All Souls' Day

Yesterday, we collectively asked the communion of saints to pray for us. Today, on the feast of All Souls' Day, we pray as a community (and personally, of course) for our loved ones who have died and for all who are in purgatory. Along these lines, I've been thinking about my role in my clients' lives. Certainly my job is to help them to see that their babies dying by abortion is not a good solution or really a solution at all. In this, I try very hard, working to save lives. But what about souls? Aren't we called to help one another get to heaven? If so, how do we do that? Over the years, I have come to think that it isn't really enough to work to save lives in the work I do. More importantly, I must work to save souls.

One thing people say against our pregnancy center work is that, once the baby is born, he or she is going to live in abject poverty (generally true with our clients), probably be abused and not amount to anything, so it's much kinder to abort him or her. There is no room for hope in this statement and I vehemently take umbrage with that kind of thinking. All human life is sacred. I don't think we have the right to decide at any stage of life when a life should be over.

I read a piece of research once which concluded that, if a child from a negative environment had just one adult take an interest in him or her for a short time (i.e. a school year or even a period of a few months), it would mean the difference between a positive and negative outcome for that child's life. Now, I can't remember all the details (like how a positive or negative outcome was defined) but it has always given me hope for our clients and their children. Maybe we at the life care center are the ones who will be the instigators of the positive outcome in this way!

Every life is precious to God and, as a Christian, I think it's our duty to uphold the value of each one of us, as He would have us do.