Holy Impatience: A Pro-life Christmas Reflection

Holy Impatience:

A Pro-life Christmas Reflection

-- Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life

Priests for Life is the world's largest Catholic organization focused exclusively on ending abortion.

Highlights

By Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life
Catholic Online (https://www.catholic.org)
12/24/2017 (6 years ago)

Published in Marriage & Family

Keywords: Pro-Life, Priests for Life, abortion

Christmas is about God becoming human to set humanity free from the oppression of sin and death. Accepting Christ, and celebrating Christmas, means welcoming that freedom, and striving that every human being may experience it. Hence we evangelize. And hence we work for justice. 

The beautiful Christmas hymn " Holy Night" states, "Truly he taught us to love one another; His law is love, and His Gospel is peace. Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother, and in His name, all oppression shall cease." Abolitionists used this verse of this Christmas hymn to stir their fervor to end slavery. Today, we in the pro-life movement use it to stir our fervor to end abortion. And we do so in the spirit of William Wilberforce, the key catalyst in the abolition of the slave trade. In his "Abolition Speech" to Parliament on May 12, 1789, he expressed the human imperative that took hold of him and made his commitment to abolition absolute:

"How then can the House refuse its belief to the multiplied testimonies ... of the savage treatment of the negroes in the middle passage? Nay, indeed, what need is there of any evidence? The number of deaths speaks for itself, and makes all such enquiry superfluous. As soon as ever I had arrived thus far in my investigation of the slave trade, I confess to you sir, so enormous so dreadful, so irremediable did its wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for the abolition. A trade founded in iniquity, and carried on as this was, must be abolished ... let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest till I had effected its abolition."

Three years later, on February 18, 1796, he made another motion for abolition in Parliament. Weary colleagues called for "suspending the question" until the end of the year. Wilberforce responded,

"There is something not a little provoking in the dry, calm way in which gentlemen are apt to speak of the sufferings of others. The question suspended! Is the desolation of wretched Africa suspended? Are all the complicated miseries of this atrocious trade -- is the work of death suspended? No sir, I will not delay this motion, and I will call upon the House not to insult the forbearance of Heaven by delaying this tardy act of justice!"(Metaxas, p. 163)

He was motivated by a holy impatience. He did not observe the oppression from a distance, or keep himself emotionally detached from the plight of the slaves. The humanity of the victims connected with his humanity. He was filled with urgency and would not let them off the hook. 

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We have witnessed in our lifetimes pro-life legislation that is either obstructed or suspended for another year, too. I have personally witnessed this attitude that can be almost described as boredom in some who are weary of the "same old" anti-abortion stories and messages. There is no holy impatience in them, no connection with the humanity of the victims who are suffering today and tomorrow. 

We will end abortion only when enough of us connect, both mentally and emotionally, with the human tragedy it represents, and then drink deeply of that human imperative, and become inebriated with that holy impatience. May your Advent and Christmas season be renewed with holy impatience! 

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Priests for Life is the world's largest Catholic organization focused exclusively on ending abortion.

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