- Appendix 1 NONVIOLENCE AND THE IMAGE OF BLOOD
[excerpt from Emmanuel, Solidarity: God's Act, Our Response, by John Cavanaugh-O'Keefe]
Nonviolence
is most interesting and valuable and valid in situations where it is the
alternative to an endless cycle of violence. Like war, a campaign of
nonviolence can be a bloody business at times, not because the practitioners
spill blood, but because they are needed amidst bloodshed, and often because
theirs is spilled.
In
Poland and in the Philippines, there was bloodshed. It may have been limited,
but it was crucial to the final outcome. The Filipino Revolution was sparked by
the unjust killing—the martyrdom—of many people, including especially Benigno
Aquino. And in Poland, Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko’s martyrdom lit a fire that could
not be quenched.
Shifting words and images
Grasping
the meaning of bloodshed can be almost impossible in our time, when the image
of blood is completely negative. The response of modern man to blood is not the
same response that others have had throughout history.
In
the cultural struggle of our time, many words are used by pro-lifers and
pro-abortionists as if they meant the same thing to both sides. But the words
often have very different or even opposite meanings. When we say “love,” we
mean the willingness to do good for the beloved; they mean sex. When we say
“faith,” we are referring to a decision to respond to God’s revelation; they
mean self-confidence. When we say “hope,” we mean an assurance about things to
be revealed in eternity; they mean “I kinda wish.” When we say “freedom,” we
mean that our lives can match our aspirations; they mean having a variety of
choices. Obviously, we differ about the meaning of “human” and “family.”
We
also differ in our understanding of the images that we use. St. Paul said that
the cross was foolishness to the Greeks, but wisdom for us. It isn’t surprising
that people react very differently to the cross; that’s a difficult image, full
of paradoxes. But today, people have vastly different attitudes towards simple
images like water.
Throughout
most of the history of Western literature, water was a symbol of rebirth. In
the Odyssey, Odysseus wanders for 20
years on the sea, and then returns to—is reborn—in Ithaca. The Israelites left
slavery behind when they crossed over the Red Sea. They came into a new life
when they crossed over the River Jordan. Jonah emerged from the belly of a
whale repentant and ready to preach. In the waters of baptism, we are reborn.
In Shakespeare’s plays, in The Tempest,
a life of injustice and treachery is drowned and a brave new world emerges from
the water. In King Lear, Lear crosses
over from delusion to truth when he is completely drenched during a storm on
the blasted heath. For most of our history, the image of water has been
associated with new life or rebirth.
Today,
though, water has connotations of death. When you see a movie or a play, and
somebody falls into the water or drives off a pier, you do not expect them to
emerge changed; you expect them to drown. “Go take long walk off a short pier”
means “Drop dead,” not “Be renewed.” Our cultural attitude toward the symbol of
water has changed, from life to death. Virginia Woolf and others have taught us
to fear drowning.
There
is a fascinating poem by one of the Romantic poets of the early 19th century
which has a transitional image of water. In that poem, someone drowned in a
baptismal font. In that poem, the symbol of life becomes a symbol of death. At
that time, the symbol was still shocking.
The
same thing has happened with our attitude toward blood. Most people today think
of blood simply as bad news, as death. But that is not the connotation that
blood has carried in the past. For much of history, blood has been a symbol of
life. To grasp that requires a mental struggle, but the struggle is worthwhile.
The
ancient attitude toward blood can be glimpsed in primitive societies, for
example in the legendary hunter who shoots a deer with his bow and arrow and
then looks the dying animal in the eye and thanks it for the gift of life for
his family. The deer’s blood was bad news for the deer but good news for the
family. Or in another primitive society, boys who have been reading Tom Sawyer
might make a commitment to each other to be blood-brothers, by cutting their
wrists a little bit and sharing their blood. (Mark Twain wasn’t worried about
AIDS.) Before you dismiss the practice as gross and as extremely dangerous,
note that the idea is not to die together, but to share life together, even in
the face of deadly threats. The blood is a symbol of life.
The
blood of the Lamb of God is at least that significant. Jesus has chosen to be a
blood brother. He will be at least as faithful as a drunken frat brother.
