Excerpt from Fr. Frank’s Homily at EWTN

September 27, 2001

I woke up this morning and said to myself, "This homily is going to be a little bit different." I want to try to say some things that maybe I haven’t said before, or maybe I haven’t said as clearly as I wanted to. Brothers and sisters, I want to say it to you this morning.

We are living in a time when time is running out. We are living in a time now, you know, where a lot of people are saying what was said in the first reading: "Now is not the time to rebuild the house of the Lord." Whether it’s rebuilding the house of the Lord, or anything else, it’s always the time to do what is right. It’s always the time to confront injustice. And I am going to make a plea today.

As you know, if you listen to this network, you hear it all the time, if you listen to me, you hear it all the time, if you listen to so many others throughout the world, including our Holy Father, you hear it all the time: that the issue of our day is the sanctity of life. And we’re in a war, and this war goes to the core of our faith. There is a division here, between those that are going to absolutely defend the sanctity of life, and those who are not. And there is no middle ground. And like Elijah, Jesus says and the Church says, you can’t hold two opinions. You’re one or the other; you’re for or against.

Now, I want to say to you today that it is time for people to leave their professions, it is time for students to leave their universities, it is time for people to band together and to dedicate themselves on a full time basis to ending the disaster that continues in our nation, in our world, day after day -- the slaughter of innocent children. It's time to dedicate ourselves full time to ending this.

I don’t know about you, but I have heard absolutely enough of people all around the country complaining, and they complain to me (and I don’t mind them complaining to me, because it’s part of my job), and they say, "My Priest never preaches about abortion. I have gone to this Catholic Church for so long and I have never hear a sermon about abortion." And I want to ask today again, why not? What’s the problem? If the Lord is God, serve Him, if He is not, don’t pretend to -- but proclaim justice.

I have had it up to here listening to and watching the reality across our country that people on the one hand will say, "This is the most important issue" and on the other hand, where are the people to do the work? Where is the money to fund the pro-life projects? I can't tell you how many pro-life organizations and offices throughout the country complain to me, "Oh, we don’t have the money to do a project."

One respect life office told another pro-life organization recently, when they called them to say they were working on a specific problem they had in their city with abortion, and they were told – "You're on your own – we don’t have enough staff, we don’t have enough funding."

I feel like Elijah saying, why are we straddling the fence, what’s the problem here? We have got to band together here. I am calling on everyone, right now, within the sound of my voice, If you feel within your heart the call to devote yourself, on a full time basis to ending the tragedy of abortion, you contact me. Because we are building an army here. Many groups -- it's not just me or Priests for Life -- many groups are joining together right now in an unprecedented way to say, "What we have been doing all along hasn’t been enough." Thanks be to God for what has been done so far, by so many people. But it is still not enough because today another 4,000 are going to be slaughtered. It is still not enough, we obviously haven’t reached the goal. And we can wait, brothers and sisters, we can’t say, like the people of Haggai’s time, "Oh it's not the time now, we’ve got other things to do, other concerns to address." We don’t address this one, and the whole structure collapses; this is the foundation. We don’t address this one, we're not the church. We don’t address this, we're not proclaiming the Gospel; we don’t address this, we're not being faithful to Jesus Christ.

And it's time now; we can't go on with life, business as usual. We cannot go on now with life business as usual. John the Baptist didn’t – he gave his whole life, he said, I am going out and I am proclaiming, I am going to go out into the desert and I am going to commune with God and I am going to go out and preach morning to night. Elijah -- he didn’t go about other tasks; he said "now is the time to stop straddling the fence."

So I am calling on you brothers and sisters, I am calling on you to join a great army. There are people who are leaving their professions, their businesses, their law practice, their medical practice, their schooling, so that they can devote their time and their talents to crafting a response.

You know that the pro-abortion organizations in our country have hundreds of full time professionals with doctorates and all kinds of expertise, in marketing and in all kinds of other things. They're using their lives, they are pouring out their lives morning to night to make sure that the slaughter continues. Where are we?

We have to give ourselves completely to this task. Don’t worry about how am I going to make my livelihood, how am I going to raise my support. We’re going to do it, we're going to do it together. We're going to raise up an army – we are raising up an army, there are people that are going to band together, there are going to be people that are going to support you, we're going to work together, and we're going to see an end to this slaughter in our lifetime. We are committed to that. I want you to be confident of that. We're going to see an end to this in our lifetime.

"He was very curious to see Him," the Gospel said.  Let us see Jesus and let us proclaim him, let us proclaim him in a special way -- and you’ll hear more about this on the network (EWTN) but in October there is the International Week of Prayer and Fasting to end abortion, the first full week of October. That’s one thing you can participate in more than ever before, wherever you are, whether you go to the special gatherings in Washington, or right from your home, a week of prayer dedicated to the sanctity of life, and hopefully by that week of prayer you’ll be spurred into more action than ever before. Like Elijah, like John the Baptist, let us no longer be silent, let us no longer straddle the fence, let us show to the world, who Jesus is, the Lord of Life, the King of Salvation.