Luke tells the Christmas story with the most detail starting with Mary receiving the news of her pregnancy from the Holy Spirit and then Joseph being told in a dream to accept it. Her story is amazing and it is hard to imagine the amount of faith it took for her to accept the news. Being a Christian all of my life it is still hard to believe like she did and I am not capable of it no matter how hard I try. A young woman likely a teenager pregnant with only a promise of marriage but a promise most men would have reneged on. Again faith by her and Joseph brought us our savior Jesus and the Christianity that we are blessed with. This is part of advent and leads up to Christmas when Jesus was born in a manger. He was loved by his mother and Joseph and he returned that love to the world that would later lead to his great sacrifice to give us forgiveness and the ability to pray directly through him to God.
We hear this story every year and never tire of it since it is the most precious thing in our lives that we received a savior on Christmas day. The sermon is repeated over and over but the sermon you won't hear is about those that end up in Mary's position but not by God. Their pregnancies are the result of ignorance, lack of respect and liability and many just the products of a society that has reduced sex to an entertainment rather than the method of mans' procreation for married persons. We see Hollywood use sex in every presentation even when it is not part of the story line to sell tickets and television depicts sex as expected with every date and casual meeting. The young girl is left with very few options and many times has little control over them. A last result is abortion. This is the sermon subject you won't hear in Church. Abortion is just another way to kill a human being and we accept killing in many forms in most societies. Self defense, war and punishment are a few of the acceptable reasons to kill a human being. There are others that are justified like traffic accidents, drug overdoses and just plain accidents. The abortion of an infant or fetus is just another way of killing that has been justified by a society that thinks sexual entertainment is just normal activity and abortion takes the place of the many ways of prophylaxis available today. Some young women have multiple abortions in the same year rendering them completely used and misused without any cry of help or assistance. Never have I heard any sermon about the people that have been so mistreated and pushed aside to keep from marring our public life. I am in a similar position as a member of the board of directors of a free clinic. A clinic that is available to help the misused and addicted people. The city has offered a large amount of money to move us out of the city and take our clients with us. It is removing Lazarus from the entrance of the rich man to ease our conscious about those that have less than we do and ease our guilt of not having to help them. Out of sight and out of mind is the way the city wants the homeless and others that require help. It is the same as abortion in that we don't have a problem if we don't see it. Our Churches are not seeing the problems that we need to be talking about or the ones that would really prove how much faith we have in the Savior whose birth we are about to celebrate.
God warned the early Jews that if they did not stop worshipping idols and return to God there would be consequences of plagues, famine and defeat by foreigners. One of the idols was moloch, the Cananite god that required child sacrifice. Today's version is abortion and it is only one of the idols we see being worshiped. It is important that we re-examine our faith and see if we can come a little closer to that faith that the Blessed Mary had.
May God Bless you and have a Merry Christmas.
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