In
the novel The Cypresses Believe in God,
the great Spanish novelist José Maria Gironella wrote about a young man giving
blood at a hospital for someone who needed a transfusion. He gave his healthy
blood to save life. The idea of a transfusion may be the closest we can get to
the ancient attitude toward blood as a symbol of life, not death.
The
blood of Jesus is like a healthy transfusion. The blood of the Lord Jesus is
supposed to pump in our veins.
On
Valentine’s Day, we exchange cute pictures of hearts. The little cutouts do not
have anything left of the old symbol. St. Valentine was a martyr who used the
powerful muscle as a symbol of love. I got a glimpse of what he meant when I
was in high school. I worked in a lab synthesizing drugs. One summer, I helped
with the drug trials, injecting mice and then seeing where the drug showed up.
I killed hundreds of mice with a little guillotine, and then cut out their
hearts. Believe me, a beating heart, even from a tiny mouse, is an impressive
item. For several minutes after the heart was cut out, it beat and beat and
beat. It was very impressive. And a human heart is much bigger.
Valentine’s
symbol was a gross, graphic effort to use an image of something of immense
power, as great as the power of death. In fact, Valentine the martyr knew that
the blood of Jesus was a power far greater than death.
The
word blessed refers etymologically to
blood. It means “sprinkled with blood.” The very ground, the dirt, of the
Colosseum, has been prized for centuries by people who remember that Christian
martyrs poured out their blood there. The ground was blessed, sprinkled with
blood. Today, perhaps the barbed wire at Auschwitz is a similar symbol: the
blood shed there inspires us more than the brutality inflicted there frightens
us. We identify with the victim of evil, not the perpetrators of the evil.
During
a rescue in 1977, pro-lifers saw blood on the liner of a trash can in Milan Vuitch’s
abortion mill at 1712 I Street, just a few blocks from the White House. The
blood reminded us that we stood on holy ground, desecrated by slaughter but
consecrated by innocent blood.
In
Deuteronomy, the Lord says: “I set before you life and death; choose life that
you and your children may live.” Pro-lifers today can choose violence or
nonviolence. Whichever way, there will be blood.
The Tobit Project: From Image to Reality
“Father, one of our nation
has just been been murdered; he has been strangled and then thrown down in the
market place; he is still there.” I sprang up at once, left my meal untouched,
took the man from the market place and laid him in one of my rooms, waiting
until sunset to bury him (Tobit 2:3-4)
Rescues
and nonviolence don’t make sense to people who want to belong to a safe pro-life
club and do safe clubby things. They make better sense when you put them in the
context of reality, amidst the massive bloodshed and death of our age. If we
are going to risk bloodshed, we need clarity about the plight of children. The
Tobit Project provided a glimpse of what happens to our children.
In
August 1986, I was with a friend going through the dumpster of an abortionist
looking for financial records when we found four small mesh bags of tissue in
the trash. The tissue resembled rice pudding, with a few spots of blood. We
examined the tissue for some minutes, suspecting that we had found tiny bodies.
When we were unable to recognize any part, we concluded that the bodies had
probably been disposed of elsewhere, and that we were looking at placental
material or something, and we threw it all away.
Over
the next few days, the two of us discussed our find repeatedly, and I consulted
Dr. Bill Colliton, a pro-life obstetrician/ gynecologist, about the tissue.
Colliton suggested a couple of other possibilities, but the more we thought
about it, the more worried we became.
On
August 19, I returned to the dumpster with another friend, and picked up some
more trash, looking for bodies. Again, we found mesh bags of tissue. This time,
the tissue was bloodier. Again, I poked through the messes, looking for fingers
or toes, but found nothing. I saw what looked like tiny pieces of liver in each
bag, but was just guessing.
In
those early days, we were very clinical: “Is this the liver, or a clot of
blood?” Our emotions surfaced later.
At
the house where I was poking through the trash, friends came down to chat, and
were interested in ghoulish possibilities, but the investigation was
time-consuming and mostly boring. Four of the eight apparent corpses were
freshly killed, but four were from August 16 (I think), and they stank
fiercely. Keith Rothfus stayed with us, praying quietly for us, for which I am
immensely grateful. But the other two went back upstairs to watch TV, which was
perhaps a healthy reaction. You cannot let this stuff take over your life.
