frfrankpavone

Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, reflects on the Sunday readings for the 10th Sunday, Year C and their message about abortion. For more information about what the Sunday readings, and the whole Bible, say about abortion, and for resources for your Church, see https://www.ProLifePreaching.org. You can order there the book “Proclaiming the Message of Life,” which contains these reflections for all the Sunday readings in the lectionary. Readings: 1 Kgs 17:17-24 Gal 1:11-19 Luke 7:11-17 Reflections: Both the first reading and the Gospel speak to us today about a mother, with no husband, who loses her son, and then a man of God -- in the case of Jesus, the Son of God -- gives the child back to his mother, alive. In both cases, this victory of life over death for a woman's child is a sign of God's favor. God is in the business of destroying death and restoring life, which, in the end, he will do for us all. This is a key characteristic of the mission of the Church and of each member of the People of God: be a sign of God's preference for life over death, a sign of the power of life over death. We cannot raise the dead as Elijah and Jesus did, but we can save children from death through our involvement in the pro-life movement. The witness, the words, and the compassionate intervention of the pro-life works of the Church bring to pass each day the words of today's Psalm, "You preserved me from among those going down into the pit," and the words of the Gospel, "Jesus gave him back to his mother." A further application of this theme is in the whole arena of healing after abortion. Each day, through ministries like RachelsVineyard.org, parents who have lost children to abortion are experiencing what it means that "Jesus gave him back to his mother." They are led, by the Word of God and the sacraments, to life-giving repentance, to reclaiming their responsibility for their children, and to experiencing the hope that both they and their children are in the hand of God and will be reunited one day. The hope given by today's readings can be the opportunity to call people to healing and to be witnesses both to life and to mercy.

Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, reflects on the Sunday readings for the 3rd Sunday in Lent, Year C and their message about abortion. For more information about what the Sunday readings, and the whole Bible, say about abortion, and for resources for your Church, see https://www.ProLifePreaching.org. You can order there the book “Proclaiming the Message of Life,” which contains these reflections for all the Sunday readings in the lectionary. Readings: Ex 3:1-8a, 13-15 1 Cor 10:1-6, 10-12 Lk 13:1-9 Reflections: “I have heard the cry of my people who are being oppressed…Therefore I have come down to rescue them.” So God speaks to Moses in today’s first reading. We enter now into a more intense period of Lent, preparing those who are to be baptized, and preparing to renew the vows of our own baptism. We reflect on the central mysteries of our Faith, to better celebrate the passion, death, and resurrection of the Lord. The Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, as well as the Paschal Mystery – that is, the central events of the Old and New Testaments -- are both about God rescuing his people who are being oppressed. Our forefathers were oppressed as slaves in Egypt and rescued through the waters of the Red Sea. We are oppressed by sin and death, and are rescued through the waters of baptism. Yet the rescued must also rescue. The saved must also save. We cannot turn to God for mercy and be deaf to the cries of others for mercy. One of the three key Lenten activities is “almsgiving,” because it symbolizes this basic truth about living our faith all year long. We are not allowed simply to look at God and thank him for rescuing us, individually. We are, rather, to let our gratitude become service, directed at rescuing others. This is the fruit of which Jesus speaks in the Gospel passage; this is the repentance he seeks of us. God’s name, as revealed to Moses, is “I AM.” It does not only mean “the fullness of being.” It means “I am here FOR YOU, to rescue and save you.” The same words are spoken by God when he is announcing that he will rescue his people from their captivity in Babylon (see Isaiah 45) and when Jesus announces the liberating effects of his passion (see John 8). In our day, these reflections show us our obligation to rescue the most vulnerable human beings of all, oppressed by abortion and euthanasia.

My Daily Diary for Thursday May 12th, 2022

Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, reflects on the Sunday readings for the 13th Sunday, Year C and their message about abortion. For more information about what the Sunday readings, and the whole Bible, say about abortion, and for resources for your Church, see https://www.ProLifePreaching.org. You can order there the book “Proclaiming the Message of Life,” which contains these reflections for all the Sunday readings in the lectionary. Readings: 1 Kgs 19:16b, 19-21 Gal 5:1, 13-18 Lk 9:51-62 The second reading’s teaching on freedom creates the opportunity to preach today on the relationship between freedom and the right to life. Unwilling to describe the details of dismemberment that the abortion procedure entails, supporters of its legality have taken refuge in much more positive words like “freedom” and “choice.” Ironically, of course, abortions do not happen because of “freedom of choice,” but rather because some pregnant women think they have no freedom and no choice but to have an abortion. Hence the pro-life movement works daily to provide alternatives to abortion. But to invoke “freedom” to justify abortion twists the very notion of freedom, in a way that today’s second reading warns against. The corrective truth that Paul gives is that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. The unborn children are our neighbors, and loving them starts with protecting them from violence. The command to “love our neighbor as ourselves” doesn’t simply mean to love them “to the same extent” as we love ourselves, but more fundamentally to love them “as a person like ourselves.” In other words, it means that we recognize in them a person with the same worth, value, dignity, and rights as we ourselves have. This is precisely where the “pro-choice” mentality has gone wrong, when it fails to see the unborn child as our neighbor. The justifications for abortion would not hold if invoked as a reason to kill a born child. “Love your neighbor as a person like yourself.” Our Declaration of Independence invokes the “right to life” as an “unalienable right” granted to all “by their Creator,” not their government. What God gives, government cannot take away. This is the foundation of our freedom – that God himself grants our human rights, and that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted.” This is the basis of the freedom we enjoy in America. Preserving that freedom requires preserving the fundamental rights that are its foundation, starting with life itself.

Now that the Democratic Party has failed to codify Roe v Wade... let's get rid of it completely! End Abortion Forever! Save the Unborn Babies!

Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, reflects on the Sunday readings for Trinity Sunday, Year C and their message about abortion. For more information about what the Sunday readings, and the whole Bible, say about abortion, and for resources for your Church, see https://www.ProLifePreaching.org. You can order there the book “Proclaiming the Message of Life,” which contains these reflections for all the Sunday readings in the lectionary. Readings: Prv 8:22-31 Rom 5:1-5 Jn 16:12-15 Reflections: The readings today, of course, present again the truth that God is One in Three Persons. Preaching pro-life on the Feast of the Holy Trinity leads us to comment on the reality of “communio". Seen in a unique way in the Trinity, this is a reality lived on a human level as well. It is first of all a gift, and secondly a task, consisting of a total self-giving to one another. The unity of families, nations, and the world depend on it. As the bulletin insert above indicates, this is a key reason for today’s Feast. A particular application is in the matter of abortion. There are no two human beings closer than a mother and her unborn child. Abortion disrupts, denies, and distorts the union of these two persons, and in doing so, further destroys family and societal unity. Most marriages break up after an abortion, and the woman often experiences an inability to bond with future children or even enter into future relationships with men. Her ability to trust and to make life decisions is impaired by abortion. Standing for life and protecting the unborn means fostering the “communio" we see, in its ultimate form, in the Trinity. Life is preserved precisely when it is given away in self-sacrificing love.

My Daily Diary for Friday April 29th - May 1st 2022

My Daily Diary for Thursday, April 28th 2022

Steven Aden explains how in 1973 the Supreme Court made a wrong turn that needs to be corrected

Katie Glenn, Government Affairs Counsel for Americans United for Life

My Daily Diary for Tuesday, April 26th, 2022