Compassion and Hard Truth

Do take a few minutes to read a wonderful article that I found on the Priests for Life website. It is titled, “Love Them Both”, and has some very beautiful reflections about how it is so important to do our pro-life work with great compassion, especially for women who have had abortions. This article can be found here. It is awesome that Fr. Frank Pavone could write such a beautiful article on the importance of doing our pro-life works with great compassion and love for those who we are trying to help. Abortion is a hard truth, terribly hard, but at the same time it is so important for us in the pro-life movement to do deal with this hard truth with great compassion for those we try to help. Our work is all about helping people: preborn babies; their mothers, fathers, and families; those employed at abortion mills; etc. We’re reaching out to them with help, hope, and healing. It is always our efforts to reach out, to be tireless in reaching out. Often this reaching out involves suffering with those who have been hurt by the great tragedy of abortion, suffering with them as we seek to understand their pain and loss. And that is what the word compassion means: “to suffer with”. And again we may reach out by suffering with those who have been denied the truth and are struggling in confusion and darkness, suffering with them as we seek to understand their difficulty. So Fr. Frank has done well to write on this, and please take some time to read the article and make it a new challenge to use extreme compassion in your pro-life efforts. I learned the great importance of being compassionate in all my pro-life works; of always taking people seriously in their concerns and difficulties; and of constantly believing in people, believing that they can see the light and know the truth. Sometimes it’s surprising how people will react to such an attitude on my part: they’re pleasantly surprised that I am out there not to puff myself up or to give them a bad time, but to do my best to help them, to share with them the good news of the sanctity and dignity of human life. Perhaps they’ve been told things otherwise about pro-life activists. So many times, when people challenge or insult or question pro-life activists, whether it is personally, by mail, by phone, or indirectly, it’s because they want to know who we are. They want to know how we will respond to their concerns, want to know exactly why we’re out there, and want to know if we will respect and appreciate them even if they don’t stand with us, want to know if we really would help them and be there for them in a difficult situation. Let’s meet this challenge with the love of Christ which is the reason for our pro-life activism. God bless!