I
did not throw these specimens out; I was pretty sure they were corpses. I took
them home, wrapped them, and put them in the freezer. I did not tell my wife
about it, and was a little nervous every time we needed something from the
freezer.
Over
the next week, I spent some time trying to get them to Bill Colliton. My
schedule was full and so was his, and transportation was a hassle. At one
point, I put the corpses in an insulated jug, with a couple of cans of frozen
orange juice to keep them cold, and took them downtown to give them to a friend
who was planning to drive out to see Colliton. But that did not work out.
We
called another physician, Bill Hogan, who had taken some of the early bloody
photos which were used in Jack Willke’s Handbook
on Abortion. Hogan said that suction abortion before ten weeks would be
likely to smash everything beyond recognition. He said we might find bone
slivers in the remains of older children, or might be able to pick out liver
tissue. He said he would be glad to look at what we had, but did not expect
that he would be able to tell us much that we did not already know. Instead, he
gave us the name of a pathologist who could examine the remains with a
microscope.
We
called the pathologist, Mike Dolan, who confirmed what Hogan had said. But he
was discouraging about recognizing anything by the naked eye. Even what
appeared to be liver tissue might be just blood clots; only examination under a
microscope would tell us for sure.
I
should emphasize that the doubts expressed by Colliton, Hogan and Dolan were
not about whether the tissue was in fact fetal remains, but about whether they
could identify it positively, and testify in court as expert witnesses that
they had seen smashed bodies. After discussing the circumstances of the
remains—eight mesh bags from an abortion clinic, each with a spot of blood that
resembled liver—none of them had any real doubt that we had eight corpses
there.
Dolan
was about to leave town for ten days. He told me how to preserve specimens in
the future, and said that he would be willing to examine them for me when he
returned.
I
decided to dispose of these eight, and get fresh specimens for Dolan when he
came back to town. So I carried my yellow jug with eight corpses and two cans
of orange juice home, and put the corpses back in the freezer. Then I waited
for an opportunity to bury them quietly.
I
was determined not to let my wife know what was going on. Her life with me is
weird enough without corpses in the freezer. So I wanted to dig the graves
discreetly. But what with scheduling problems and rain and whatnot, time
passed, and the corpses never made it into the ground. Then a new problem
arose: I started going a little bonkers.
For
one thing, where was I going to put the corpses? In the orchard, the meadow, or
the woods? In the woods, I could mark them, without any fear of being asked for
explanations any time soon. Should I mark them, or just get them into the soil
like dead mice? In the orchard, I could remember where they were without
marking the graves. But if these eight are just the beginning, I may need the
space in the meadow. Mass grave, or eight separate graves? I wasn’t worried
about the depth; the soil here gets rocky a ways down, and regardless of good
intentions at the outset, I would not dig much past the rocky level.
The
big problem, though, was that I had no reason to doubt that more corpses were
being dumped. Each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, another half a dozen or so
children are killed there. I could call a press conference and display the
corpses, and make life hard for the abortionist for a few days. But then he
would continue as before, except that now he would flush the bodies down the
toilet. The more I thought—to be more accurate about it at this stage,
“stewed”—about it, the more I thought (stewed) I should try to keep retrieving
the bodies. The public relations angle was interesting, but not very
interesting, especially since the poor bodies are mangled beyond recognition.
Until there was an exposé, the bodies would keep landing in the dumpster, three
times a week.
Slowly,
the recognition dawned on me that I knew where and when bodies were being
dumped, regularly, as in Argentina under the junta or in Cambodia under Pol
Pot.
I
left bodies rotting in that dumpster in Bethesda. I had to admit that I did not
have the inner strength to go get them. (I didn’t have time, either; but even
if I had, I would have let ‘em rot.) Until I knew where they are going, I was
not going to consider getting any more.
I
kept going back in my mind to that scene in Gaithersburg, with Keith helping us
pray, but two good, sane, pro-life friends deciding to watch TV. What has
happened to us that we can watch TV as bodies are unwrapped in the basement?
Poor naked little bastards.
