Will we do everything in our power not to destroy life? Will we love? Will we be loved? Mother Teresa put these kinds of questions 35 years ago this weekend to the National Right to Life convention. Help mothers, whomever they may be, wherever they may be. And if they don’t want their children, “Mother Teresa’s sisters want them.”
She talked about how abortion destroys the joy of loving in the hearts of men and women. It’s a poison that spreads a lethal misery.
I can’t help but think about this in the context of what has been going on in the United States these last weeks and months — and longer. There is both legitimate anger and there is irrationality. (George Washington is a villain now?) The sin of racism. The ugly things we will say and do to one another. Abortion certainly doesn’t help. We’ve made it a matter of mainstream health care that a mother would go in for a procedure that kills her child. Increasingly, she is being sent home for her baby to die, to face the remains alone.
There is a great deal that has been beautiful about America. And yet we have permitted grave evils. Apparently, it might now be “woke” to oppose the death penalty. I’ll pray for the day abortion will be.
Love one another. Loving one another requires a more radical commitment to life than we’ve had. Hear what Mother Teresa had to say and let’s see if we can try this again and pray it catches on.
“God loves us . . . Do not be afraid to love until it hurts.”
The video from 1985 is here.