Our Lady of Guadalupe 2025

 

On April 24, 2007 Mexico City legalized abortion for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.  That same day, as Catholics Gathered in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, the Tilma of Juan Diego, started to glow with an image of a fetus in Mary’s womb.

 

Our Lady of Guadalupe is the Patroness of the Pro-Life movement because in 1531, it was the first Church-approved Marian Apparition where our Blessed Mother appeared pregnant (the black band around her waist signified pregnancy in the culture at the time.

 

Approximately 70 MILLION children have been aborted in the United States.  And relatedly, it is estimated that 100 MILLION more children have died through the use of the contraceptive pill, which has as one of its mechanisms reducing a child’s chance of implanting on the mother’s uteran lining.

Even the United States Supreme Court has recognized the link between abortion and contraception when, in 1992 in “Planned Parenthood v. Casey”: "in some critical respects abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception . . . .  for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail."

 

So as Catholics we are leading the charge in a lot of ways against abortion and helping women choose life, but we are not doing nearly as well supporting families who are not using contraception, as no Catholic marriage should be.  I was talking to one of my sisters at Thanksgiving and she said an elderly lady sat down next to her in her pew right before Mass started, and began grilling my sister about how her and her husband could possibly their 4^th child, my sister was grilled on their grocery bills, electricity bills, and lots of other total boundary violations, but the main point is that we, as Catholics, need to be SUPPORTING families who are having children, not doing the horribly sinful things of DISCOURAGING families from having more children.

 

So what are we doing, as a parish, to support families who are having children?  Let’s build and even better and more flourishing culture of life at this parish, helping support families with children, and never discourage a family.  I will end with this: St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta said this: “Saying there are too many children is like saying there are too many flowers”.  Amen!