I
had never felt so keenly that abortion has three sets of victims: children who
are killed, women who are exploited, and all the members of the surrounding
community—who are offered a powerful lesson in impotence and apathy and
despair.
As
time passed, we became extremely angry. Our anger was not at the parents, nor
even at the abortionists whose work we uncovered. We became enraged at the
cold, callous society that allowed such things to take place in broad daylight.
We fantasized about going into the offices of lukewarm clerics and piling
bodies on their desks. We felt the urgency expressed so well by Archbishop
Weakland in the bishops’ pastoral on economics, that “the greatest injustice”
is to treat a person as a nonperson, to act as if they simply are not there.
Over
time, the horror weighed us down. There was one body in particular that broke
my heart. I found a body bag, a small mesh bag that fits over the intake of a
suction bottle to catch the pieces as the machine sucks the child out. In the
bag, there was a pile of mush, with a hand sticking up. I picked up the hand
and lifted it out slowly. The arm came out, then the rib cage, then a torn
abdomen and the legs. I had the whole body except the head and one arm. This
was in a mesh bag from a suction abortion, and at first I could not understand
how the body had gotten through the tube. Slowly, I understood that what must
have happened was the hand got caught by the suction first and was pulled into
the cannula. The arm followed. When the shoulder hit the mouth of the cannula,
the body was stuck until the cannula cut through the chest and ripped off the
head and one arm; the body went through a little more. The hips did not fit
until they were crushed in. Then the legs went flapping through. That body
broke my heart.
I
had looked through gore for fingers and toes, had learned not from a textbook
but from observation that all eyes are blue before birth, had admired the
beauty—the stunning beauty like the glory of the earth as seen from outer
space—of skulls, with lacy plates forming. I have never heard anyone before or
since talk about the beauty of the skulls of babies. They are so fine, so
delicate in appearance although they are quite resilient, so clearly the
objects of loving attention by a great creator. But for some reason, nothing
moved me as much as this body.
In
the dumpsters, I cried out to God in agony. I saw the unchecked power of death.
In the face of these dead babies, who could speak of sweetness and light? All
hope and all joy seemed to be extinguished; it seemed that only the blind and
ignorant could maintain hope.
An
image of God’s love came to mind. In the U.S. Capitol, off the rotunda, there
is a room full of statues of American heroes, one from each state. One of them
is Fr. Junipero Serra, the Franciscan missionary who worked all along the coast
of California, holding up a large cross, about two feet high. This symbol of
missionary work is by no means unique to the Franciscan saint, but it is a
gesture I had never understood well. I had never been able to imagine what you
would say while holding up a cross like that. That audiovisual aid did not
correspond to any thought that I had ever wanted to communicate.
I
had seen someone hold up a cross that way once before. At the close of an
all-night vigil outside an abortion clinic in Kensington, Maryland, during our
dawn prayer service, a man from a Catholic Worker house suddenly held up a
small cross, as if he were warding off vampires. I was intensely embarrassed. I
could not imagine what might be going through his mind. It is not that I was
unmindful of the significance of the death of Jesus, but I felt that crosses
belonged on the wall. The gesture seemed bizarre.
But
in the dumpsters of Washington, I came to understand why one might use it, what
one might want to communicate that would be helped by a cross held aloft. It is
a statement of God’s love.
I
came to a new appreciation of Jesus as savior. The words of the prophet
Zephaniah moved me deeply. Zephaniah said, “You have no more evil to fear.” How
true, I thought, but at what price?
Zephaniah
said, “Do not let your hands fall limp.” We frequently found hands and feet
with fingers or toes sliced off, and sometimes we would hunt through the gore
trying to find the missing digits, while these words echoed in my mind, as a
plea for life.
Zephaniah
said, “He will exult over you, and renew you by His love.” O God, I prayed, is
that true? Jesus Christ, Lord of the universe, where are the toes? Is it true?
You will “renew” and “exult”? Who can imagine exultation? Zephaniah said, “He
will dance over you, as on a day of festival.” I thought, How can I believe
that before I see it? Dance? With what opiate?
