I was blessed recently to be on a pilgrimage with about 40 young Catholics and chaperones from the archdiocese. The destination was the March for Life in Washington, D.C. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade about a year and a half ago, but our youth understand that the fight to protect life, especially in Minnesota, is far from over.
The bus from the archdiocese left Minnesota Jan. 16. I kind of cheated and flew in Jan. 17, then enjoyed my first full day with the group Jan. 18. That day included visits to the Holocaust Museum, the Lincoln Memorial and the Martin Luther King Memorial. I was looking forward to all these visits, but it wasn’t until later that I realized they were intentionally chosen because of the consistent call to respect life. Each of these sites, along with the march on Jan. 19, focuses on the danger of treating any life as something less than human.
During the march and the events surrounding it, the focus was certainly on the unborn. Our day began with holy Mass at St. Mary, Mother of God in Washington. I was blessed to be the presider, and we probably had about nine other groups from around the country join us. The Gospel was Mark 3:13-19, the calling of the Apostles. That seemed providential. As I told the young people, in a similar way, Jesus has called all of them to be disciples. The readings from Mass tell us that Jesus “appointed twelve … that they might be with him and he might send them forth.” Notice that Jesus doesn’t just send us, he wants us to first spend time with him. Similarly, we first spent time with the Lord that day in holy Mass, then we went forth to bring Jesus to others.
In encouraging our young people to go out and be witnesses, I borrowed some ideas from the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen. In his book, “The Mystical Body of Christ,” Archbishop Sheen talks about how others have been against our Church for 2,000 years. In the early years, they used violence to try to defeat the Church. They crucified Jesus and killed the martyrs. But Jesus showed that violence doesn’t work against the Church, because just as he rose and lives forever, the Church will live forever. There was then a phase with a focus on ideas. There were plenty who disagreed with our creed, whether it was Jesus’ divinity or humanity, or the Trinity, or the Eucharist. Faced with the distorted ideas of her opponents, the Church showed the immortality of her ideas. Archbishop Sheen then said, quite prophetically, that today the world attacks us with its passion — a misguided passion that distorts morality and elevates personal choice to an ultimate value. When we are up against someone’s passion, the truths of the faith and natural law will only go so far. Sheen says our response must be love. The force of passion cannot withstand the counterattack of divine love. In short, I told our young people that as we defend the faith and defend life, yes, we have to speak the truth, but we must always do so with love, because the only thing that will satisfy is divine love.
In their desire to promote life, many of our young people made signs. Several included a famous quote from St. Teresa of Kolkata: “It is a poverty that a child must die, so that you may live as you wish.” Mother Teresa spoke that line in reference to the riches of our country, pointing out that we really aren’t all that rich if someone else must die for us to be happy.
Another one of St. Teresa’s famous references comes from the Gospel where Jesus tells us, “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do to me.” St. Teresa asks the question, “Who is the least?” Is it the poor and the marginalized right here in this archdiocese? Do we have to go to a third world country to really find the least? Or is it true that no one is “more” least than the unborn child, a child who depends on someone else 100% of the time for 100% of their needs? The young people from our archdiocese who made the trip last week know who the least are, and they know that how we treat them matters.
