How Can Personal Holiness Protect the Unborn?

If I had been alive during the Holocaust, what would I have done to help the Jews and other minorities who were victims of the Nazis?

This question is not one that I think of often, but after watching Woman in Gold about an Austrian born immigrant who fights for justice in obtaining her aunt’s portrait that was stolen from the Nazis, this question once again came to my mind

At some point in the movie, my mom remarked that the holocaust is like the abortion industry today. As I watched the people fighting for their lives, I wondered, “What am I doing to help protect these innocent babies?”

I told myself later on that I would examine my conscience on this issue and take a moral inventory of what I have done and what still I can do in this area.

Apart from prayer and the usual service and activist events planned, I still was not satisfied. What else can I do to influence the culture? I would not like to reinvent the wheel but rather shed light on an often over-looked view of change: the kind that lasts.

Here, I turn to the spiritual giant Fulton Sheen for advice. In Guide to Contentment, he states that influence is not what one does but who one is. The example that he gives is how Peter’s shadow healed people in the Bible.

Wanting to know the exact verse he was referring to, I went online to Acts 5:15-16 and read: “

“Thus they even carried the sick out into the streets and laid them on cots and mats so that when Peter came by, at least his shadow might fall on one or another of them.^d 16A large number of people from the towns in the vicinity of Jerusalem also gathered, bringing the sick and those disturbed by unclean spirits, and they were all cured.”

If Peter’s mere shadow could cure people because of his holiness, how many countless people could be touched by my example of holiness and turn to Christ, without me knowing it? This, I propose, is a secret key to unlock a “sleeping giant” within each of us and help others first and foremost by who we are rather than just what we do.

Sheen expresses this point succinctly in the words: “Because the light is in him, it shines on others, because the glow is in him, he radiates love.” In this passage, he is not referring just to Peter but also to any person of influence.

May we continue to pray and participate in peaceful activism to protect the lives of the unborn. May we also learn to become people of influence.

References:

Sheen, F. J. (1996). Guide to Contentment. Staten Island, NY: Alba House.

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Acts of the Apostles 5:15-16. Retrieved from http://usccb.org/bible/acts/5