Preaching on abortion, Epiphany, Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life

Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, reflects on the Sunday readings for the Epiphany 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.

Is 60:1-6
Eph 3:2-3a, 5-6
Mt 2:1-12

The opening and closing prayer, the Preface, and the readings of today’s feast all work powerfully together to enable us to communicate the message of the sanctity of life. Epiphany is about “revelation” and “manifestation,” and that, of course is what Christ does. Not only does he reveal the Father to us, but he reveals us to ourselves. He shows us that this human nature of ours, that can be so troublesome and burdened, has in fact been renewed. The Preface proclaims, “You made us new by the glory of his immortal nature.” That, indeed is “the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel” that Paul proclaims to the Ephesians in the second reading. As an older Epiphany prayer says, it is a promise that God will draw us “to the life where your Spirit makes all life complete.” Death is no longer the final word for the human family, and this gift is shared not only by one nation or one people, but by all humanity.

The universal offer of God’s salvation extends to those still in the womb. Epiphany not only tells us that there are no national or ethnic boundaries to God’s call, but that there are no artificial boundaries between “born” and “unborn,” “wanted” or “unwanted,” “convenient” or “inconvenient.”

Moreover, the “epiphany” most needed in our time is the ability to see beyond the appearances of those who are smaller and weaker, and beyond the illusion created when some are declared “non-persons” under the law. Breaking through all this darkness and blurriness is the clear light of Christ, which shines on every human life without exception, bringing those lives God’s love and giving us the sacred obligation to love them as well.