I recently came across a letter that my boyfriend, Tommy, wrote to his family last year after the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. His words of wisdom are just one among the many reasons that I love him and am always so proud of him. Written to my beautiful family:
May the peace and love of our Lord fill you with consolation, joy, and increased faith this day and all days. I write to each of you as your younger brother or son, and as your companion in this journey we call life: the love story of creation and His Creator. This “life” I speak of is of infinite and sacred value, for man’s life is the grand finale, the culmination of God’s creation as is illustrated in the first creation story (Gen 1). And it is for this reason that I write to you.
This past weekend, I had the honor of marching in the March for Life at our nation’s capital. Following the protest, I attended a ‘Students for Life of America Conference’, which enlightened and encouraged student groups within the pro-life movement to continually get involved and promote such a divine cause. During this short pilgrimage, I was able to reflect over man’s contingent relationship with God, and the importance of protecting life. Please take my reflections to heart, as I write from the heart. Though I am aware that what I will write may be controversial, I cannot keep silent: there is no time for silence when it comes to injustice. In the words of the great advocate for justice, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “[T]ime is always ripe to do right.” I refuse to be silent when millions aren’t given a chance to speak, when those who are voiceless are exterminated. I, as their brother, am now their voice.
My beloved family, we are living in the midst of the greatest genocide, and quite possibly the most horrific holocaust. The Nazi’s exterminated some 11-12 million human beings in the Holocaust... In one year there are approximately 42 million abortions performed globally[1]. 42 million children, every year, are having their skulls crushed, their brains sucked, their lungs smashed, their bodies ripped apart, and their very earthly existence taken away. There has never been a greater scale of murder in the history of mankind. We are witnessing the most terrifying moments of man’s history. What are you doing about it? At our death, when we stand before the gates of Heaven, will we hear the voices of the millions martyred speak: “Father, this one wanted to save me! This one heard my cry when so many refused to listen to my beating heart! O, Eternal Father, let them enjoy Your glory as I do!” Or, on the contrary, will the millions martyred from abortion be silent at our death… just like we were during theirs?
Why? Why is it that so many children are having their lives taken away? It is because they are inconvenient... Millions of children are murdered, not because they pose a threat to humanity (as Hitler thought the Jews did) or because they pose a threat to a religious belief, but because they are inconvenient: they pose a threat to one’s “progress.” Abortions occur because the child is a simple inconvenience. In a world where modern philosophy has plagued the average mind so that the future is the only means of hope, so that “progress” means mere technological advancement, so that one is always looking into tomorrow, so that the only truly valuable things are those that are material, it just so happens that when a newborn poses a threat to one’s social position or convenience, then that child is brutally murdered.
What is next? Because people tend to walk down the path of cowardice and refuse to face suffering, the philosophical thinking of eliminating one’s pain has gained great success: If you are in pain, eliminate the pain. (Just look at the youth: a young boy’s hormones are causing him pain, so he masturbates to relieve himself; a young girl’s lack of feeling acceptance causes her pain, so she dresses immodestly, revealing to others’ eyes what should be reserved for her future husband; a teenager is stressed because of school, so he gets drunk to have a stress-free time.) This type of thinking is detrimental to our very humanity. Suffering is not to be eliminated! (The Christian message of suffering is one of redemption; to suffer is to participate in the redemptive offering of Love as implemented by the God whom so courageously suffered for man.) And, because of its byproduct, it is detrimental to our existence: a woman is petrified of giving birth or raising her child, so she eliminates the little one living inside of her; a man is not ready to be a father because he wants to do more with his life first, so he forces his partner to get an abortion. Are we so blind as to see what is actually happening? Our society is allowing one person to judge another’s life based on his own emotional stability: we are allowing the existence of a child to be placed in the realm of a mere “convenience test.” Fortunately for you, you have passed that test—otherwise, you would not be alive and reading this text before you.
So, I propose the same question again. What is next? With a rising national debt, are we going to kill the poor, the unemployed, and those who do not benefit society? Are they not a mere inconvenience to the wellbeing of our country? Or perhaps, we should consider killing the mentally unstable or physically handicapped. If anything, they are nothing more than an inconvenience, as they require consistent help, guidance, and can hardly do anything productive (productive in the modern meaning of the word). What if we kill every criminal? Surely, they are an inconvenience to the country as a whole: even in jail they require food, maintenance, etc. We already kill the unborn because they pose a threat to another’s wellness… what is to stop this nation from killing more?
Furthermore, how can we call ourselves Christian if we allow this injustice to thrive? In order for the Word to have become flesh, the Word had to enter into human form. In order to enter into human form, the Word had to be conceived in the womb, nurtured in the womb, and born from the womb. This incredible miracle—the Word made flesh—lies at the core of Christian thinking: we worship the God of Man, who is also the God that became man. Now, it is pure ignorance to say the Word becoming flesh was not an incredible inconvenience. Consider the story: an angel tells Mary, a young, unmarried Jew, that, if she accepts his message, she is to give birth. At that time, if you were unmarried and became pregnant, the penalty was death. She knew that accepting this pregnancy meant that her fiancé, whom she was deeply in love with, could easily leave her. Accepting this pregnancy will completely change her life; her entire life-plan will be changed if she says yes: whatever future hopes she had in mind would be erased if she accepted such a pregnancy. She knew all of this. And she still said yes: “Let it be done to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38).
