As we are currently in the season of advent waiting for Our Lord in preparation of His coming at Christmas and eventually His final return, let us take a moment out of our busy schedules and ponder Scripture and spiritual thoughts which challenge us to embrace the dignity and preciousness of all life.

1^st Day of Advent

“The Lord is coming; I will place myself in His presence and go to meet Him with all the energy of my will. “   ~Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen’s “Divine Intimacy”, page 3

Pro-Life Challenge:

In what way will I use more of my energies to promote the dignity of all human life?

  

2^nd Day of Advent

“FEAR NOT, for I am with you.  From the east I will bring back your descendants, from the west I will gather you.  I will say to the north:  Give them up! And to the south:  Hold not back!  Bring back my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth:  Everyone who is named as mine, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”    ~Isaiah: 43: 5-7
Pro-Life Challenge:

Each person is uniquely and wonderfully made in the image and likeness of God, and our heavenly Father wills that none of His children be lost. 

Do I pray every day that God will bring back those who work in the abortion industry, our legislators who fail to vote for the protection of life, and those who have had abortions? 

  

3rd Day of Advent

Man’s whole existence is a constant preparing to see God, who draws ever closer.   ~Francis Fernandez In Conversation with God Vol. 1 p. 5

Lord, make me know Your ways.  Lord, teach me Your paths.   Make me walk in Your truth, and teach me, for You are my God, my Savior. ~Responsorial Psalm, Cycle C, Ps. 24

Pro-Life Challenge:

God’s voice is often as soft as a breeze.  Do I listen when He calls me to work in defense of the least of our brothers and sisters? 

Do I use every opportunity to teach those in my family, my work community, and even my church about the dignity of every human life?

  

4th Day of Advent

According to His promise, we await new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.  ~2 Pt 3:13

Instead, there shall always be rejoicing and happiness in what I create, for I create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight.  I will rejoice in Jerusalem and exult in my people.  No longer shall the sound of weeping be heard there, or the sound of crying.  ~Isaiah 65: 18-19

Pro-Life Challenge:

How am I awaiting the new heaven and earth? 

Do I pray as if the answer to this evil depends on God, and act as if it depends on me?  Or am I waiting for God to miraculously stop the attacks on human life?

  

5th Day of Advent

“Servitude to the world and to our spiritually selfish will is deadly, we must flee from it.  It keeps us from being free servants of God.  It makes us want to serve God in our own way rather than God’s, which is not right and makes our service mercenary.  I tell you the, we must follow this way and teaching that He has given us.  God wants to do everything by intermediaries.  We see clearly that we were not created by ourselves but that God Himself made His charity an intermediary.  By means of His pure love, He created us in His image and likeness so that we might share in and enjoy the eternal sight of Him.  But we lost this through the selfish love and sin of our first father.  So to give us back what we had lost, God gave us His Son as intermediary, and this mediator took on the blows in our place – since the war between us and God had been so great that there was no other way this peace could have been made.  Why?  Because the infinite God had been offended, and finite humankind who had sinned could never, by any suffering they might have borne, have made satisfaction to the clear infinite God.  So the blazing depths of God’s charity found a way to make this peace.   ~Saint Catherine of Siena

Pro-Life Challenge:

Jesus told us we cannot serve two masters.  Am I a servant of God or a servant of the world?

Which one would the people who know me say that I serve?

 

6th Day of Advent

“As Jesus passed two blind men followed Jesus crying out, “Son of David, have pity on us!”  When he entered the house, the blind men approached him and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I can do this?”  “Yes, Lord,” they said to him.  Then he touched their eyes and said, “Let it be done for you according to your faith.”  And their eyes were opened.  Jesus warned them sternly, “See that no one knows about this.”    But they went out and spread word of him through all that land.”

“If we live our life with our eyes fixed on God, we need fear nothing:  ‘Faith, if it is strong, protects the whole house.’ (St. Ambrose, Commentary on the Psalms, 18, 12, 13) 

With faith, we can achieve results far in excess of our own scanty powers; literally nothing will be impossible.   ‘Christ lays down one condition:  we must live by faith; then will be able to move mountains.  And so many things need moving in the world, but first of all in our own hearts. ‘ “ (St. Jose Marie Escriva)

                                                    In Conversation with God by Francis Fernandez volume 1, p.42
 

Pro-Life Challenge:

How strong is my faith in God’s ability to transform our culture of death into a culture of life?  What do I fear in my work, and how does that fear keep me from doing what God wants me to do for Him?  Do I pray daily for an increase in faith?  Do I make time to sit before the Blessed Sacrament and pray for greater faith?