Preaching on abortion, Ascension, Year C, Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life

Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, reflects on the Sunday readings for the Ascension, 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: Acts 1:1-11; Eph 1:17-23 or Heb 9:24-28; 10:19-23; Lk 24:46-53

Reflections:

The Ascension is a powerful feast on which to preach the sanctity of human life, because at its core, this feast is about our human nature being exalted to the heights of heaven. Jesus prayed on the night before he died, “Father, give me the glory I had with you before the world began.” How is the glory he has in the Ascension different from the glory he had “before the world began?”

It differs only in that now, he has it in a human nature. Our humanity has been taken to the heights of heaven, fulfilling the destiny God intended for human life from the beginning. Revelation 3:21 declares, “To the one who gains the victory, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne.” God’s plan for us is not just that we will gather around the throne or fall down before the throne, but that we will sit with him on the throne!

This hope extended to the human family by the Gospel is directly contradicted when the same human beings destined for the heights of heaven are thrown in the garbage by abortion.

The human nature Jesus brings to glory in the Ascension is the same human nature you and I share, and the same human nature that the babies in the womb share. Celebrating the Ascension in daily life means treating each human life as one destined to sit with Christ on his throne.