For Sanctity of Life Sunday
I was the sweaty toe-head bouncing, throwing or hitting whatever ‘ball’ happened to be in season back in 1971. I was full of life, which is about all I remember, except that the Pirates beat the Orioles in a comeback best-of-seven World Series featuring some of my childhood hero’s including Roberto Clemente, one of the best ball players of all time (the best, many Pirates fans would say,) and playing defense out of his mind at the hot corner, third base, Brooks Robinson.
I didn’t have a clue that at roughly the same time a decision was being made cross country to legalize abortion. I don’t think I knew what abortion was at the time. If I did I know the young me would have thought it was barbaric, the kind of thing you would read in a horror novel. Fiction. Why would anyone kill a baby? I have two little sisters and the youngest was born right about the same time as that law was passed. I can’t imagine life without either of them. They light up the world.
The older I get the more precious life becomes. Not for me, but for our unborn, our infants, our children, our elderly and infirm. The world seems to get increasingly hard and callous while the vulnerable, the poor, the sick, the orphan and widow, are increasingly, like the unborn, without a voice in the world. They become the afflicted and the victim.
In church we worship the Giver of Life, the One who share’s His life, His breath, with every human, knitting and fashioning them in the sanctity of a mothers womb from conception. These little ones can hear us, they feel us, why, John the Baptist actually jumped with excitement while still in the womb, which his mother knew was more than last nights falafel, when Mary, the Mother of Jesus, visited. God loves people. He makes each one perfect and special.
Let’s speak up for life. Each person needs a chance to run and sweat and play baseball and forty-something years recall who played third base on the losing squad.
Sincerely,
Ed
