Pro-life Preaching Hints

July 25 - Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 

Gn 18:20-32
Col 2:12-14
Lk 11:1-13

Jesus told us that if we ask, we will receive. That is what Abraham also knew and carried out in the first reading. His prayer called upon the mercy of God. Jesus says that the greatest good we can ask for is the Holy Spirit. The Spirit brings that mercy, and enables us to say “Our Father.” When we pray in that way, we are (like Abraham) calling down God’s mercy on all our brothers and sisters. We are in fact defining ourselves as brothers and sisters because of the fact that we all have one Father.

This has implications. No longer can we exclude any person from our love. Love is indivisible, and must be extended to every human being. This is the basis of our pro-life convictions. In its broadest sense, the acknowledgment of God as Father extends to his role as Creator and affirms the responsibility we have to every human being (whether Christian or not) because he/she was made by and is loved by God.

Hence, the unborn and the terminally ill cannot be excluded from personhood, from prayer, from protection, or from practical help.

When we ask, we receive. We should invite our people to join the ongoing worldwide daily prayer to end abortion, at www.ProLifePrayerCampaign.org. What we receive, furthermore, is not simply an answer to our prayer in the form of God doing something. What we receive is part of the heart of God. He makes us compassionate as he is, and he gives us the grace to live out that compassion as true brothers and sisters united in the Holy Spirit with one Father.

Back