Preaching on abortion, 29th Sunday, Year A, Pro-Life Leader Frank Pavone of Priests for Life

Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, reflects on the Sunday readings for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A 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 45:1, 4-6
1 Thes 1:1-5b
Mt 22:15-21

The first reading emphasizes the fact that the Lord alone is God; there is no other. In a culture of death, that is precisely the truth that is denied. The battle between pro-life and pro-choice is really about the dominion of God. Is He Lord over human life or not? Abortion advocates more and more openly admit that abortion kills a child, but claim to have that right anyway. That is why John Paul II could write, “Life, especially human life, belongs only to God: for this reason whoever attacks human life, in some way attacks God himself” (Evangelium Vitae, 9). Dr. James McMahon was an abortionist in Southern California and performed partial-birth abortions. When asked by the American Medical Association news how he justified doing it, he admitted that the baby was a child, but then said there was a more important question, “Who owns the child? It’s got to be the mother,” he explained.

In the Gospel’s familiar account of Jesus’ answer about taxes, Jesus says that the coin belongs to Caesar because it bears his image. What, then, belongs to God? That which bears his image, namely, human life itself, including that of Caesar! Jesus teaches here the hierarchy of Divine and human authority. Christians must be good citizens; but citizens and their governing authorities alike must obey God, acknowledging his dominion over human life, and protecting it.