Even if a mother could forget

Homily

8th Sunday of Ordinary Time

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

27 February 2011

Daily Readings

Even if a mother could forget, and be without tenderness for the child in her womb, I will never forget you. Please allow me to use these words from Isaiah, who was worried that He had been forgotten by God, to talk about abortion. Let me preface the remarks by saying that if you have had an abortion, or if you have been involved in an abortion as a father or as a family member or as a friend, that God has not abandoned you. He will never forget you, and His love for you is as strong today as ever. So if you have been injured by abortion, do not be afraid to come to confession if you haven't already, for the Lord's mercy awaits you there, and God will forgive you and make you whole again if you allow him to do so. I make remarks on abortion never to the shame of those who has been hurt by abortion, but so that no one may be afraid of God's mercy, so that many can be healed, and so that many people might be able to choose life today and tomorrow, and to choose it in the abundance that Christ offers it to us his disciples.

Some of you have been touched by abortion, but many others of you have not. Most of us, however, are personally involved in a culture that is promiscuous and contraceptive, and few of us are more than a few steps away in our personal lives from some kind of mistake, from perhaps being faced with an unplanned pregnancy, and the ensuing temptation to choose abortion. What is more, the reality is that only by fortunate circumstances are we here to worship God together today, for our right to life was protected at its beginning, not by law, but by our own mothers and families. So even if we are not sexually active ourselves, or involved in contraception, or have never been involved in an abortion, still we are survivors in a generation where abortion is legal. None of us can say that we have not been personally touched by abortion. When it is possible by law for a mother to forget the infant in her womb, society is deeply damaged, and each one of us personally as well.

In this homily, I will not talk of the struggle to restore legal protection to the unborn child, but of the virtue of chastity. This is a virtue that we all need, and need in abundance, a virtue that frees a human person in a unique way to live without the fear and anxiety that Jesus talks about in today's Gospel. It is because this virtue of chastity is so lacking in our culture, that reasonable people who have already been born think they must have the right to an abortion. It is because chastity is so underdeveloped as a virtue, that abortion will continue to be the defining civil rights issue of our generation. It is a battle that we cannot pass on to another generation to fix. It is our personal battle, and it is a battle that must be won today, beginning not only in congresses and coursts, but more fundamentally in the hearts and minds of those who know it is possible to live and to love in the most perfect and sacrificial and beautiful way.

I would like each one of us tonight, to recommit ourselves to cultivating that virtue of chastity in our lives, regardless of how pure or impure we are, regardless of what our habits or experiences are that we bring to Mass tonight. Let's all look back in our lives, to the innocence of our youth, to the time when we knew that we could and would love people in a most beautiful way, and together look forward to the end of our lives, forward to the day, pray God, of our own wedding, and recommit ourselves to what we want our lives to say and mean. Let's recommit ourselves to the virtue of chastity, no matter how difficult the re-conversion might be for us, so that we might restore the opportunity in our lives to make another person holy by the way that we love them.

Chastity at its minimum means training ourselves to habitually avoid the temptation to have sex outside of marriage, so that if we are called to marriage someday, a sacrament that is becoming less and less a possibility for many Catholics, we can hear and answer that call, and have a chance of meeting someone who can also make a sincere gift of themselves to us in return. Chastity at its minimum means training ourselves to learn from our mistakes and to not put ourselves in situation where we know we will fail. It is also a refusal to settle for mediocrity, to allow temptation to dominate our lives, but to continue despite failures to pick ourselves up and to learn from our mistakes and to try harder.

There are those however, in the culture around us, and the evil one who speaks inside of us, who will tell us that such a struggle for chastity is in vain. We might even be ridiculed for trying by certain friends, and the evil one can easily get us to hate ourselves for the things we have already done more than the sin we are trying to avoid, and many of our efforts to become chaste can seem rather futile. Chastity is not an easy virtue to cultivate, and so many give up and take the path of least resistance. Yet we give up to our own peril, if we settle for a diminished view of sexuality and of ourselves.

Chastity, if it is a real possibility for us, must be a virtue that we choose to train ourselves in, a virtue which requires effort on our part, but more importantly, chastity is a goodness, a habit, a virtue, that is ultimately spiritual. In this chastity is not only a goal to be achieved through our own efforts, it is something for which we are chosen. It is ultimately possible mostly because God right now wants to share with us his perfect chastity, the gift of his love, a divine love that defines the inner Trinitarian heart of God. He wants to share this perfection with us because He is deeply in love with us, his children. Even if a mother could forget, God will not forget us, and He will never stop wanting to pour his divine perfections, and his perfect chaste love, into the hearts of those who wish to receive it. Jesus when talking about our mission in life, to not merely be chaste but to participate in His mission of redeeming love, told those first disciples that it is not we that choose Him, but He who first chooses us, and appoints us to go out into the world, and to bear fruit that will remain. His great commandment to us is similar, love one another as I have first loved you.

Chastity at its most beautiful then, is much more than our choosing to be chaste even when we don't want to because we're afraid of what will happen if we aren't chaste. It is this, yes, but it is much more. Being chaste is a being chosen by God to first receive but then to give the very love through which the world was first created, and by which it is redeemed and made new again from the inside out. Our pure desire to build the virtue of chastity in our own lives reveals a great understanding on our part that we have an incomparable dignity as children of God, and our lives have meaning because we have been chosen to make the world holy again by the way that we love people. Chastity at its highest is being an instrument of the divine love that recreates the world in a more powerful way than any other economic, political or physical force.

When our Lord tells us not to be anxious in the Sermon on the Mount, and not to be worried about food or clothing, He is not telling us all to become Trappist monks, and to flee the world. No, He asks us to help him heal the world of its anxiety, by seeking first the Kingdom of God, and by teaching the world that God Himself through His Son takes away the ultimate anxiety that all of us have in wanting to be noticed and to be loved from the inside out. He asks us to welcome Him, and the workings of his divine love, into every aspect of our lives, especially those areas of our lives where we feel the most insecure. He asks us that if we feel insecure enough to have given up on the virtue of chastity, to not be afraid of His love, and to try inviting Him to share His perfections with us in the most intimate and personal areas of our lives.

As we are fed by the perfect love of Jesus made present, let us be saved from every mediocrity and discouragement in our battle to be chaste, and in our desire to free the world from the evils of our generation. As we allow God to make us Holy by pouring his love into our hearts tonight, let us see clearly how we are part of the solution in making the world holy once again, by the way that we love one another. Let us not be afraid to be chaste lovers, and to heal the world around us of its anxiety, as we seek first in our lives the Kingdom of God.