This week is Respect-Life Sunday and it kicks off an entire month of support for the Pro-life moment. Our first reading and Gospel talk again about the vineyard of the Lord, and the fact that those to whom the vineyard was entrusted did not properly respond to the Lord or yield fruit for which he was looking. Instead they broke his covenant, creating a culture of death, by killing his prophets and eventually even his Son. Finally, they had the vineyard taken away from them for bearing no fruit, of the fruit of life. We too will all have to give an account of how we used what God has given us in the vineyard to produce good fruit. And at the end of our lives Jesus will question us about fruit of love. Did we use what we have primary for love of God and love of neighbor.

I believe included in this question of our love will be the question of pro-life. How even more so we will have to give an account of our efforts to support the Church’s work of protecting God’s greatest gift--the gift of life. Jesus will say to each one of us who lived in the current culture of death, “What did you do to defend life in my vineyard? I speak for myself but at this point in my life I will have to answer, “not enough Lord, not enough!” God has entrusted the life of every individual to his or her fellow human beings, brothers and sisters. We are to give of ourselves to each other in imitation of Christ who gave Himself totally to us. God asks us to bear fruits of life rather than to abuse our freedom with perversions of “choice” that end up taking life.

To work in the vineyard of the Lord means to stand for life and ‘to stand for’ means that we stand against whatever destroys life. And there is nothing in our society that destroys more human life than abortion—nothing at all, no crime, no disease, no natural disaster, no war. If you look at all the wars that we have ever fought in our nation’s entire history, you will see that we destroy more human lives by abortion in one year than we have destroyed by all the wars of our nation’s history put together. There’s an abortion in our country every 26 seconds, 3,300 a day.

The irony of this horror is that some promote this taking of human life under the slogan “freedom of choice”. But the women getting the abortions do not do so because of freedom of choice; they do so because they feel that there is no freedom and no choice. They feel trapped, abandoned, desperate, afraid…and sadly they feel that there is no one they can turn except the abortionist, who makes money, lots of money off their desperate situation.

The Church and the pro-life movement want to give you the “good news” that there are people ready to help, that there are better choices better than abortion. People are ready to provide help. Let us allow no one ever to feel that the only way to solve a problem is to have her child destroyed. As a country, as a people, we can do better than the destruction of 3300 children a day.

The sad thing is that so many who need this help don’t know it’s available. But that’s where we come in. Each of us can save someone’s life by spreading the Good News that there are alternatives to abortion. Over the next few weeks we are going share with you this and other information. Next week we will have in the bulletin, 55 practical suggestions of legal, peaceful, effective things that we can all do to help bring and end to abortion and help women in need. And at the top of this sheet you will find telephone numbers that can be called anytime of the day or night. There are children who are depending on us to do something. Children are alive today because churches just like ours learned what they could do and began to speak up when they had the chance by saying, “Don’t have an abortion…There’s help available!”

We also need to let people know that to oppose abortion does not mean to oppose those who have had them. To be pro-life means to be pro-woman. To love the baby does not mean we forget the mothers. We can love them both, protect them both, welcome and care for the both. We need to reach out to women who have had abortions. We need to let them know the doors of the church are open to you, the doors of God’s mercy is available to you. God is not and we are not against you; we’re on your side. There is a true case of a woman who had 24 abortions and even for her the doors of the Church are open. Open as well is Christ’s heart of divine Mercy!

It is also urgent that in our day we avoid being fooled by the slogans of our day, which are nothing more than lies. Some people talk about “safe and legal abortions” because they think that making it legal has made it safe and therefore to keep it safe and out of the back ally ways, we must keep it legal. This is a lie. First of all, safe for whom? It’s never safe for the child. The very purpose of the procedure is to destroy the child.

But what many people don’t realize about this lie is that it isn’t safe for the mother either. And that’s true not only because of the over 150 physical and emotional complications that can result from this procedure—But also, because legal abortion facilities in our country are the most unregulated surgical facilities in the nation. Women are injured, even killed and these things are being covered up; we are just not hearing about them. I personally have had many mothers share with me the pain and agony of their decision. They are devastated by the mistake they made. So often they struggle not with the fact that God can forgive them, they struggle instead to forgive themselves.

And what about the lie of the slogan “pro-choice.” The problem about this lie is that we don’t hear what the choice is. Is a particular choice right or wrong, good or bad, should it be allowed or prohibited? Doesn’t this slogan depend on what you’re choosing? Do I have the right to choose to steal from you, to abuse you, to kill you? Of course not—because my choices ends where your rights begin. And therefore the law protects (or should protect) your rights against my choice to harm you.
In abortion what is the choice? Some say it’s the choice whether to have or not have a child.

Certainly everyone one has a choice whether or not to have a child. We can all understand that there are circumstances in which some people should not have a child. But isn’t there a big difference between the choice of whether or not to have a child and the choice of whether or not to kill a child. When we talk about abortion, we are not talking about a child who might come into the world; we are talking about a child who is already in the world. Scientifically, life begins at the moment of conception and we were all embryos once, every one of us. So the question is not, “Should I bring a child into this world?” The question is, “May I throw a child out of the world?” And the answer is no!

Some people will say abortion isn’t my business. But as I said at the beginning, Love is our business, again when we face Jesus we will all be questioned about Love. Doesn’t love mean that when we can help another person in need or in danger we try to help them or at least speak up for them. If we witness a helpless child who is about to be run over by a car or is in danger of being abused by an adult, don’t we have a duty to intervene, a duty of love? What more helpless child is there than the child in danger of being aborted? He or she is the most helpless child in our world—is it not our business and duty to intervene?

In a short while we will offer ourselves at the Sacrifice of the Mass. Christ gives Himself away on the cross and, in the Holy Eucharist we find the meaning of love: I sacrifice myself for the good of the other person, I lay down my life for him. Isn’t it ironic that this is the perfect reversal of abortion and all crimes against life, which say instead, I sacrifice the other person for the good of myself? And isn’t it ironic, that the very same words that Jesus and His priests use to proclaim love, are used by the defenders of abortion: This is my body. Some say they control their bodies and so others must die; But Christ says, “This is my body given up for you in the Holy Eucharist, so that you may live.” Jesus gives His Body away, so others may live. This is my body, given up for you. In the power of these words, the culture of death will be transformed into the culture of life.

As we receive the fruit of these words, the Holy Eucharist-Jesus himself given up for us so that we may live, let us pray for openness to His power so that we may not be indifferent. Let us pray that we may have the grace to get actively involved in the effort to stop the killing of all children by not only abortion, but by all crimes against life. Holy Mary, Mother of Life, Mother of all mothers, and mother of the unborn, pray for us.