Abortion

In Colorado, a pair of twins was together for the first time outside the womb. Not in itself strange, but the brothers have birthdays two months apart. Brother #1 was delivered premature. Brother #2 stayed in the womb for as long as doctors could manage. In our legal system, if someone ended the life of Brother #1 in the interim it would have been murder; if someone ended the life of Brother #2, it could have been a legal abortion. Insanity? No, this is justice in our country. The Catholic Church has always condemned abortion. In the Didache it is prohibited along with infanticide. The Church teaches that life begins at conception when physical life is formed and the being is infused with a soul. Some say that Thomas Aquinas said abortion was permitted in the early months. Aquinas was always opposed to abortion; he was just not certain of when life began (considering the stage of medicine in the 13th century). All human life has value. God would not allow conception to occur if He did not have a plan for that person, if He did not want that person to be. No one is an accident. Only our laws are ludicrous, the arbitrary time of birth is a poor factor for determining the start of legal rights. Brother#1 for two months had all the protection of our legal system, while Brother#2 had none at all. The same doctor who delivered Brother#1 could have also aborted Brother#2, all while trying to do everything possible to keep Brother #1 alive. Any wonder why some people think the world has gone mad?

Questions

Is God the Rock in our lives? Is "in God we trust?"

Who or what do we put first in our lives? Do we put "no other gods before Him" or have we made other idols? Is that idol someone else, a relationship, an activity, a career, worry (including about having enough money to survive), or yourself? Someone, I don't remember who, said that when we do not worship God on the Sabbath, that we are actually breaking this commandment because we are making something else more important than God, creating another god before Him.

Someone else told me that Martin Luther suggested making the sign of the cross upon getting up in the morning, what a good way to start the day with God, instead of remembering to include Him maybe on the way to work. When we are in pain, do we look to God? When we are in trouble, do we look to God? When we are in turmoil, do we look to God? or is God an afterthought? a "by-the-way"? Do we have faith that God is with us? Do we think and act as if we have that faith?

There is always a need for each of us to turn more to God. We cannot live this life through our own power. God is our Rock.

Solutions

The answer to life’s problems lies not in the wisdom of men. We need to turn to God. God may use the problems in our lives to cause us to turn to Him, to look to Him for support, for comfort, for the answers. Sometimes there are no solutions; we just need to endure and rely on God to get us through, as He told Job - who are we to question Him, who made the universe, in a ‘why’ and think that we may understand. The ultimate connection to God is through Jesus in the Eucharist. It is with Him that we can work out life’s problems. It is with Him that we can find the love and comfort and strength to endure problems that have no quick and easy solutions. He, the Son, is the Word, spoken in the Bible. Our first commitment, before any person or job, needs to be to God. If we bounce all other choices off of our relationship with God, the right and wrong of those other choices will become clear. It is when we try to structure our relationship to God around those choices that we get into serious trouble. The old Baltimore catechism asked, “Why did God make us?” Answer, “God made us to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him in the next.” How we do this ranges from the Mother Teresa’s ministry to the dying to the ditch digger who goes to work every day and home at night to the embrace of his family. God gave us an instruction manual, the Bible, and a teacher, the Church. As with all teachers, sometimes the Church has to tell us to do something, like going to Mass every Sunday, because we don’t or won’t see the ‘why’ or the good of it. We do it because we are told, yet we are better for it, though maybe unconsciously, and then one day our eyes and souls open and we rejoice that we were made to do it. He is waiting to embrace us in His Love, if only we let Him.