Friday Fast: for women who have been pressured to abort
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Intention: For any woman who has been pressured to have an abortion – that she may know the Lord’s tender healing love.
Reflection: “I was pressured into the abortions by family members who told me that I was not emotionally stable and incapable of being able to care for a baby… I am in a state of total sadness and regret for what I have done. I want to cry but the tears will not come.”
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Although we may not always see the fruit, prayer and fasting are incredibly powerful ways that we can support women who are suffering. Let us pray that they may know the powerful love of God, who cares so deeply and tenderly for them and their children. Let us pray that they may know that they do not have to suffer alone.
Did you know? It’s normal to grieve a pregnancy loss, including the loss of a child by abortion. It can form a hole in one’s heart, a hole so deep that sometimes it seems nothing can fill the emptiness. Project Rachel is the Catholic Church’s healing ministry to those who have been involved in abortion. If you or someone you know is suffering after abortion, confidential non-judgmental help is available. Call Project Rachel’s national toll-free number, 888-456-HOPE (-4673), or visit HopeAfterAbortion.org or EsperanzaPosaborto.org.
More:
- Learn about the Bishops’ Call to Prayer for Life, Marriage, and Religious Liberty
- Sign the pledge to fast on Fridays for life, marriage, and religious liberty
- Join the Call to Prayer Facebook event
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Friday Fast: Pray and Fast for Abortion Supporters and Providers
Intention: For the conversion of all who support abortion, that Christ’s love may open their hearts to the truth and that, through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, they may experience the depths of God’s healing mercy and forgiveness.
(If you or someone you know is suffering after abortion, confidential help is available. Visit HopeAfterAbortion.org or EsperanzaPosaborto.org.)
Reflection: Although we may understand intellectually what abortion is, after 40 years since its legalization, we may start to become numb to its reality. However, the recent convictions of the Philadelphia abortion provider, Kermit Gosnell, for the killing of three babies who were born alive, manifested in yet another vivid way the horrific details of the abortion culture that confronts the Gospel of Life. These children remind us of the urgent necessity to promote and defend the sanctity of all human life.
We can do this by being witnesses of Christ’s love to all those who support abortion and by praying for their conversions. We must strive to imitate the absolute character of God’s longing and love for each of them, which can then evoke the conversion that each needs. Remembering the conversions of St. Paul and Mary Magdalene, which show us that with God all things are possible and that no one is beyond the reach of His mercy and forgiveness, let us pray for every heart to be opened, reconciled, and united with the Lord.
Did you know? In the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, today is a special day of prayer and penance in reparation for the crimes against the sacredness of human life, especially in the womb. It is also the World Day of Prayer for the Church in China. Join in prayerful solidarity with the faithful in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia as they unite their prayers and penances with the same intentions for the Church in China.
More:
- Learn about the Bishops’ Call to Prayer for Life, Marriage, and Religious Liberty
- Sign the pledge to fast on Fridays for life, marriage, and religious liberty
- Join the Call to Prayer Facebook event
Archive
Archbishop Lori: Life, Marriage and Religious Liberty (homily)
This past Sunday October 14, Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore gave the homily at a mass for Life and Liberty at the National Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. Archbishop Lori, the chairman of the USCCB Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, addressed an overflowing crowd with powerful words about the gift of life and the importance of religious liberty, our first freedom.
In his homily, the Archbishop made the connection between protecting life and defending marriage. Noting that since the passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973, “over 50 million unborn children have lost their lives through abortion,” he remarked, “Human life is further undermined by the dismantling of the most fundamental unit of society, the family, by seeking to upend marriage as a God-given institution that is unique for a reason, namely, as a relationship of love between one man and one woman.”
Archbishop Lori also drew connections between religious liberty and marriage. He spoke at length about a current severe threat to religious liberty, the so-called “contraceptive mandate” issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, which the Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty has fought tirelessly. He then said, “Indeed, many of the secularist threats to religious liberty seem to hinge on the Church’s teaching with regard to the sanctity of human life – whether it’s the Church’s teaching on the immorality of abortion, or the obligation of couples to be open to the gift of new life, or marriage as between one man and one woman, the unique relationship that begets new human life and is meant to be the matrix in which it is nurtured.”
For more on the connection between marriage and religious liberty, go to the Religious Liberty FAQs for more information.