Wikicommons/Photo by Wolfgang Moroder
Guest Post by Pro-life Leader Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life
Shortly after I became full-time National Director of Priests for Life in 1993, I was reviewing a series of videos of pro-life demonstrations. I had taken part in many of them before, and had seen the antics of the pro-abortion counter-demonstrators, as they chanted their slogans, trying desperately to justify the killing of babies.
At one point, a woman was screaming into the camera, pointing to herself and saying, “This is my body! This is my body!!”
And it struck me that these were familiar words. In fact, as a priest, these were the words I would say every day at the altar. These are the words Jesus said the night before he went to the cross. “This is my Body, given up for you.”
And here we have the clearest, most dramatic manifestation of the fact that abortion is a spiritual battle.
Despite differences among Christian denominations about the Lord’s Supper, we all agree that Jesus freely sacrificed himself, in his human body, on the cross, and that this sacrifice is the manifestation of God’s love and the source of life.
“This is my body.” The same words are used by the Savior of the world to bring life, and by the advocates of abortion to bring death. They are spoken from opposite ends of the universe, with totally opposite meanings and results.
When Jesus speaks these words, He is teaching us the meaning of love: I sacrifice myself for the good of the other person. Abortion is the opposite, because it sacrifices the other person for the good of oneself.
I began speaking about this insight in those early years of my Priests for Life ministry, and gave them a worldwide platform while working at the Vatican from 1997-1999. We created a brochure about it, and then I asked Catholic singer Dana (Rosemary Scallon) to write a song about it. EWTN then produced the music video, which won a Catholic video award in 2000. (See www.EucharistAndProLife.org.)
Other Catholic writers gave the theme additional publicity later in that decade, and this comparison has not lost its force.
This Sunday, many Christians will celebrate the feast of “Corpus Christi,” the Body of Christ. We will reflect on this gift of self-giving love. As we continue to engage the fundamental moral debate on abortion, let’s allow these four words to teach us what is at stake. Yes, we have our bodies, our freedom, our choices. But why? We have them so that we can freely give ourselves away in love, that others may live.
That is the meaning and purpose of life, and the reason we are pro-life.
Frank Pavone is national director of Priests for Life and the national pastoral director of Rachel’s Vineyard Ministries and the Silent No More Awareness Campaign..
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