Pro-life Preaching Hints

August 16 – 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Prv 9:1-6
Eph 5:15-20
Jn 6:51-58

Jesus tells his disciples that his food was to do the will of the Father (John 4:34). He gives himself to us as the Bread of Life, and this gives us life just like the Father gives him life. It follows, therefore, that our participation in the Lord’s Supper is geared toward our doing the will of Christ. “Try to understand what is the will of the Lord,” Paul therefore urges in the Second Reading, giving us some concrete examples. Our defense of life is one major aspect of union with the will of God.

"When I am lifted up from the earth," the Lord said, "I will draw all people to myself" (Jn.12:32). He fulfills this promise as he feeds us with himself and builds up the Church. The Church is the sign and cause of the unity of the human family.

Imagine all the people, in every part of the world, who are receiving Christ today. Are they all receiving their own personalized, customized Christ? Are they not rather each receiving the one and only Christ? Through his Word and through the Church, Christ the Lord, gloriously enthroned in heaven, is drawing all people to Himself. If He is drawing us to Himself, then He is drawing us to one another. St. Paul comments on this, "We, many though we are, are one body, since we all partake of the one loaf" (1 Cor. 10:17). When we call each other "brothers and sisters," we are not merely using a metaphor that dimly reflects the unity between children of the same parents. The unity we have in Christ is even stronger than the unity of blood brothers and sisters, because we do have common blood: the blood of Christ and the life of his Spirit! The result of our faith is that we become one, and this obliges us to be as concerned for each other as we are for our own bodies.

In receiving Christ, we are to receive the whole Christ, in all his members, our brothers and sisters, whether convenient or inconvenient, wanted or unwanted.

As St. John remarks, Christ was to die "to gather into one all the scattered children of God." Sin scatters. Christ unites. The word "diabolical" means "to split asunder." Christ came "to destroy the works of the devil" (1Jn.3:8). Christ builds up the human family as he says, "Come to me, feed on My Body, become My Body." Abortion, in a reverse dynamic, says, "Go away! We have no room for you, no time for you, no desire for you, no responsibility for you. Get out of our way!" Abortion attacks the unity of the human family by splitting asunder the most fundamental relationship between any two persons: mother and child. Christ reverses the dynamic of abortion.
 

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