The
world is full of saviors. In Harvard Square in the 1960 and ‘70s, there were
lots of them—Guru Maharaji, Kahlil Gibran, Meher Baba, the Church of
Scientology—lots of them, all selling sweetness and light. I’m in favor of
sweetness and light. But the question that matters about it is, can you get
there from here? Or is like the old Yankee gag about getting directions to
someplace over the hill: “Let me think. You could go that way . . . Nope. Or
you could try this way . . . Nope. Come to think of it, you can’t get there
from here.”
In
the dumpsters, sweetness and light is an attractive offer.
But
the overwhelming reality of death snuffs out shallow hopes and dreams, crushing
them contemptuously.
In
the dumpsters, the difference between Jesus and all the other purported saviors
stands out. The first thing you hear about Jesus is the story of His
crucifixion. In the dumpsters, when your heart cries out in pain, the first
thing that Jesus says is, “I am with you.” If he wants to go on to talk about
sweetness and light, he can do so credibly—because he begins by saying,
unmistakably, “I am with you.” In the dumpsters, the blandishments of other saviors
do not mean anything. How can you believe them? They offer an alternative to
pain, but once you have slipped into the abyss, alternatives are irrelevant;
you need a way out. Jesus doesn’t offer a lot of philosophy about pain. Or if
he does, that is not the way he begins to teach. He starts by saying,
unmistakably, from the cross, “I am with you.”
When
I cried out in pain, broken and crushed, he did not explain it or drug it or
ask me to look at flowers. He said, “I am with you.” Because he knew the pain,
understood the question that was deeper than a verbal question, understood the
question that agony does not pose but is, his response could be credible. He
said, and I heard, “I am with you.”
Because
he had been broken like the children whose bodies I was recovering from the
trash, he had credibility. When he spoke of peace, his peace was stronger than
death, not a dishonest pretense that death no have power.
I
heard him and I clung to him and he saved me from despair. I know he lives, and
I know he is Lord, because I saw his power over death. I know I cannot explain
that adequately; but I know what I saw. I saw the power of death, and I saw the
power of his love beyond death.
Because
he was broken as the dumpster babies were broken, and because he was killed as
they were killed, he and he alone has credibility when he talks about sweetness
and light, about a resurrection. If he says he will renew you and dance over
you, it is credible. He bought the right to speak to people in agony. He paid
for the ability to comfort the broken-hearted.
Perhaps
that was what Fr. Junipero was saying when he held up that cross in California.
Pain
or no, we were collecting more and more bodies. By early 1987, eight of us were
engaged in the task of retrieving bodies from five abortion clinics in the
Washington area. At the Hillcrest abortion clinics, we found bodies that would
fill your hand, bodies of children around 20 weeks old. The task of retrieving
the bodies was draining, physically and emotionally—and I opted out as often as
I could. With hundreds of bodies accumulating, we had to think through the
proper way to bury them. How should the remains of the bodies from a holocaust
be buried? A few pro-lifers launched a project—the Tobit Project—to find
churches and organizations who would help with proper burials.
But
in Los Angeles, St. Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis, Washington and elsewhere, pro-lifers
who were retrieving bodies had to re-invent the wheel. Specifically, we had to
insist that human bodies—arms, legs, eyeballs, and other body parts, whether
attached or scattered—should be buried respectfully. That does not sound
particularly complicated or controversial, but we do not live in normal times.
Should
the children be buried in haste, secretly, as had happened in at least two
cities? What is the point of the burial, anyway?
A
funeral serves a variety of purposes. It is an expression of love for the
deceased person. It offers support to the family. It heals the community. The
ritual provides balance and continuity. Among Christians, a funeral is a
proclamation of the resurrection.
For
Catholics, a funeral is a time to pray for the dead. Some Christians hold the
view that prayer for the dead is a waste; final exams have arrived, and you
pass or fail, and then it is over. This argument aside, all people believe that
remembering the dead and mourning them is good and necessary.
But
after an abortion, this aspect of a funeral is altered, since we never met the
preborn children whom we bury. In fact, pro-abortion philosophers deny the
personhood of preborn children for precisely this reason; nobody has any fond
memories of their foibles. Still, the outlines of a moving story are known:
nameless and voiceless and powerless, they were rejected and killed.
