Preaching on abortion, 12th Sunday, Year A, Pro-Life Leader Frank Pavone of Priests for Life

Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, reflects on the Sunday readings for the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A and their message about abortion.
For more information about what the Sunday readings, and the whole Bible, say about abortion, and for resources for your Church, see https://www.ProLifePreaching.org. You can order there the book “Proclaiming the Message of Life,” which contains these reflections for all the Sunday readings in the lectionary.

Jer 20:10-13
Rom 5:12-15
Mt 10:26-33

“All the hairs of your head are counted…you are worth more than many sparrows.” This assertion in today’s Gospel forms the basis for preaching on how much God values human life. It is not just “living things” that God values, because he created them. Rather, it is human beings – worth more than other living beings – who are privileged to have a particular relationship with God. This “capacity for God” marks out what we mean by the “sanctity” of human life. There is a relationship opened up for us with the Creator – a relationship of which lower forms of life are not capable. We can know him, praise him, receive a share in his divine nature, and one day see him face to face. We were made for him, as St. Augustine said, and our hearts are restless until we rest in him.

If a sparrow does not fall to the ground without the Father’s knowledge, what about a tiny unborn child killed “in secret” by chemical abortions (sometimes masquerading as birth control), or a new human embryo destroyed “in secret” in a laboratory in the name of “research?”

Part of acknowledging Jesus before others, then, is to bear witness to the care that he and the Father give to the smallest human lives, and the concern God has to preserve such life.