Are we facing our own “1967 moment”? The upcoming threat of total decriminalisation of abortion alongside attempts to legalise euthanasia hovering on the horizon can appear to represent a present-day reiteration of the seismic decision to legalise abortion here in the UK back in 1967.
The constant threats to life at its beginning, end and at any vulnerable spots in between are enough to make us feel so far into the dark abyss that we “give up the ghost”, so to speak. One of the real problems we face as pro-life Catholics, is how to keep the momentum going. How do we keep fighting, and writing, helping expectant mothers and spreading the “Gospel of Life”, as Pope St John Paul II called it, when we might be feeling totally without hope ourselves?
We know, actually, what the answer is. The deepening of our own prayer lives. The attempt to strive towards sainthood personally, the entrusting of our life and work into the hands of Our Lord, through His Mother, is the way to keep a hold of that hope that we have to offer to a weary, weary world.
Abortion and euthanasia, like suicide, are expressions of the ultimate hopelessness in human beings. All three seek solace in nothingness, trying to plunge ourselves or our children or loved ones into nothingness and out of our God-given immortality, to avoid the pains and struggles of the earthly part of our lives.
When crises loom above us, we say “I must pray about that”, “let’s pray” – but do we really pray? In response to the darkening skies of unrestricted abortion and euthanasia, some years ago the Good Counsel Network (GCN) launched “Sackcloth and Ashes”, a little sub-department in a dark basement with the indomitable Stuart manning the desk. From there, every year, 12 days of prayer and fasting for the end of abortion and euthanasia are announced and promoted throughout the country (the next day of Prayer and Fasting for Life is this Saturday, 23 March).
What do we aim to achieve? Firstly to make prayer – and the forgotten art of fasting, which Our Lord concretely tells us is necessary to get rid of certain demons – central to pro-life work. As a priest said recently: We have to fill up the treasury of the Church with our prayers and sacrifices if we want the Church to be able to act with any power, because the treasury of the Church depends on our prayers and voluntary offerings of good deeds and sacrifices.
Secondly, because prayer and fasting helps to make us holy. Like everyone, those of us who work to share the Gospel of Life are flawed, and sometimes terribly flawed, human beings. Prayer and fasting for life, giving up our own comforts and desires even if only for one day in a month and taking our small offerings to Our Lord in prayer, helps to not just change the landscape on life issues, but also to transform us.
Does it work? This prayer and fasting lark? I can only share my experiences as a counsellor to women considering abortion. Numerous times I have seen instant and remarkable changes of heart in men and women seeking abortion when there are people praying and fasting for them.
A friend described GCN as a “little hand-knitted organisation”, which is fairly accurate, yet we know of over 4,000 babies (some now adults) whose parents chose life for them because of support and help we were able to provide for them. We could only offer them the support we did because we and our supporters prayed and fasted and trusted that God would provide – and He did.
Last week, a young woman who took the first of her abortion pills had a change of heart after a Christian friend prayed for her. With support from pro-lifers, she got the abortion reversal treatment, which aims to override the progesterone-blocking effects of the pill she had taken.
A day or two later, heavy bleeding began and the baby’s life hung in the balance for several days. Whenever groups of people started praying and fasting, the bleeding would slow and stop. So far, the pregnancy is continuing, and there are now thousands of people praying and fasting for this young woman and her baby.
But if prayer and fasting work, why have we not halted the march of death through our culture? Here I have to agree with Chesterton’s words on Christianity, but turn them specifically to fasting: Fasting has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried!
Join us in prayer and fasting. If you fail to fast well, you will be in good company. But there is always next month to try to do better, for your own sanctity and for the end of euthanasia and abortion.
Clare McCullough runs the Good Counsel Network for women in crisis pregnancies.The next day of Prayer and Fasting for Life is this Saturday, 23 March. For more information on future Fast Days, sign up here.
Photo: A Catholic prays with a Rosary during a gathering to call for the reopening of places of worship during the national lockdown in France due to Covid-19, Nantes, France, 15 November 2020. (Photo by SEBASTIEN SALOM-GOMIS/AFP via Getty Images.)
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