Funerals
are supposed to be a service to the families of the deceased. But for victims
of abortion, that is a little complicated. You cannot invite the family of the
deceased to the burial. They probably don’t want to hear that the “procedure”
at the abortion clinic produced a body. They are likely to be enraged to learn
that their names are available to pro-lifers, who have been portrayed
(dishonestly, of course, but repeatedly) as vindictive terrorists.
Even
when you can match individual bodies with the names of patients who had
abortions on a particular day (easy in Chicago, where each body had the
mother’s name attached, but very difficult in Washington, where the bodies were
scrambled, and the lists of 30-50 mothers were separate), a phone call to the
parents of the deceased could trigger a lawsuit for harassment, or even
criminal charges.
Still,
it is overwhelmingly obvious that abortion reveals a desperate need for prayer
for the family of the deceased. The Church can’t ignore the family simply
because they don’t show up for the funeral; their absence shows how much they
need our prayers.
Funerals
serve to repair the community. But with abortion, this aspect of a funeral is
also controversial. Many people are very offended by the suggestion that they
are affected by abortion.
The
abortion holocaust has been with us for a generation, but very few pastors are
prepared to deal with its complications. Some are beginning to learn how to
deal with post-abortion syndrome (PAS), but the widespread devastation in a
community is still generally unnoted. Abortion kills a child, defiles a
mother—and destroys community. Everybody near an abortion clinic is offered a
powerful lesson in apathy and despair. The entire surrounding community is
taught to ignore bloodshed. Either we resist that lesson, or we learn it. Once
we learn to mind our own business when children and women are attacked, will we
still be able to resist anything?
The
abortionist assumes that the community is too weak to protect children. He
spits in the eyes of all local pro-lifers, confident that their brave words
about the humanity of the preborn are devoid of force. He assumes that he can
kill children and abuse women without any interference from pro-lifers. Too
often, his assumption is correct.
The
community that is afflicted with abortion is in desperate need of healing. What
will it take to open our eyes, if corpses in our trash cans do not stir us to
action?
The
ritual of a funeral provides sanity and balance, restoring a sense of order and
continuity. The fact that there is a ritual is an assertion that “we have been
here before,” that this pain, as bad as it is, is still a familiar part of the
human condition, something that previous generations have seen, something we
can cope with. Ritual, by itself, even when every syllable of it is
incomprehensible, has a powerful healing function.
But
after an abortion, there is no funeral rite. The absence is devastating. If
there is no ritual, then the question arises: Have we been here before?
Christian
funerals proclaim that Jesus, by His death and resurrection, broke the power of
sin and death. Presumably, that includes abortion. But if this proclamation is
made in secret, and the message is hidden in a pauper’s grave, then the
messengers have not fulfilled their responsibilities.
What
should we have learned from the discovery of corpses in our trash? Sin abounds;
does grace abound the more? What on earth does it look like?
In
the end, hundreds of the bodies from Washington were buried next to Truro
Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, near the offices of the National
Organization of Episcopalians for Life. One of the bodies we retrieved is in a
tomb at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio.
Elsewhere,
people suffered for their respect for the bodies of the dead. In Milwaukee,
Monica Migliorino Miller went to jail for months for her role removing babies
from the trash and burying them.
The Transforming Power of Blood
The
blood of those babies broke my heart. The blood of Jesus healed it. I saw in
the crucifixion a revelation of God’s overwhelming love.
The
blood of babies challenges us to act. The blood of Jesus enables us to act, and
to act with love, the power that is stronger than death.
We
are all familiar with the idea that to wear the crown of peace you must wear
the crown of thorns. But Pope John Paul II says that St. Paul’s attitude toward
the cross was not like that. Paul saw the glory of the resurrection, and then
later saw more, saw the overwhelming love revealed on the cross.
The
blood of Jesus is not about death, it is about life. When God offered a
covenant to Abraham, Abraham was ready to seal the deal by giving God what he
valued most, his own son and heir. God intervened and said that the other
bloody deities of the world might demand such sacrifices, but he did not. But
centuries later, when the covenant between God and Abraham was perfected, the
deal was sealed with blood, with the blood of Jesus.
