Fr. Frank Pavone
From the Jan/Feb 2006 Issue of Lay Witness Magazine
“Without Me, You Can Do Nothing”
The foundation of all that can be accomplished in the prolife movement is prayer. “Without me,” Christ said, “you can do nothing” (Jn. 15:5). Jesus does not merely “help” us, as if we were working on our own and He came along to ease the burden. Rather, we cannot even begin a good work without His saving action within us. All we do is His gift. We need to pray more, and with greater fervor.
But every good thing can be abused, and even prayer can become an excuse, a refuge from our responsibility to take some form of action to stop abortion. We are called to action for the very same reason we are called to pray. Does God really need us to pray? Certainly, He does not need to be reminded of His duties, or told to do His job. God calls us to pray because He wants us to be involved in what He is doing. If, therefore, He calls us to pray, even when He could act without our prayers, it is reasonable that He calls us to action, even when He could act without our works. God calls us not because He needs us, but because He chooses to use us.
Prayer is not just asking God to do something. That’s part of it, but there’s more. Prayer is union with God. Prayer means we open ourselves so wide to God that He comes in and does something through us. Prayer and action are not two separate options, but rather two aspects of the same reality: union with God.
When we come to prayer, we come to the living God, a consuming fire, the source of all activity. When we walk away from prayer, we should not feel rested, but restless. We should not feel that we’ve done our duty, but that we’ve been given our duty.
When we ask God to end abortion, His favorite response it to reach down from heaven, lift us up by the back of the neck, and throw us into the battle! God is not going to rip open the sky, come down, and tell our nation to stop abortion. Instead, He is going to put conviction in our hearts and words on our lips and command us to speak and act.
A Source of Encouragement
A life of prayer not only leads one to action, but also shapes that action, and enables us to avoid discouragement.
Discouragement results from a lack of total vision. We look only at the problems and our human weakness, but don’t take account of divine strength, which is available to us at every moment. Prayer, by its very nature, helps us to pay closer attention to the reality of grace, and to see all things in the light of eternity. The mind, enlightened by prayer, understands more readily that, as John Paul II said at World Youth Day in Denver, “The outcome of the battle for life is already decided.” The prayer life of a pro-life person should be centered constantly on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, who conquered the kingdom of death and therefore the power of abortion.
Prayer makes us more aware of the power of evil, and we are therefore less surprised at the resistance we encounter in pro-life work. The more we expect resistance and even harsh persecution—which is, after all, one of the “promises of Christ”—the less will we be tempted to retreat from the battle when it gets intense, or to lose patience over the slow and painful nature of our progress.
At the same time, it helps to take account of the evidence that we are indeed making tremendous progress in the pro-life cause. Public opinion continues to move in our direction, youth are more involved than ever in the pro-life cause, and magazines like Glamour are running articles like its August 2005 piece “The Mysterious Disappearance of Young Pro-Choice Women.”
Nourishing Charity
A life of prayer makes it possible to avoid bitterness in our pro-life work. By prayer we nourish the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which enable us to see creation—including all people —from God’s perspective. This means that just as we can recognize God’s image in the unborn, we can recognize it in the pro-abortion advocate, and even the abortionist. Indeed, the most challenging word in the phrase “the dignity of every human life” is the word “every.” In Evangelium Vitae we read, “Not even a murderer loses his personal dignity” (no. 9). Prayer enables us to see that the abortionist is not our enemy, but rather is captive to the enemy. Prayer gives us the power to love those who oppose us, because by definition, prayer calls down God’s grace upon them—a grace that leads to conversion—and allows us to look at them through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and through Eucharistic eyes.
The charity we extend to those who oppose us also applies to those who lead us, even when they fall short. It is easy to say that “the Church must do more,” and, indeed, that is true. A life of prayer includes prayer for our bishops and priests. There is nothing wrong with seeing their shortcomings and being disappointed in their failures. But disappointment does not need to lead to bitterness. Above all, the one who prays is aware of his own failures, and upon seeing the failures of others, he adopts an attitude of humility, rather than an air of superiority. It may be true that we are doing more than those who lead us. But the prayerful heart seeks constructive ways to encourage those in leadership, to foster unity within the Church, while at the same time not hesitating to use proper channels to challenge and correct others, with due respect for their reputation and the demands of justice and charity.
The Need for Pro-life Retreats
The effectiveness of our pro-life activity will increase the more we grow in holiness. That is why pro-life retreats are so helpful. They are opportunities to focus on God, and on how our pro-life work is rooted in our response to God and is meant to lead us back to him.
Pro-life retreats are part of a larger spirituality of pro-life work now being fostered by the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, a new society of apostolic life that Priests for Life has been given permission to form. Not only is this a community of priests, deacons, and lay missionaries, but it also has lay associates. Any Catholic doing pro-life work can join the new society as an affiliate member, receive spiritual training, and eventually
make promises related to the defense of life and participation in the prolife movement.
Conclusion: No More Death
Ultimately, all prayer and worship points to the world to come, where “there will be no more death” (Rev. 21:4). We touch eternal life even now, and our prayer and action bring that life to fruition within us. We stand victorious in front of the culture of death and command it to flee, for the God whom we touch in prayer continues to draw us to Himself, and to work through us to renew the world.
Fr. Frank Pavone is founder and president of Priests for Life, which is not just for priests, but is an organization that serves the entire Church in her fight against abortion and euthanasia. Seminars, educational material, strategic planning, networking, media work, political activity, and pro-life retreats are among the many activities that Priests for Life conducts in local communities nationwide. For more information, please call (718) 980-4400 or visit www.priestsforlife.org.
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