Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children

Lectionary: 312

We earnestly desire each of you to demonstrate the same eagerness

for the fulfillment of hope until the end, so that you may not become sluggish, but imitators of those who,

through faith and patience, are inheriting the promises.

No sooner have neophytes entered the Church than they feel, or suspect they feel, sluggish. Their enthusiasm is waning, or they fear that it might wane. "Being in love is the happiest ten minutes of your life!" After that, we struggle to maintain that eager, hopeful, optimistic spirit.

Even in the first century, authors of the New Testament recognized that sluggishness in their communities. In the Revelation of John of Patmos, the Christ warns the Laodiceans,

"I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth!"

It's a rather crude expression, but effective.

That sluggishness may be the core reason for the hypocrisy we hear of in Saint Matthew's Gospel. Having arrived at a good place and comfortable in new routines of worship, the Christian might be less willing to make room for newer members of the Church, less willing to recognize the style of a younger generation, and downright hostile toward those who introduce new words, gestures or symbols to their familiar customs. They glory in the statistics of a growing church but not the actual presence of different persons with different sensibilities, histories. expectations and insight. "Learn our language and the way we have always done it!" the first generation of Christians said to the second. "Why should we have to learn your ways!"

Saint Paul had to fight vigorously for the rights of gentile Christians against the stodgy Jewish Christians as the Church was liberated from the narrow, Pharisaic interpretations of Moses and the Law. 

This challenge is certainly familiar to the Church today, as we bid farewell to what we thought were the advances of the twentieth century. "My future has passed!" many boomers might say as they realize they'll not live to see women priests or married clergy in the Catholic Church. Rome gives no indication of accepting gay marriage, will not honor second and third marriages after divorce, and is frankly hostile to abortion.

That sacred "eagerness for the fulfillment of hope until the end" is not so easy to maintain when the future is less clear and more threatening. It is easier to be sluggish, like the slug, in no particular hurry to go anywhere.
And so we pray for a rebirth in the Spirit, a reawakening of wonder, especially as we advocate for the birth of the unborn. When the world is delighted by the miracle of conception and birth, when we take delight at the endless possibilities of the child with limited abilities, we will know the fulfillment of our hope.