Colleen Roy recently spoke at the 40 Days for Life mid-point rally. The following is excerpted from her talk.
Many years ago, I decided that I would only have bread and water for my breakfast and lunch during Lent. It went along as well as you can imagine.
At first I struggled with the lack of sugar, but the nobility of such a great self-denial kept me going. Then it became boring. Bread, bread, bread. Water, water, water. When would dinner come!?
About halfway through Lent I decided, not insincerely, that I wasn’t feeling any particular loss anymore, and that I wasn’t feeling any particular spiritual gain either. So, I gave it up.
I still fasted, of course. But in a way, I abandoned my post and stepped off the path I had originally felt called to follow.
Think about Our Lord’s fasting. 40 days of … nothing? No bread or water. No food as sustenance. What did he feel at Day 20? Was he, like me, ready to give up? Ready to just get on with it by giving up the penance taken on only for our sakes and starting his work? Certainly his work was more important than his fasting. Certainly Our Lord did not need to fast and pray to prepare for what he came to do.
In the end, Our Lord did not give heed to those offered temptations, to just move on and get at it. Because the thing he came to do – save sinners – and the work of prayer, fasting, and diligence were the same. The one gave a foundation for the other. There was no giving up, because the penance is also what he came to accomplish for our sakes.
And so here we are, at the halfway point of prayer and fasting for the unborn, the unwanted, the untimely. Are you tempted to give up? Do you feel like this time is simply getting in the way of the work of saving the unborn? Or are you willing to wait just a bit, to persevere in diligent prayer and a little bit of fasting?
Years ago, I was speaking at another pro-life event. I was the happy recipient of a seat beside the main speaker, who told me the story of his inconvenient birth. His mother was almost 50 and the doctor said she and the baby would die. The doctor urged her to think about her other children and abort. She told him where to take his plan, and she trusted in God’s care. A few months later, Adam Exner, our future archbishop, was born.
It should be the natural thing for a mother to die for the sake of her children. Which mother here would not stand in front of a child in the line of fire? For all my weakness and selfishness, there is no way that I would stand by and let my child be killed without offering myself in his place. Or more than just offering, but insisting, fighting so that I would be killed in his place. I am a mother. It is in my nature, not a virtue I’ve built within myself. Naturally speaking, it is also in the nature of a father. He has it within him to defend, protect, form, and provide for his children. It is who and what we are.
But here is the work of the devil. He seeks, and often succeeds, in corrupting, twisting our very nature of primarily being children of God. The devil corrupts the nature of what it is to be a man, a woman, a father, and a mother.
In the story of Narnia, certain animals are gifted with a participation in a type of spiritual life, with faith in Aslan, with reason and a desire to find truth. They become known as the talking animals. As the story progresses, we are told that any of those animals who act in corruption progressively begin to lose their ability to think, speak, and reason. They become senseless beasts again, ignoble, lowly, instinctual, living in the dirt, capable of killing or cannibalizing their young. It is the act of a beast to kill the young. It is a loveless society, without the ability to think, speak, and reason that kills its young.
We all have heard and probably used the expression “culture war.” We, the culture of life and love, are in a battle, a war against the culture of death.
Catholic writer Phil Lawler quotes the Irish scholar Mark Dooley: “The phrase ‘culture war’ assumes that both sides have rival cultures they are battling to defend and promote. However, the enemies of civilization, of life, and love, have no culture. When you observe our current predicament from that standpoint, the prevailing madness makes perfect sense.”
The goal of the radical left today is not to substitute one sort of culture for another, but to eliminate every form of culture. We are not in a culture war, but a spiritual one.
And that is why we continue to pray and fast.
Dom Prosper Gueranger, a Benedictine priest from the late 1800s, reflected on the trials faced by martyrs of Christ, contrasting them with the challenges of modern believers.
“When we compare our trials with yours, noble martyrs of Christ, and our combats with those that you had to fight, how grateful ought we not to be to Our Lord for His having so mercifully taken our weakness into account.”
But despite our weaknesses, we are called to the same reward as the martyrs. “God holds out a crown to us also, and we are not at liberty to refuse it. Rouse up our courage, brave martyrs! Get us a spirit of resistance against the world and our evil inclinations, that thus we may confess Our Lord Jesus Christ, not only with our lips, but with our works too, and testify by our conduct, that we are Christians.”
Our martyrdom today is the death of our worldly spirit, our willingness to stand against the evil insanity that leads our nations to murder its young in the cruellest way, in the safe haven of its mother’s body.
We must be willing to fast, pray, and make sacrifices, to martyr our own wills to that of God. The battle is spiritual and we must be the Church militant, spiritually prepared to face evil in our day.
That is why the prayer and the fasting are the WORK of our pro-life efforts. Every argument, all of our logic, all of our offers, mean nothing to a world that is close to being spiritually defeated. We are cooperating in God’s work, and so it takes God’s methods.
In Ephesians 6 we are called to spiritual preparedness, to be “strong in the Lord” and put on “the full armour of God” to stand against the devil’s schemes. This armour includes the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, feet fitted with readiness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit.
“And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.”
The 40 Days for Life campaign is a Lenten campaign of prayer for an end to abortion that starts on Ash Wednesday and ends on March 24, Palm Sunday.
The international 40-day campaign brings individuals together at prayer vigils outside of abortion facilities in their local communities.
“It is a peaceful and educational presence,” the 40 Days for Life website says. “It also serves as a call to repentance for those who work at the abortion centre and those who patronize the facility.”
40 Days for Life launched its first-ever nationally coordinated campaign in 2007 and is now in over 1,000 cities in 63 countries. It says more than 20,000 unborn lives have been saved and nearly 150 abortion facilities have closed, with more than 200 abortion workers quitting their jobs — one of the most famous being pro-life speaker and advocate Abby Johnson.
Throughout the 40 Days for Life campaign, individuals, churches, families, and groups are asked to join in prayer for specific intentions each day and are encouraged to fast.
Vancouver’s 40 Days for Life prayer vigil takes place at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre near B.C. Women’s Hospital. For information, visit 40daysforlife.com/en/vancouverbc. Join a nightly 40 Days for Life Rosary at beholdvancouver.org/events/40-days-for-life-nightly-rosary.
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