6 months ago

Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, reflects on the Sunday readings for the 28th 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 25:6-10a
Phil 4:12-14, 19-20
Mt 22:1-14 or 22:1-10

The readings assigned for today speak about the banquet to which God – in the old and new covenants – calls his people. The homilist can point out that this is a banquet of life. The prophecy of Isaiah tells us that God is in the business of destroying death. “On this mountain he will destroy the veil that veils all people, the web that is woven over all nations; he will destroy death forever.” This is the same mountain on which he will provide the choice foods and wines.

God did not make death; rather, he destroys it. He does so in Christ, for whom the wedding banquet (the marriage of Christ the Bridegroom with the Church his bride) is celebrated. To stand with Christ is to stand with life, and to stand with life is to stand against whatever destroys it. Nothing destroys more life than abortion.

We are on the holy mountain now – in the Eucharist, where the Church, and each of us individually, renew our vows to the Lord, and receive (not simply recall) his victory over death. It remains for us to “proclaim, celebrate, and serve the Gospel of Life” (as John Paul II put it in Evangelium Vitae), to apply that victory to every sector of society.

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