Reflecting on praying before an abortion mill.

Outside of the abortion processing machine, in the cool wind and cloudy skies, witnesses gathered together for a common cause: relief to the scourge of abortion. It was spiritually jarring and emotionally disturbing to stand in close proximity to such a thoroughly malevolent asylum. Beginning with recitation of the Holy Rosary one nevertheless finds a way to accept the graces offered to enter into a deep meditation.

But then – mirabile dictu – through the hubbub of Georgetown Road, there was a tiny whisper of sanity: Nothing is more precious and sacred than the gift of human life. Emmanuel – God with us – is here.

Noted Pro-life apologist Stephanie Gray remarks “There is something very important and beautiful about the nature of women: that they are to be mothers (whether in spiritual or physical form). A pregnant woman becomes a tabernacle enveloping a person made in the image of the Divine”. The supreme exemplar of this insight is the Incarnation of Our Savior in the most blessed womb of Mary the Great Mother of God.

In its most profound reality, love is essentially a gift; love begins with the couple but does not end with them, because it makes them capable of the greatest possible gift, the gift by which they become cooperators with God for giving life to a new human person. Thus the couple, while giving themselves to one another, give not just themselves but also the reality of children, who are a living reflection of their love, a permanent sign of conjugal unity and a living and inseparable synthesis of their being a father and a mother (cf. Familiaris Consortio, 14).

Yet, contesting authentic giftedness stands the prevailing attitudes of the clique (this small, sectarian coterie of mainstream abortioneers). Abortion opposes love; the evil of abortion dissolves unity; the organized slaughter of innocents extends its weeping darkness to fill yet another vast cemetery.

Perceiving hidden and secret things before us in the depths of Planned Parenthood’s building, fortified and guarded with arms as it was, the realization that prayer alone has the power to break through the steel, brick, and security glass happens. Watching Dr. Havoc drive off in his glamorous sports car after his laborious day at the office emptying tummy bumps was chilling.

Pope Benedict XVI’s reflection reminds us all of the deepest meaning of authentic love.

“Love is Suffering”

We must think of love as suffering. Only if we are ready to endure it as suffering and thus ever again to accept each other and once again take the other to ourselves, only then can a lifelong relationship develop. If, on the contrary, we say when we get to the critical point, I want to avoid that, and we separate, then what we are really renouncing is the true opportunity that is to be found in man and woman being turned toward each other and in the reality of love (Pope Benedict, God and the Word).


Ad Jesum per Mariam,
Timothy J.A. O’Donnell