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_{Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 7, 2007} 

        Blessed Mother Teresa said, "Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use violence to get what they want.  This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion."  "America you are beautiful and blessed..." said Pope John Paul II, "The ultimate test of your greatness is the way you treat every human being, but especially the weakest and most defenseless.  If you want equal justice for all, true freedom, and lasting peace, then America, defend life."  Strong words, very strong words! 

We live in a violent, hate-filled world.  It is a world of drive-by murders and drug crazed people.  It is a world in which babies are aborted and little children are abused and killed by their parents.  It is a world of political and economical corruption.  Is there more evil in the world today than in former generations, or is it that the media makes us more aware of what is going on?  Today is Respect Life Sunday.  October is Respect Life Month.  The secular media doesn't dare mention it.  Have you seen anything in the Macon Telegraph or on CNN announcing it?

        Normally, I preach primarily each week from the particular Gospel reading.  Today is going to be different.  Today I want to talk about the Old Testament Reading from the prophet Habakkuk.  Habakkuk doesn’t get a lot of press.  In fact you just heard it all…five verses out of the entire three–year Sunday cycle!   

Habakkuk, a Jewish prophet, lived six centuries before Christ.  It was a time that in its own way was really as bad as our own.  In Judah there was widespread political intrigue, corruption of morals, social injustice, contempt for the poor, and, worst of all, a creeping idolatry which ignored the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who had saved the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and who had formed them into a people with whom he had made a solemn covenant.

        Habakkuk the prophet was disgusted!  Almost no one among his people showed any wish for repentance and renewal.  Habakkuk, to put it plainly, was fed up.  So he turned to God in prayer, but not the polite and compliant kind of prayer that seems appropriate before the majesty of God.  Habakkuk complained bitterly to God.  His patience was just about at an end.  He prayed, "How long, O Lord?  I cry for help but you do not listen!  I cry out to you, Violence! But you do not intervene."

        Other people may have prayed to God this way before Habakkuk, but the Bible makes no mention of them.  Habakkuk seems to have embarked on a new, bold way of speaking to God.  His insistence with God is remarkable, but God's response is even more remarkable.  He did not thunder down words of rebuke upon this puny creature of His.  God did not demand, "How dare you speak to me this way?"  Rather God asked Habakkuk to be patient.  Then he added, "The just man, because of his faith, will live."

        Habakkuk was a man of faith.  He believed that God the Creator was responsible for his creation.  He called upon God, who had made a covenant with his people, to remember his faithfulness and his love for them.  Habakkuk did complain, that is true, but he complained to the right Person, to the one true God who alone could clean up the mess in the world.  He believed that God is in charge.  Habakkuk was a man of great faith!

        Faith is a gift.  The apostles feared that their faith was not strong enough.  Perhaps they were thinking of someone like Habakkuk when they asked Jesus, "Lord, increase our faith."  That plea for greater faith must surely be our own when we pray at Mass, especially when, in the Prayers of the Faithful after the Creed, we ask God to right the wrongs of our society.

        Our prayer should be filled with a boldness that comes from faith!  St. Paul assured Timothy, "The spirit God has given us is no cowardly spirit, but rather one that makes us strong, loving, and wise."  That spirit we received at our baptism.  It should move us to pray to God with respect but also with tenacity, not only at Mass but whenever we pray.  A prayer that is strong, loving, and wise acknowledges that God the Creator is the right person to complain to because God is the one who is in charge!

        My prayer for us today is that we will always have the gift of faith that tells us that God is in control and the gift of wisdom that tells us we aren't God!  The leader of God’s Church on earth, Pope Benedict XVI, says "The love of God does not distinguish between the newly-conceived infant still in its mother's womb, the baby, the youth, the grown adult or the elderly, because in each of them He sees the sign of His own image and likeness." 

Let us all pray that God the Creator will clean up the mess we have made of his creation, that he will change the hard hearts of the media, the politicians and judges, the doctors and all who do not respect and cherish God’s greatest gift...LIFE!  Let us pray that we will all develop a true respect for all life!   

MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT...

GOD IS PRO-LIFE!