My Brothers' Keeper

The wind whipped through the abandoned camp, the gaps in the barbed wire fences, the houses that evil built. My feet stepped cautiously along the cobblestone and dirt roads where evil tread. My eyes saw mounds of hair that evil sheared, piles of tattered shoes that evil stole, prisons where evil sneered, walls riddled with bullet holes where evil killed, ovens where evil burned. Evil was in the wind that blew through Auschwitz that day, chilling me to my core, taunting me, asking me, "Why did God forsake this place, these people who suffered and cried out for His help? Why did no one save them?"

I remembered words written by a young girl: "In spite of everything, I still believe people are basically good at heart," Anne Frank wrote from her attic prison. Did she change her mind when she reached this place? Evil made sure that the world will never know. I was different when I walked out of the ghost camp that October evening. I had seen and felt what could not be conveyed in a classroom history lesson. I wondered how God could possibly let something so terrible happen to so many innocent people. It was easier to trust in God's mercy and love before, but now that I had seen and tasted real human suffering for myself, how could I believe? A faint hope rose in me--at least I could rest in the confidence that we would never allow something like this to go on today. And then as quickly as hope rose, it disappeared: it is going on today. It began in 1973 and continues today--50 million innocent human lives destroyed. A force greater than the gusty Poland wind suddenly moved in my heart--the cry of God, "The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground." (Gen. 4:10) The voice of our brothers' blood calls to us from the ground, from the dumpsters where they are carelessly tossed, from the jars that line the walls of an abortionist's office, from the execution rooms, from the battlefields, from a grocery store in Arizona.

There is blood everywhere. And we wonder, who is going to clean this mess up? In the film The Passion of the Christ, the Mother of Christ gets on her hands and knees to clean up her own Son's blood after His scourging. After His death, she holds his bloodied, bruised, broken, body and looks at us with haunting eyes as if to say, "See how much He loves you?" More than we can know. He actually did that for us, to cleanse us with His Mercy. He showed us what it means to be His brothers' keeper by showing mercy, by loving everyone, and by giving up His life so that we may live. He did this for us and said, "Now do this for others."

That said, the freezing march through Washington D.C. on Monday morning will quite literally be a walk in the park compared to His struggle up to Calvary under the crushing weight of our sins. But it is a step along the Way. With renewed hope and trust in God's mercy, I will march with fellow pro-lifers up to the steps of the Supreme Court building and I will PRAY to God that people wake up and realize that this is LIFE we are talking about, our brothers and sisters. Whether or not you are able to join the thousands marching through D.C. this weekend, I ask you to at least take a moment to pray with us for the souls of our brothers and sisters who will never see the light of day, the Abels of our time. Let us be the voice of our brothers' blood crying out from the ground--the voice of truth.

You will not silence my message;

you will not mock my God;

and you WILL stop killing my generation.

(Pro-life Youth pledge, Rock for Life)

The Choice

Since October is Respect Life month, my mind has been working around the issues of life and death. When I was younger and complaining about the injustice of it all, my mom explained that changing the laws won't matter unless we also change hearts. It's true. The government could overturn Roe v. Wade, and then the states would decide for themselves whether a mother was justified under law to have her unborn child murdered. But if we change their hearts so that they see how disgusting it is that this is even an option, there will be little to no need for laws. It just seems like common sense to me, that it's wrong to destroy life at its most innocent, precious, helpless stages. Why are we so surprised when kids go to school with guns when their generation is not even safe within the confines of their mothers' wombs?

It is a culture of death that, sadly enough, goes beyond abortion. Hearts have been corrupted by lies. They buy into the instant pleasures the world offers, and they seek success so that they can gain more of these pleasures. People seem to have forgotten about God because they have what they need for a comfortable, secure life. God's "rules" interfere with that, so they disregard Him completely. But when this life is over--and we never know when it will be--where will these shriveled hearts go? God does not "send people to hell." They choose to go.

This is a choice we all have. We can choose to love God with everything we have and everything we are, and spend eternity with Him in heaven. Or we can choose to ignore Him, to reject Him, to say, "That's not for me" and spend eternity in misery. Really, God's "rules" don't seem like such when we love Him, when we want to please Him, when we see the world as He sees it. When we ask for it, He gives us His Heart and His Love to share with the world. St. Therese wrote that most people don't think about death enough. She didn't mean that we should think of death in a depressing, paint-your-fingernails-black-and-hate-the-world kind of way, but in a Gladiator, "What you do in this life echoes in eternity" kind of way. If we choose lies now, we will spend eternity in darkness. If we choose truth, we will live in the Light.

It makes me wonder, thinking about faith and salvation as this choice we have between life and death, why do we try to be politically correct about it? Why do I try so hard not to make other people feel uncomfortable when I want to speak of God's love? "Let sleeping dogs lie," I suppose. But these aren't dogs. These are people, humans created in the image and likeness of God, brothers and sisters on this earth. If we truly believe that what we believe is the True Way to eternal life, that all sin leads to death, why do we keep silent?

I admit that I know the answer for me: I can be incredibly shy around others, so I found a peaceful existence in being an overly polite person who has limited, surface-deep interactions with others to keep from making anyone feel too uncomfortable. I can sit behind my computer and my journals and write things like this, but when it comes down to it, I am silent when it counts, when it is a matter of life and death. So here I make my choice to break out of this peaceful, comfortable existence. I want to stir things up. I cannot do it alone, but "The Good God does not need years to accomplish His work of love in a soul; one ray from His heart can, in an instant, make His flower bloom for eternity." (St. Therese)