Given this understanding of the incredible inconvenience regarding Mary’s pregnancy with the Word—Jesus—a clearer understanding of abortion begins to develop. Whenever we are lukewarm in our belief about abortion, we are lukewarm about the birth of our God. Whenever we do not exclaim boldly the evils of abortion, we are not exclaiming joyfully the news of our living God. Whenever we do not seek to defend the unborn, we are not honoring the great acceptance of Mary. Perhaps what we need is a renewal of belief in our Lord Jesus; perhaps we no longer recognize the importance of the Godbecoming man, of the birth of our King, of the Eternal Word taking on human form in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Let us, then, remember why He came: to destroy the sting of sin that is death (1 Cor 15:54-56), to give us eternal life (Jn 3:16), that we may inherit divine majesty and glory (Rom 8:17), to set us free from the slavery of sin (Gal 5:1). He came so that we may live life abundantly and to the full (Jn 10:10). Are we so ignorant as to forget why the God of Love became man? Who are we to act so god-like as to be in charge of who is lucky enough to be born?
Finally, let us not forget whom the Christ has made us into by his life, death, and resurrection: He has made us to be dwelling places of the Almighty God. In the words of Saint Paul: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which are, is holy” (1 Cor 3:16). I need not say more.
I want to quote another passage from scripture: “God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him” (Wis 2:23). It seems that Pope John Paul II the Great understood this passage when he wrote: “Man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God. The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable value of human life even in its temporal phase… [Life] remains a sacred reality entrusted to us, to be preserved with a sense of responsibility and brought to perfection in love and in the gift of ourselves to God and to our brothers and sisters.” Abortion says “to hell” with all of this. We have a responsibility to protect and preserve life. It is our duty to treat God as He is: a God of life, and treat His creation as He intended: as a sacred entity.
Therefore, I invite you, reader, to partake in a movement — to be pro-life. I do not ask that you label yourself as one who is “anti-abortion,” but to label yourself as definitively "pro-life:" one who is the voice for the voiceless, the cry for those without rights, the warrior for those who cannot fight, the life for those who have it taken away. I invite you to exclaim from the rooftops the evils of abortion. Where has ethics gone? Or moral law? Or dignity? I encourage you to take a stand; not one of mediocrity, as one who simply disagrees with abortion, but rather as one who agrees with life, who is a defender of what is sacred, and who is willing to do anything and everything to save one unborn life of God! These children are not dying from natural causes, from lack of food, or from a disease… these children are being murdered. All these children have is you: whereas a survivor of a genocide may write an inspirational book, or starving families may be noticed in films or pictures, or governmental injustices may be seen through the media, the aborted child has no voice, no way of crying to a camera before he is taken away to the modern “gas-chamber.” All that the unborn has is the voice of others. It is their only hope; for it is no longer feasible for them to have hope in life, because life is no longer an inherent right to them. Family, please, be that voice.
Saint Irenaeus once said “The glory of God is man fully alive.”[2] How true this statement is. It is only natural for the creator to manifest his majesty in his creation. In order to cultivate a culture of God’s glory, we must cultivate a culture of life—not only one that nurtures the quality life, but, even more importantly, one that accepts life. To accept life, to allow one the opportunity to be born, is the absolute foundation of freedom: to disregard one’s right to life is simultaneously to disregard one’s right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These two democratic ideals—and natural human rights—are dependent upon the right to life. So, because God’s glory is made manifest in the life of man, we must fight to preserve the natural right to live, to be given the very chance to have life.
At the closing of this letter, perhaps one more quote will suffice, if what I have written has not already inspired, changed, or encouraged your desires to fight this social injustice. One of the most respected women and persons this world will perhaps ever see is Mother Teresa. She is one who tirelessly gave herself to others so that they may experience a more full life; it is no wonder that she said:
“Life is the life of God in us. Life is the greatest gift that God has bestowed on human beings, and man has been created in the image of God. Life belongs to God, and we have no right to destroy it.”
It doesn’t take a great deal of research in bioethics to understand why abortion is immoral and ethically unsound. All it takes is simple reason to see the beauty of life and the evils of destroying it.
May all of us continue to pray for not just an important cause, but quite possibly the greatest cause we can pray for this very day. For it is a cause for our nation, our world, our humanity, and for the glory of the God of all Love.
Praised be Jesus Christ… now and forever.
Pax Christí Mea Familia
Tommy Piolata
[1] http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html
[2] For what other reason would Saint Paul had said: “I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20). This truth also seems apparent in his preaching: “For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them” (Eph 2:10); see also 2 Cor 4:7-11.
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