Father Ralph’s Corner 11-9-2018
Always An Alternative
AAA is especially for those women with crisis pregnancies who see no way ahead except a termination.
Each will have different reasons for this “impossibility”.
Some of them may be as follows:
· I can’t possibly cope with another child.
· The pregnancy was the result of casual ‘post-party’ sex with my boyfriend.
· My health could not cope with a pregnancy now.
· The financial burdens would be very great.
· There are many ‘social’ reasons that would make it exceedingly difficult.
· In addition many educationally disruptive reasons…College and beyond.
When a person pleads that they have no alternative to aborting their child, in response to the reasons that they give - one might say:
· This is already a human being with its own unique genetic form; the details of what it will become are ‘programmed’ from conception. It has a right to be born.
· Do not decide to eliminate this child if there is any alternative. AAA will provide you with help that will remove or reduce one or several of the “difficulties” which make you now say “I have no alternative but to abort my child.”
· Do not claim that “difficulties” are insuperable. Many of them may be overcome or alleviated.
· The decision to eliminate is not reversible once the termination has taken place. You could be pondering the “what ifs” for a life time.
AAA will provide you with help that will remove, or reduce, one or several of the difficulties which make you now say: “I have no alternative but to terminate my pregnancy”
AAA POSSIBILITIES
Referring a person to various forms of already available Crisis Pregnancy Assistance, for example:
+ Coalition for Life
+ BirthRight
+ThriVe
+Our Lady’s Inn
+Respect Life Apostolate (of the St Louis Archdiocese)
+List of men and women eager to help in various ways (counsel, adoption, financial assistance, etc.).
+Friendship - people eager and glad to stay supportive through the months of pregnancy and after the child has been born.
+Medical assistance
+PRAYER - individuals and communities who will support them with prayer.
ALWAYS AN ALTERNATIVE
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DARKNESS
There is storm in the desert,
storm in the mountains
and storm at sea
but the miracle is
that creation itself
continues to be.
The earth shudders
rocks are shattered
houses fall;
lightning nails
the coffin of earth
which darkness palls,
For there on high
nailed to a tree
with man-made steel
are the hands of God
who fashioned Man
on the Potter’s wheel.
Above the head
of the woman who bore
the God-man child
a billion stars
of a billion years
are being defiled.
for at this hour
and at this place
in the Milky Way
the life of God
nailed by Man
is draining away.
The wonder is not
that the world quakes
at his final call
but that when he died
the world could bear
to exist at all.
(Poetry and the Prose above by Ralph Wright O.S.B.)
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EVEN THE DEATH OF THE CROSS
13th STATION
Jesus is laid in the Arms of His Afflicted Mother