Our commitment to defend our pre-born brothers and sisters
receives its form and sustenance from the Eucharist as a sacrament of faith,
unity, life, worship, and love.
The Eucharist is a sacrament of faith. The Consecrated Host
looks no different after the consecration than before. It looks, smells, feels,
and tastes like bread. Only one of the five senses gets to the truth. As St.
Thomas' Adoro Te Devote
expresses, "Seeing, touching, tasting are in Thee deceived. What says trusty
hearing, that shall be believed?" The ears hear His words, "This is My Body;
this is My Blood," and faith takes us beyond the veil of appearances.
Christians are used to looking beyond appearances. The baby
in the manger does not look like God; nor for that matter does the man on the
cross. Yet by faith we know He is no mere man. The Bible does not have a
particular glow setting it off from other books, nor does it levitate above the
shelf. Yet by faith we know it is uniquely the Word of God. The Eucharist seems
to be bread and wine, and yet by faith we say, "My Lord and My God!" as we kneel
in adoration.
The same dynamic of faith that enables us to see beyond
appearances in these mysteries enables us to see beyond appearances in our
neighbor. We can look at the persons around us, at the annoying person or the
ugly person or the person who is unconscious in a hospital bed, and we can say,
"Christ is there as well. There is my bother, my sister, made in the very image
of God!" By the same dynamic we can look at the pre-born child and say, "There,
too, is my brother, my sister, equal in dignity and just as worthy of protection
as anyone else!" Some people will say the child in the womb, especially in the
earliest stages, is too small to be the subject of Constitutional rights. Is the
Sacred Host too small to be God, too unlike Him in appearance to be worshipped?
The slightest particle of the Host is fully Christ. Eucharistic Faith is a
powerful antidote to the dangerous notion that value depends on size.
The Eucharist is also a Sacrament of Unity. "When I am lifted
up from the earth," the Lord said, "I will draw all people to myself"
(Jn.12:32). He fulfills this promise in the Eucharist, which builds up the
Church. The Church is the sign and cause of the unity of the human family.
Imagine all the people, in every part of the world, who are
receiving Communion today. Are they all receiving their own personalized,
customized Christ? Are they not rather each receiving the one and only Christ?
Through this sacrament, Christ the Lord, gloriously enthroned in heaven, is
drawing all people to Himself. If He is drawing us to Himself, then He is
drawing us to one another. St. Paul comments on this, "We, many though we are,
are one body, since we all partake of the one loaf" (1 Cor. 10:17). When we call
each other "brothers and sisters," we are not merely using a metaphor that dimly
reflects the unity between children of the same parents. The unity we have in
Christ is even stronger than the unity of blood brothers and sisters,
because we do have common blood: the blood of Christ! The result of the
Eucharist is that we become one, and this obliges us to be as concerned for each
other as we are for our own bodies.
Imagine a person who receives Communion, accepts the Host
when the priest says, "The Body of Christ," says "Amen," and then breaks off a
piece, hands it back, and says, "Except this piece, Father!" This is what the
person who rejects other people may as well do. In receiving Christ, we are to
receive the
whole Christ, in all his members, our brothers and sisters, whether
convenient or inconvenient, wanted or unwanted.
As St. John remarks, Christ was to die "to gather into one
all the scattered children of God." Sin scatters. Christ unites. The word
"diabolical" means "to split asunder." Christ came "to destroy the works of the
devil" (1Jn.3:8). The Eucharist builds up the human family in Christ who says,
"Come to me, feed on My Body, become My Body." Abortion, in a reverse dynamic,
says, "Go away! We have no room for you, no time for you, no desire for you, no
responsibility for you. Get out of our way!" Abortion attacks the unity of the
human family by splitting asunder the most fundamental relationship between any
two persons: mother and child. The Eucharist, as a Sacrament of Unity, reverses
the dynamic of abortion.
The Eucharist is the Sacrament of Life. "I am the Bread of
Life. He who eats this bread will live forever. I will raise Him up on the last
day." (See Jn.6:47-58) The Eucharistic sacrifice is the very action of Christ by
which He destroyed our death and restored our life. Whenever we gather for this
sacrifice we are celebrating the victory of life over death, and therefore over
abortion. The pro-life movement is not simply working "for" victory; we are
working "from" victory. As the Holy Father said in Denver in 1993, "Have no
fear. The outcome of the battle for life is already decided." Our work is to
apply the already established victory to every facet of our society. Celebrating
the Eucharist is the source and summit of such work.
The Eucharist is the Supreme act of Worship of God. Two
lessons each person needs to learn are, "1.There is a God. 2. It isn't me." The
Eucharist, as the perfect sacrifice, acknowledges that God is God, and that "it
is [His] right to receive the obedience of all creation." (Sacramentary, Preface
for Weekdays III). Abortion, on the contrary, proclaims that a mother's choice
is supreme. "Freedom of choice" is considered enough to justify even the
dismemberment of a baby. Choice divorced from truth is idolatry. It is the
opposite of true worship. It pretends the creature is God. Real freedom is found
only in submission to the truth and will of God. Real freedom is not the ability
to do whatever one pleases, but the power to do what is right.
The Eucharist is, finally, The Sacrament of Love. St. John
explains, "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for
us" (1Jn.3:16). Christ teaches, "Greater love than this no one has, than to lay
down his life for his friends" (Jn.15:13). The best symbol of love is not the
heart, but rather the crucifix.
Abortion is the exact opposite of love. Love says, "I
sacrifice myself for the good of the other person. Abortion says, "I sacrifice
the other person for the good of myself." In the Eucharist we see the meaning of
love and receive the power to live it. The very same words, furthermore, that
the Lord uses to teach us the meaning of love are also used by those who promote
abortion: "This is my body." These four little words are spoken from opposite
ends of the universe, with totally opposite results. Christ gives His body away
so others might live; abortion supporters cling to their own bodies so others
might die. Christ says "This is My Body given
up for you; This is My Blood shed for you."
These are the words of sacrifice; these are the words of love.
In Washington in 1994 Mother Teresa said that we fight
abortion by teaching the mother what love really means: "to be willing to give
until it hurts...So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to
love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect
the life of her child."
Gustave Thibon has said that the true God transforms violence
into suffering, while the false god transforms suffering into violence. The
woman tempted to have an abortion will transform her suffering into violence
unless she allows love to transform her, and make her willing to give herself
away. The Eucharist gives both the lesson and the power. Mom is to say "This is
my body, my blood, my
life, given up for you my child."
Everyone who wants to fight abortion needs to say the same.
We need to exercise the same generosity we ask the mothers to exercise. We need
to imitate the mysteries we celebrate. "Do this in memory of me" applies to all
of us in the sense that we are to lovingly suffer with Christ so others may
live. We are to be like lightning rods in the midst of this terrible storm of
violence and destruction, and say, "Yes, Lord, I am willing to absorb some of
this violence and transform it by love into personal suffering, so that others
may live."
Indeed, the Eucharist gives the pro-life movement its
marching orders. It also provides the source of its energy, which is love.
Indeed, if the pro-life movement is not a movement of love, then it is nothing
at all. But if it is a movement of love, then nothing will stop it, for "Love is
stronger than death, more powerful even than hell" (Song of Songs 8:6).
--Fr. Frank A. Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life
