The Immaculate Conception and November 6, 2012

“The angel went to Mary and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you." ²
Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. ³⁰ Bu
the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. ³¹ You will be wit
child and give birth to a son”                                                                    Luke 1:28-33 (NIV)  

         

It seems to me that it is impossible to understand Jesus apart from how he confronts the political
order of the world.    He came to bring a new kind of Kingdom.    It is a kingdom that values the
weakest of society and one that confronts the power brokers of the world.  

   

As we decide how to vote on November 6 I think that a really, really good test of what kind of
government to vote for would be the test of how it seeks to treat the weakest among us.  

God entered earth as an embryo, a zygote, an unborn child, in a world that didn’t consider children
persons.  Children got personhood not at birth but at young adulthood.    

Who are the weakest among us?  I can think of no one more vulnerable than unborn children.   A
good question to ask yourself is this one, “where does a person, unborn or born, derive his or her
value?  Is it from God, in whose eyes no one is an accident?  Or is value derived from my wanting or
not wanting that child?  If the value of a person is dependent on what value those in power
(including women caring that child in their womb) assign them, then we’re all in trouble. 

   
Mary was a teen with an unplanned pregnancy.   Yet, she told God, “thy will be done” because it
wasn’t even a thought in Judaism that an unborn child was not a person valued by God.  

I find it simply impossible to believe that the brutal removal of any life from any womb is any way,
shape or form acceptable to God.  

I suspect that this issue of abortion is the number one issue in America.  It reflects who we are,
whom we worship, whom and what we value, and our incredible ability to rationalize the worst
of actions in terms that sound therapeutic and compassionate   Satan appears most often as an
angel of light.

 

Prayer  

“Lord, we admit our complicity in the brutality involved in removing life from the womb.   None of
us in America is unstained, be it from actively promoting abortion or for passively living as if we
can’t do anything about it.  Forgive us and give us Grace-animated Courage to do whatever you
 want us to  do, big or small, to demonstrate to the weakest among us that they are valuable in your
 eyes and in ours.        Amen”