Pro-life
Preaching Hints
October 24 - Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
2 Tm 4:6-8, 16-18
Lk 18:9-14
The story in the Gospel
passage for today proves that the Lord pays attention to the
lowly.
But the lesson is not just about the efficacy of
prayer. It’s about God’s love for the smallest, the outcast, the
“poor” – which means more than the materially deprived, but more
fundamentally about those who have no help but God. “The Lord
hears the cry of the poor” – of those who cry to him because
they don’t have access to any of the power structures of this
world which should protect them but don’t.
God hears the
“poor” because it belongs to his very nature to do so. He is a
God of justice. “Justice” is a powerful theme in Scripture, and
refers to the intervention of God to rescue the helpless. The
fundamental act of justice, of intervention, in the Old
Testament is the Exodus, foreshadowing the supreme act of
justice in Jesus Christ, who rescues us from the kingdom of
death and hell by his own death and resurrection.
All of
this points, of course, to God’s concern for the poorest of the
poor, and the most helpless of all, the children still in the
womb. They have no access to the power structures of this world,
who have officially deprived them of their rights of personhood.
No group of human beings is more victimized, or in greater
numbers, than children in the first nine months after
conception.
The God of justice requires his people to “do
justice,” that is, to “hear the cry of the oppressed” as he
does. The unborn child is, indeed, “the orphan,” often abandoned
by mother and father who resort to abortion. The mother of the
child is, for all practical purposes, facing the plight of the
“widow” in Scripture, because half of those who have abortions
say that they can’t go forward due to lack of support from the
father of the child.
We are called to intervene, to reach
those tempted to abort and strengthen them to do what is right,
and to speak and take action to restore protection to the
unborn, for the Lord hears the cry of the poor.
Back
|
