Healthcare Reflections

The weekend in 2007 before I discovered that my sweet baby Margaret, at age 18 weeks gestation, no longer had a heartbeat, I knew something was wrong. It wasn't so much that I could feel anything physically; I just had a feeling. Most of all, when I said a prayer to the baby's Guardian Angel, I knew the answer: "She's already gone." I can't describe how I knew it, but in the doctor's office a few days later, it just wasn't a complete surprise to find out that she was gone.

This past Thursday evening, I had a similar experience while attending a beautiful Holy Mass that was especially being said for the abomination of a so-called "healthcare" bill that is currently Congress' hot topic. The priest pointed out that it will essentially make abortion free, which will expand the number of abortions in our country like nothing since Roe v. Wade. Already we have a generation of Americans who think killing an unborn child for just about any reason is a valid "choice;" now our federal budget would help pay for the slaughters.

Sitting there in the holy, beautiful old church, with rich Latin hymns being offered by a talented men's choir, candles, statues of the saints, my fellow Christians, and, of course, the precious presence of Our Lord, I had the feeling that my prayers were being answered with the same answer I felt from that Guardian Angel: "No, my child, my ways are not your ways. Trust me."

For my dear blog readers who think that means that this healthcare bill is actually good for our country, um, that's not what I mean. I mean that God is at it again, allowing evil from which He will bring great good, in the way that He does so perfectly. Could it be an accident that all of this is happening right before Easter?

Sometimes I have this crazy fear that we really are getting close to the drama of the end times. Maybe we are. But I am thankful for this time in America. I am thankful for this time in which the epic battle between Good and Evil feels so vivid, and I can feel so clearly my connection to the parts of history when that battle has openly raged. Is our time really any more dramatic than first-century Rome, fourth-century North Africa, sixteenth-century England, eighteenth-century France, nineteenth-century Mexico, twentieth-century Russia, or any other age? Hardly. The battle rages on, I suppose.

At Mass on Thursday night I felt a close connection to the horror that Christ's followers must have felt at the foot of the Cross. In fighting against the evil of abortion in our time, we are blessed to share in the sorrows of Jesus' early followers at Calvary, as we watch in dismay as evil seems to triumph. It won't, of course, regardless of what happens on Capitol Hill this weekend.

"I have come to love the darkness. – For I believe now that it is a part, a very, very small part of Jesus’ darkness & pain on earth. You have taught me to accept it [as] a “spiritual side of ‘your work’” as you wrote. – Today really I felt a deep joy – that Jesus can’t go anymore through the agony – but that He wants to go through it in me. – More than ever I surrender myself to Him. – Yes – more than ever I will be at His disposal."

~ Mother Theresa, in a letter to her spiritual director, 1961

"Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus."

~ 1 Thessalonians 16-18