Responding with Mercy to the Culture of Abortion, 2nd Friday (II), January 22, 2016

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Votive Mass of Thanksgiving for the Gift of Human Life
January 22, 2016
1 Sam 24:3-21, Ps 57, Mk 3:13-19

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• During this extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, the theme of mercy is meant to influence everything the Church does and impact how Catholics go about their ordinary duties. Today as the Church marks with prayer the 43rd anniversary of the horrible Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions that legalized abortion in our country, we ought to look at the whole subject of abortion through these lenses.
• We’re helped how to do that in today’s first reading. Saul was for the second time trying to kill David and David was presented with any chance to take Saul’s life before Saul would take his. But he refused to lay a hand on the “Lord’s anointed.” So great was his reverence for God that he would never seriously countenance doing anything against someone in an intimate relationship with God, regardless of that person’s sins against God or against him.
• During this Year of Mercy, we’re called to look with mercy on three different categories of people involved in abortions always keeping in mind that we’re looking at those made in the image and likeness of God, those whom God loves, those in many cases who have also been anointed by God.
  • The first group is the unborn, those whose lives are being threatened by abortion and those whose lives have already been taken here on earth. To look with mercy upon them is first to do everything we can to save and protect them, to care for them, to help them come to birth, rebirth, life and eternal life. From the first moment of their existence they live in a relationship with the God who created them and formed them in the womb. We shouldn’t lay a hand on them to harm them. For those who have already been massacred, we entrust them, as St. John Paul II called us to do 20 years ago in Evangelium Vitae, to God’s mercy.
  • The second group are the women who have had abortions or who are tempted to have them. Likewise we need to look on them with mercy, as those very much loved by God, and seek to help them rather than harm them by making them feel as if they cannot approach God’s mercy because we look at them and see scarlet letters rather than God’s image. It was amazing a few months back when the media reported that Pope Francis had given all priests the ability in this Year of Mercy to absolve the censure due to abortion so that they could subsequently absolve the sin (a faculty reserved to local bishops in the Code of Canon Law that bishops can delegate to priests). Priests in US dioceses had it seems almost universally been given the faculty by their bishops to do so but regardless, priests here in New York and elsewhere reported that various women who had had abortions came to them for confession because they had never known previously that they could be forgiven. We have got to get the message out that forgiveness of the sin of abortion is possible and that our hope for post-abortive women is that they receive the cleansing and healing they need in this Sacrament. Likewise we’re called to look with mercy on pregnant women in difficult circumstances, however they got pregnant, and seek to care for mother and child both.
  • The third group are all those involved in promoting abortion, from those who work in the abortion industry, to politicians and judges who use their offices to allow certain human beings to take the life of those who are smaller, younger and more vulnerable, to boyfriends, husbands, parents, siblings, members of the media and others who encourage or facilitate women to have abortions. The sins they commit are grave but God’s mercy is greater. How edified we are whenever we witness the conversions of those who used to work in the abortion industry. During this Year of Mercy, it’s a time for us to work on getting even more of them.
• To grow in this capacity to look with mercy, we need to draw close to Christ. In today’s Gospel, he summons the twelve in order to “be with him” and so that he might “send them out.” The Lord calls us to come to spend time with him, to unite us to himself, so that, transformed by him, we might be sent forth to continue his mission of mercy. The Lord called the 12 to a three year seminary experience with him in which he trained them in mercy. And when we look at aspects of that training, we can learn a lot about how to build a culture of mercy so as to advance the culture of life.
• As I’ve mentioned on various occasions so far during this Jubilee Year, the evangelists mention five things Jesus did when they say his “heart was moved with pity” for the crowds. Each of the five is highly relevant to forming a culture of mercy in advance of the culture of life.
  • The first is to teach. Likewise we need to pass on the truth with charity. The truth about the humanity of the child. The truth about the real good of women. The truth about what is really happening. The abortion industry is full of lies and euphemisms: “choice” “women’s rights” “women’s health” “blob of tissue” “better for the fetus” etc. This culture of the lie, coming from the father of lies, needs to be opposed by passing on with love what God has revealed and what human reason can see.
  • The second is to heal. How important it is for women who have had abortions to experience hope and healing! God bless the Sisters of Life for doing so much of this important work. The healing isn’t quick or easy, but it can and does happen, with patient accompaniment, prayer, and the grace of the sacraments.
  • The third is to feed. There are often so many material needs that can conduce a vulnerable woman toward abortion. With mercy we need to try to help meet these needs.
  • The fourth is to forgive. This, first, is to help bring them to experience the forgiveness of Christ in the way Christ himself established. Their consciences, once they begin to function appropriately, lead them to recognize the gravity of what they’ve done, but often they are like Lady MacBeth, trying to wash the stain away, not realizing that there’s no detergent in the world powerful enough; only God can do that, and he does in the Sacrament of his Mercy. And in this Year of Mercy God would like us to be like the friends of the paralyzed man bringing others, who might be emotionally crippled, to God working through his priests so that they might receive that forgiveness. It’s also necessary for all of us to be merciful and forgive those who have made themselves the enemies of the pro-life movement and done harm at various levels to us and other pro-lifers.
  • The fifth and final relates to today’s Gospel. In St. Matthew’s version of the scene, Jesus, looking with compassion on the mangled and abandoned shepherd-less sheep, asks everyone to pray for laborers to take in the harvest that is already ripe. And after they have prayed, Jesus immediately calls 12, the 12 we encounter in today’s Gospel from St. Mark. Out of mercy, Jesus gets us to pray for more laborers and then calls us to continue his mission by becoming those laborers. We’re all here because of 2,000 years of prayers to the Harvest Master, and we’re allied diligently to go to the world to seek to perpetuate Jesus’ work. We also need to be praying and calling others to join us in the fields. How beautiful and hopeful it is to see how young the March for Life is, because we’ve been praying for these young people to join us in the fight and we’re happy that they’re responding, in some way, to that call.
• “Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy!,” we prayed in the Psalm today. We asked God to “send his mercy and his faithfulness” and he does that as he sends his Son, the true Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ. He is the one who has called us here to be with him, not just on the outside but on the inside, so that he might send us out, united with him, to extend his mercy in teaching, healing, feeding, forgiving, praying and calling. We ask him to rain down his mercy on us and on our nation today and to give us the gift of conversion.

The readings for today’s Mass were: