Pro-Life Sermon 5
Given by Fr. Kevin Drew of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, for the 6th Sunday of Ordinary Time, February 16th, 2020.
Do you remember last January I preached about Briana the cow?
The nightly news last January 22, (the date in 1973 when abortion was legalized) ran a story of how the pregnant Briana made a daring escape off a truck just minutes before it arrived at the slaughterhouse. A beaming anchorwoman reported how Briana and her new baby were safe in an animal shelter, as if it was some kind of home for unwed pregnant cows.
This was what you call a feel-good story; a refreshing respite from all the bad news that makes up most of a nightly newscast. Of course, the story was not based on any kind of reality. For as I preached, Briana the cow didn’t jump off the truck to escape the slaughterhouse. For Briana had no clue she was going to the slaughterhouse. Because she’s a cow.
When you entered church today you saw a photo of a couple other cows. It’s a billboard featuring a mama cow and her calf. At the top it states: Dairy Takes Babies From Their Mothers. Then on the bottom it advises the world to go vegetarian.
The great English writer and eventual Catholic convert, GK Chesterton, who weighed around 300 pounds, jokingly claimed to be a vegetarian once. In 1909, Chesterton wrote: Well, I am a vegetarian – between meals. From breakfast to lunch not a leg of mutton crosses my lips ... Only four times a day I will eat, like a man; for the rest of the day I will browse happily, like all the beasts of the field.
A writer pointed out that in making fun of vegetarianism Chesterton was defending traditional Christian freedom and conviviality (good cheer) against the “puritanism of Islam” on the one hand, and the “secular asceticism”, the severity of people like the Dublin-born playwright George
Bernard Shaw and his ilk. These people practiced a militant vegetarianism and teetotalism (no drinking) while advancing the idea that the government should impose its socialist will on the populace.
That socialist will included the promotion of contraception, abortion and divorce, things that go against Christ’s commandments, destroy families and empower godless governments. Chesterton was a bit of a prophet in this regard. Adolph Hitler, who rose to power a couple decades later, and who was the epitome of socialist intolerance was a non-smoker, vegetarian and teetotaler.
But back to the cows on the billboard wanting us to go vegetarian ...
A professor took the picture of the billboard in January in Dublin, Ireland, above a café that no doubt sells gallons of milk and cream a day. The professor learned that the billboard started going up around Ireland just a few months after the Irish people voted to legalize abortion. So, in the re-paganized Ireland, abortion – the ultimate example of taking babies away from their mothers – should be legal, while dairy farms should be illegal. As a friend of the professor put it: “1500 BC: worship animals, sacrifice babies; 2020 AD: worship animals, sacrifice babies.”
If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you; if you trust in God, you too shall live.
If you choose. This is the freedom of choice that separates man from the animals. You see, cows don’t choose. And this freedom to choose, what we call “free will” makes man closer to God than he is to the lower animals. The Church explains: God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions (CCC
1730). St Irenaeus wrote: Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts. (see CCC 1730).
he has set before you fire and water to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand
The wisdom writer Sirach, 150 years before Christ, mentioned fire. So did Christ. He spoke of fiery Gehenna three times in the Sermon on the Mount. Gehenna was a valley in a south neighborhood of Jerusalem that was associated with evil. The prophet Jeremiah, who wrote about 600 years before Christ, wrote Gehenna was a valley where Jews sacrificed their children (7:31-32). And so, it became known as the Valley of Slaughter. At Gehenna they burned their children in fires on altars to pagan gods. That is why Christ called it fiery Gehenna, which He used as a euphemism for hell. And yet, regrettably, persons created with free will choose to go there. It’s their choice.
The father of our modern world is Martin Luther, a 16th century renegade priest. Luther wrote that the human will is like a saddle horse ridden by either God or the evil one who fight for the reigns. Human beings then are merely steered by their driver – God or Satan. What then does this heretical thinking make of man? It downgrades him to the level of a beast, a creature which cannot control his passions; a person who cannot choose. Man then becomes closer to the visible animals than to the invisible God above. And so, man acts like an animal as he browses through the filth like all the beasts of the field.
Those vegetarian-types in Chesterton’s day argued we all come from monkeys in a godless cosmic accident. They’re still arguing that today. It’s their religion. And people join it because it’s a religion that doesn’t hold anyone accountable for their actions. How can they be, when everyone is a saddle horse? You see saddle horses don’t sin. They don’t make moral choices. Horses don’t go reconcile with their brother for sinning against him before they bring their offering to the altar. Horses don’t go to Confession.
Are we really saddle horses? Do we have no responsibility for our actions? Should we sing along with that poor creature who calls herself Lady Gaga that we are “just born that way” and therefore have no mastery over our acts?
Should we (thanks to Martin Luther) tell ourselves we are already saved, even if we laugh off what Christ preached on the Sermon on the Mount; telling ourselves it is no longer relevant for modern times? Funny, that’s what the ancient Jews in 600 BC surely said while they were worshiping animals and sacrificing children. The ancient Jews were with the times. If we have no mastery over our acts, then what is the point of Holy Mass, which Christ commanded us to celebrate in commemoration of his death? If we cannot control our actions Mass becomes kind of a joke, does it not? It becomes more of a therapeutic feel-good story; one not based on reality. If God’s laws get cast aside, Mass becomes nothing but an exercise in self- worship. Isn’t that interesting? People want to act like animals. And they worship them. And they then worship themselves. Animal worship.
My friends, Christ didn’t come to save horses and cows. He came to save us, rational, yet fallen creatures who make bad choices. And so, Christ climbed a mount and gave a sermon on the moral life. He gave us a law of which the smallest letter will not pass away. Keeping the law is the key to our survival. It’s not optional. Christ gave us the law and said follow it. He is a hard case. But he is also kind and merciful. And he showed us how to keep the law when he climbed another mount to suffer and die as a sacrifice for our sins. He did his Father's will. He does
his Father’s will at the Holy Sacrifice of Mass.
So, what is your choice?
he has set before you fire and water to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand
Christ told people to stretch forth their withered hands and he healed them. And he tells you at Holy Mass to stretch forth your hand. He’ll then grab it and have you follow Him up Calvary. And you can nail it into the cross and hang way up high with Christ, way above the valley of slaughter below. And it will feel good. It’s a feel-good story because it’s based on reality. It is based on the fact that you are closer to God than you might think. And with God’s grace you can conquer your sins, you can master your acts. If you so choose.
If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you; if you trust in God, you too shall live.
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