet Nam war combined. The evil and injustice of slavery was ended at the cost of many lives.

We are now 160 years beyond the Civil War and its horror. Yet very clearly history is sadly repeating itself with the evil of abortion. In the last years I could find statistics (2015-2018) the average number of children aborted each year was over 621,000, more than all the years of the Civil War together. Our current freedom to take human life in the womb is a curse that divides us from God, our national unity, and one another. In fourteen days we will have Election Day in our country and a key way to make inroads to peace and justice is how we vote. Do we support and vote for candidates who pledge to support abortion or who waver on the issue? If we do, we have to accept some responsibility for the evil that is happening. I cannot see how pro-abortion candidates are not in the express lane to hell. Hell is the domain of the devil and he surely is wreaking havoc in dividing us so violently. Through abortion innocent human lives are brutally taken and adult lives are deprived of peace and love. Sacrifice of the most innocent and vulnerable among us is evil and will deprive us of unity with one another and in the end deprive us of eternal salvation. I judge no one, that is God’s job. I seek to inform and open hearts to the gift of faith in God that will unite us with Him and one another. Self control, sacrifice, generosity, and unconditional love exhibit all we are truly capable of when we live in the image and likeness of God. Being a Republican or Democrat is not going to get us to heaven. That path is illumined by Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. He is our personal, national, and universal salvation.

Some of the violence we see in our nation today has abortion as its cause and is carried out by its supporters. Many Life Centers and churches have been attacked and defaced, while our government law enforcement agencies seem to do nothing but protect abortionists. Protecting such a violent act as abortion, as we see, leads to the destruction of those places and people who are pro-life. The slave owners and their supporters surely have their descendants in some of the pro-abortionists.

Abortion is heralded as a woman’s choice and freedom. The greatest choice and freedom is to rise above ourselves, both men and women, and sacrifice, love, and support one another. In past columns I have written graphically describing how brutal the act of abortion is. Physically, one way is by dismembering the child in the womb and removing the parts. I do not understand how any human being can support that. Can you?

May the holy innocents among us find hope, support, and love as we pray, vote, and seek to achieve unity that only faithfulness to the truth of the dignity and value of every human can enable us to attain. May we be the blessing we seek every time we prayerfully sing, “God Bless America!” I offer Psalm 146 and its Psalm prayer from the breviary for your prayerful reflection.

My soul, give praise to the Lord;
I will praise the Lord all my days,
make music to my God while I live.
Put no trust in princes,
In mortal men in whom there is no help.
Take their breath, they return to clay
and their plans that day come to nothing.
He is happy who is helped by Jacob's God,
whose hope is in the Lord his God,
who alone made heaven and earth,
the seas and all they contain.
It is the Lord who keeps faith for ever,
who is just to those who are oppressed.
It is he who gives bread to the hungry,
the Lord, who sets prisoners free,
the Lord who gives sight to the blind,
who raises up those who are bowed down,
the Lord, who protects the stranger
and upholds the widow and orphan.
It is the Lord who loves the just
but thwarts the path of the wicked.
The Lord will reign for ever,
Zion's God, from age to age.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be.

Psalm Prayer: God of glory and power, those who have put all their trust in you are happy indeed. Shine the brightness of your light on us, that we may love you always with a pure heart.