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Did you ever realize that the same four words that were used by the Lord Jesus to save the world are also used by some to promote abortion? “This is my body.” The same simple words are spoken from opposite ends of the universe, with meanings that are directly contrary to each other.
Scripture tells us that on the night before He died to save all people, the Lord Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to His disciples, saying, “This is My Body, which is given up for you.”
He was pointing to what would happen the next day, when He would give that same Body on the cross. He sacrifices Himself so that we may live. He gives up His Body so that He can destroy the power of sin and death. As a result, He welcomes us into His life, into His Kingdom. He makes us members of His Body!
On the other hand, abortion supporters say, “This is my body! I can do what I want, even to the point of killing the life within it.”
Abortion is the exact opposite of love. Love says, "I sacrifice myself for the good of the other person.” Abortion says, "I sacrifice the other person for the good of myself." In the Eucharist we see the meaning of love and receive the power to live it.
Gustave Thibon has said that the true God transforms violence into suffering, while the false god transforms suffering into violence. The woman tempted to have an abortion will transform her suffering into violence unless she allows love to transform her, and make her willing to give herself away. The Eucharist gives both the lesson and the power. Mom is to say "This is my body, my blood, my life, given up for you, my child."
Everyone who wants to fight abortion needs to say the same. We need to exercise the same generosity we ask the Moms and Dads to exercise. We need to imitate the mysteries we celebrate.
This is what the Eucharist teaches us; it is the Sacrifice and Sacrament of love. And love is the energy of the pro-life movement. Indeed, if the pro-life movement is not a movement of love, then it is nothing at all. But if it is a movement of love, then nothing will stop it, for "Love is stronger than death, more powerful even than hell" (Song of Songs 8:6).
The Eucharist also shapes our pro-life commitment in many other ways, as a Sacrament of Faith, Unity, Worship and Life.
The Eucharist is a sacrament of faith. The Consecrated Host looks no different after the consecration than before. It looks, smells, feels, and tastes like bread. Only one of the five senses gets to the truth. As St. Thomas' Adoro Te Devote expresses, "Seeing, touching, tasting are in Thee deceived. What says trusty hearing, that shall be believed?" The ears hear His words, "This is My Body; this is My Blood," and faith takes us beyond the veil of appearances.
Christians are used to looking beyond appearances. Neither the baby in the manger nor the man on the cross look like God. Yet by faith we know He is no mere man. The Bible does not have a particular glow setting it off from other books, nor does it levitate above the shelf. Yet by faith we know it is uniquely the Word of God. The Eucharist seems to be bread and wine, and yet by faith we say, "My Lord and My God!" as we kneel in adoration.
The same dynamic of faith that enables us to see beyond appearances in these mysteries enables us to see beyond appearances in our neighbor. We can look at the persons around us, at the sick and the poor, and we can say, "Christ is there as well. There is my brother, my sister, made in the very image of God!"
In the same way we can look at the child in the womb and say, "There, too, is my brother, my sister, equal in dignity and just as worthy of protection as anyone else!" Some people will say the child in the womb, especially in the earliest stages, is too small to be the subject of Constitutional rights. But is the Sacred Host too small to be God, too unlike Him in appearance to be worshipped? The slightest particle of the Host is fully Christ. Eucharistic Faith is a powerful antidote to the dangerous notion that value depends on size.
That Faith, furthermore, impels us to work with Christ to transform civil society and public policy to conform to his will. The Eucharist, encountered on this earth, connects us to heaven. Encountered in time, it points to the eternity when all will be transformed in Christ. This led St. John Paul II to write, in his encyclical on the Eucharist, "Certainly the Christian vision leads to the expectation of "new heavens" and "a new earth" (Rev 21:1), but this increases, rather than lessens, our sense of responsibility for the world today. I wish to reaffirm this forcefully …, so that Christians will feel more obliged than ever not to neglect their duties as citizens in this world" (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, n.20).
The Eucharist is also a Sacrament of Unity. "When I am lifted up from the earth," the Lord said, "I will draw all people to myself" (Jn.12:32). He fulfills this promise in the Eucharist, which builds up the Church. The Church is the sign and cause of the unity of the human family.
Each person in the world who is receiving Communion today is receiving exactly the same, unique Christ. Through this sacrament, Christ the Lord, gloriously enthroned in heaven, is drawing all people to Himself. If He is drawing us to Himself, then He is drawing us to one another. As St. Paul says, "We, many though we are, are one body, since we all partake of the one loaf" (1 Cor. 10:17).
When we call each other "brothers and sisters," that is not a mere metaphor dimly reflecting the unity between children of the same parents. The unity we have in Christ is even stronger than the unity of blood brothers and sisters, because we do have common blood: the blood of Christ! The result of the Eucharist is that we become one, and this obliges us to be as concerned for each other as we are for our own bodies.
Imagine a person who receives Communion, accepts the Host when the priest says, "The Body of Christ," says "Amen," and then breaks off a piece, hands it back, and says, "Except this piece, Father!" This is what the person who rejects other people – born and unborn -- may as well do. In receiving Christ, we are to receive the whole Christ, in all His members, our brothers and sisters, whether convenient or inconvenient, wanted or unwanted.
As St. John remarks, Christ was to die "to gather into one all the scattered children of God." Sin scatters. Christ unites. The word "diabolical" means "to split asunder." Christ came "to destroy the works of the devil" (1Jn.3:8). The Eucharist builds up the human family in Christ who says, "Come to me, feed on My Body, become My Body."
Abortion, in a reverse dynamic, says, "Go away! We have no room for you, no time for you, no desire for you, no responsibility for you. Get out of our way!" Abortion attacks the unity of the human family by splitting asunder the most fundamental relationship between any two persons: mother and child. The Eucharist, as a Sacrament of Unity, reverses the dynamic of abortion.
The Eucharist is also the Supreme act of Worship of God. Two lessons each person needs to learn are, "1.There is a God. 2. It isn't me." The Eucharist, as the perfect sacrifice, acknowledges that God is God, and has the right to receive the obedience of all creation.
Abortion, on the contrary, proclaims that a mother's choice is supreme. "Freedom of choice" is considered enough to justify even the dismemberment of a baby. Choice divorced from truth is idolatry. It is the opposite of true worship. It pretends the creature is God. Real freedom is found only in submission to the truth and will of God. Real freedom is not the ability to do whatever one pleases, but the power to do what is right.
The Eucharist, finally, is the Sacrament of Life. "I am the Bread of Life. He who eats this bread will live forever. I will raise Him up on the last day." (See Jn.6:47-58) The Eucharistic sacrifice is the very action of Christ by which He destroyed our death and restored our life. Whenever we gather for this sacrifice, we are celebrating the victory of life over death, and therefore over abortion.
The pro-life movement is not simply working "for" victory; we are working "from" victory. As St. John Paul II said in Denver in 1993, "Have no fear. The outcome of the battle for life is already decided." The Eucharist is the source and summit of the whole life and ministry of the Church, including her pro-life work, which is to take that victory Christ has already won, and to proclaim it, celebrate it, serve it, and apply it to every aspect of our world!
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For more information on the Eucharist and pro-life, see www.PriestsForLife.org/Eucharist.