The
solemnity of the agreement was clear from the value of the sacrifice: God’s own
son. The determination of God to fulfill his side of the agreement was clear
from the value of the sacrifice: God’s own son. The unimaginable love of the
Father for us was revealed in that sacrifice: he gave his own son. Who can
understand that? We will spend the rest if eternity plumbing the depths of that
profound mystery.
But
when we begin to grasp what God did in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, when we begin
to see it, a new wonder is hidden behind that. God has invited us to be
recipients of his colossal and eternal love—but also to be participants in that same love. He has invited us to share in
creation, making new and eternal creatures: babies. And he has invited us to
share in redemption, pouring out our blood for the sake of God’s
children—babies who are threatened by death and mothers who are being deceived
and exploited, and our opponents who are blind and living in darkness. Paul
said, “I make up in my own body the sufferings lacking in Christ.” Nothing was
lacking, of course, but Paul was right that we are invited to participate.
God
does not need our help in the works of creation and redemption—but he chooses
to allow us to participate. That is what a rescue is all about. That is why we
can rejoice when we are beaten and humiliated and jailed.
Sometimes
we can see clearly how God uses what we offer. In 1983, on Holy Saturday (at
the rescue mentioned in chapter one), I was arrested with a group of folks at
Sigma abortion clinic in Kensington, Maryland. That day, I was dropped on my
face with my hands cuffed behind my back, and I bled all over the place. Head
wounds are very dramatic. As it happened, my sister Kathie saw all that blood,
and by God’s grace that event was one of several things that helped her to
understand her abortion, and helped her to return to life, return from death to
the Lord. My blood was a small part of her healing, but still a part. To help
your sister return from despair to hope: wouldn’t you be willing to bleed all
over and even die for that? By God’s gift to me, I was allowed to be a part of
God’s work in her life. What a gift, for my sister but also for me.
When
we are at risk, a variety of things happen. We feel fear, and try not to be
mastered by it. We see various evils, like police brutality. But the most
important reality is that we share in the sufferings of Jesus. We have made
ourselves available for the service that is suffering.
When
we act in solidarity with the threatened, we have the right and the power and
the duty to forgive. Before we are threatened, we do not have the right to
forgive: “Hey, Hitler, I forgive you for killing people I don’t know.” That’s
meaningless: bystanders can’t forgive. But when we are assaulted with the
babies and mothers, we have the power to forgive. We should be ready to
exercise this colossal power, because we chose deliberately to be there, in
response to an invitation to the Lord. We didn’t stumble blindly into this; we
are not taken by surprise.
When
you suffer with the children and their parents, you are given a stunning and
world-changing power. The power to forgive is an immense power, an unbelievable
gift from a loving God. When you see that, it is almost embarrassing to add the
obvious, that forgiveness is also a duty, because our Lord has asked us to
forgive even as he has forgiven us.
In
Washington in 1987, rescue leaders announced plans to close all the abortion
clinics during the March for Life, as they had the previous year. But the night
before the march, when all the rescuers gathered to pray and make final plans,
it was a pitifully small group. There were a dozen abortion clinics in DC, and
there were not even two dozen rescuers. Still, they trusted the Lord and pushed
ahead.
Last-minute
calls revealed that one abortuary had closed, and several were delaying their
abortions until the afternoon. Only one was opening in the morning. So 20
rescuers went there, and closed that one until late morning. By mid-morning, a
blizzard took over our work, and shut down the whole city. Everything closed,
killing centers included. Because of the snow, they were closed the next day,
and the next and the next. Then it snowed again, and the city closed for two
more days.
When
the rescuers gathered on the night of January 21, they had little power to
offer to the Lord. But they did what they could, and the Lord blessed the work,
and there was almost no killing for a week.
Obviously,
the rescuers had nothing to do with that blizzard. But if they had not tried,
there would have been killing that morning. The small group of rescuers delayed
the killing, and then God arranged more delays. Who knows how many hundreds of
women had their appointments canceled not once but twice? How many of them
thought to themselves: “Hm, I wonder if someone is trying to tell me
something?”
God
did most of the rescue work by himself, but the rescuers were a part of it, by
his invitation, by his grace.
The
cross of Jesus, breaking the power of sin and death, was the central event of
human history. We are called to understand it, and to be recipients of that
grace. But also, in the immensity of God’s love, we are invited to participate.
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