Open our eyes, Lord!
Monday, January 17, 2011
Joan Crown
As I prepare once again to head to our nation’s capital to protest the injustice of abortion along with 124 others from our Archdiocesan Catholic high schools, I find myself asking, “How long Lord? How long must the children die? How long must the mothers and fathers grieve? How long before we wake up and realize what we have done?”
For 38 years our country has tolerated this scourge on our nation... a scourge which cannot stand. Are we not compelled to rescue one being led to the slaughter?
There are over 68 million Catholics in the United States. What will it take for them, together with others of faith, to say ENOUGH!!!
Perhaps we need an image to move us to action such as the young black boy Emmett Till who was beaten beyond recognition for whistling at a white woman in 1955. His mother demanded an open casket at the funeral to show the world what hate had done to her son. Thus, the civil rights movement began.
What image do we have compelling enough to make us speak up to stop the slaughter of our innocents?
I will never forget watching the Knights of Columbus in full regalia carrying a small white casket to a donated grave — a grave in which a little girl, killed at the hands of those who run an abortion mill in Hialeah, was laid to rest. No one was charged with her murder. The police officers who found her decomposed body stood by the grave side at attention to honor her short life.
Another memory I will never erase from my mind is the day I received a phone call from a father of three children crying, begging me to stop his wife from killing their fourth child through abortion. I tried but could not stop her. Legally, neither could her husband because the father of the child, even if married, has no rights in an abortion decision. I often wonder what became of their marriage, knowing that the trauma of abortion bleeds into the relationship of the parents.
Imagine the sight of a nun dressed in a heavy dark brown habit standing in the hot sun face lifted toward heaven, eyes closed, praying in front of an abortion mill. When she encounters a woman leaving after her abortion, she falls to her knees and weeps with such grief, such genuine personal pain for the child that was just killed. This image provoked the question in the mind of the clinic manager, “How many other people cry outside my workplace because of the work I am doing?” (This is an excerpt from a new book by Abby Johnson titled, “Unplanned”, the story of how she left the abortion business.)
Open our eyes Lord that we might see what must be done to restore the sanctity of all human life, born and unborn.
“I have come that you might have LIFE and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)
Comments from readers
"Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and let Your Perpetual Light shine on them. May they rest in Your Peace. Amen."
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Mari Tuccitto
Thank you for your powerful words, your continued courage in speaking the truth, and for your consistent leadership of our Respect Life ministry especially during the most difficult of times. Please know that you and those who will be going to the March for Life in Washington D.C. are in my daily prayers. A group of youth from St. Augustine Parish and Catholic Student Center, including my son, will be going as well. Let us continue to pray and to work for an end to the culture of death and the respect of every single life! God bless you and yours. At your service in Christ through Mary,
Lilly Rangel-Diaz