“Those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life” (Rom. 8:5-6)
Happy Pentecost to you all!
I have been thinking about life and death a lot recently.
A.M. recently organised a sponsored walk, along with a couple of her friends, to raise money for the charity Life: www.lifecharity.org.uk. The support they received from our parishioners was overwhelming: and they were able to raise over £3000. A.M. also attended the March for Life in London a couple of weekends ago, along with some 4000 other people. They were sworn at, pelted with horse dung, and sprayed with beer by abortion rights protesters. The mainstream media totally ignored the event, except for this trail in the Evening Standard:
In the mean time, A.S. is campaigning hard in Dublin
to prevent the repeal of the 8th amendment to the Irish Constitution – which
would lead to abortion being allowed on demand up to 12 weeks.
But then, last week, I attended the funeral of a
little girl, who had died tragically at birth. She was loved, welcomed and
prayed for by her Christian parents and brothers; but she died. It was utterly
heartbreaking. But it set me thinking...
If we think that abortion is a bad thing, “pro-life”
is not really the best label for us. Very few people are “pro-death”. Little
baby Maria lost her earthly life at birth; yet we do not curse God for taking
her to Him. If we object to abortion, our main reason is not because we want
all those babies to live. Of course, we do want them to live! – but what we
really believe is that no one but God has the right to take them away from us.
Each abortion is not just a tragedy for the child, but for the parents, the
doctors, and society as a whole; we have, though unwittingly, turned ourselves
into accomplices to killing.
When I was young, almost everybody would have agreed
that we do not have the right to kill innocent human beings. Those who did not
object to abortion generally rationalised their position by suggesting that
human life didn’t really begin until birth – or at least, certainly not at conception.
But over the past 30 years or so, we have learnt so much more about genetics,
embryology and human development, and the advent of ultrasound technology has
enabled us all to gaze into the womb. A child has a unique genetic code from
conception, and a heartbeat from c. 3 weeks. It is truly as the Psalm says:
“you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Ps.
139:13). These days, it is almost impossible to maintain the view that an
unborn child is not really a unique living human being. And so the vocabulary
of the abortion rights movement has changed, away from saying that abortion
isn’t really killing, to asserting “the power – and the responsibility – of
taking life” as a way of positioning “women at their most powerful” [Merle
Hoffman, Intimate Wars].
And yet, when I saw baby Maria’s father carrying his
own daughter’s coffin in his arms into church for her funeral, I knew that
power, whether for man or woman, is nothing but an illusion. For there is only
One who truly has power. Our virtue, if we are to have any, lies not primarily
in protecting everyone from death – though that is a good thing to try to do –
but in treating each and every human life with the love it deserves as a child
of God, which means: “Thou shalt not kill.”
Why then did baby Maria die? God only knows. But God
drops hints. Here from the book of Wisdom, chapter 3:
The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace. For though in the sight of others they were punished, their hope is full of immortality. Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself; like gold in the furnace he tried them, and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them. In the time of their visitation they will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble. They will govern nations and rule over peoples, and the Lord will reign over them forever. Those who trust in him will understand truth, and the faithful will abide with him in love, because grace and mercy are upon his holy ones, and he watches over his elect.
Is little Maria’s hope really “full of immortality”?
The traditional Protestant emphasis on “faith alone” does not help us here –
for Maria was too young to have faith before she was taken. The traditional
Catholic emphasis on baptism is equally unsatisfactory. For if Maria is a
Christian, then she was so at least no later than conception, when “knit
together” in her mother’s womb. But even this is too modest, though, for surely
“all the days ordained for [her] were written in your book before one of them came
to be” (Ps. 139:16)! Why is Maria a Christian? Purely by the grace of God,
because “grace and mercy are upon his holy ones, and he watches over his
elect”. Why did God take her away? So that she could be a “sacrificial burnt
offering ... run like sparks through the stubble... and rule over peoples”!
There seems to be much in Scripture which hints that
our eternal destiny may be affected not just by our own faith, but by the faith
and the actions of others who love us in Christ. “The unbelieving husband has
been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified
through her believing husband” – and so their children are made holy (1 Cor.
7:14). And “women will be saved through childbearing (1 Tim. 2:15)”. Even Paul
echoes the book of Wisdom, filling up in his flesh “what is still lacking in
regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church”
(Col. 1:24)! And so baby Maria is a Christian because her family is Christian,
welcoming her and praying for her from before her conception. And Maria will
help to keep her family Christian by praying for them, and by having given her
life for them. Maria, like all those millions of unborn lives cut short, has
been granted the greatest privilege of all: to die innocent, like Christ,
prayed for by others, and praying for others, in her heavenly glory. And so let
us pray for those innocent departed ones – for in Christ their death is far
more than just that.
No one has put it better than John Donne:
The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume. No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
I never used to understand why Catholics celebrated
Mass when someone died. I thought it was just because “Catholics do that sort
of thing”, i.e. they can’t think of anything better to do in church! But it
struck me, at Maria’s funeral, what an amazing privilege it was for me to be
there. For baby Maria is now with “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (Matt. 8:11),
“Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders” (Ex. 24:9), and the
“thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand” (Rev. 5:11) at
the heavenly Feast. And at the centre of that Feast is the “Lamb, looking as if
it had been slain” (Rev. 5:6) – He who said over the bread “This is my body”!
Thank you, Maria, for the privilege of being there with you and the angels and
saints, and the “Lamb slain from the creation of the world” (Rev. 13:8), at
that heavenly banquet. Non sum dignus.
Please pray for Maria and her family. And please pray
for the millions of innocents we slaughter each year, who join her in Heaven.
For they are surely praying for us. And please pray for the people of Ireland,
that this Friday they may have the courage to choose not to kill.
N.
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