On this fourth Sunday in Advent we share in the lives of two women, Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, both soon to give birth to sons. In communion with them, we too feel an “infant in (our) womb leap for joy” and we too are “filled with the Spirit.” Together, we wonder “how does this (miracle) happen to me?” In these women’s pro-life Spirit, we too can give life – to a pro-life world in which joy is the genuine experience of every mother and every son.
We need Mary and Elizabeth’s joyful pro-life energy to change a grievously pro-death world. It coerces both mothers and sons towards its pro-death ethic, in abortion (Planned Parenthood) and in war (the military). It coerces all of us against the obvious truth that women, specifically mothers, can receive health care and boys can receive skills from organizations that don’t also practice violence. It coerces all of us against the obvious truth that the violences of abortion and war are great money makers. Both make money by dehumanizing mothers and sons to the level of commodity. Militarism’s abortion business, specifically its Planned Parenthood division, has long been dehumanizing women, coercing them for money and using their babies’ body parts for sale to “procurement technicians.” They package and deliver the body parts to the labs of major universities and the government for financial gain. The labs thus ‘own’ and have ‘property rights’ over aborted human life as a commodity. Militarism’s war business, specifically its U.S. division, has long been dehumanizing sons, coercing them for financial gain and using their bodies for sale to corporate war-plunderers. They use the young men to package and deliver oil, sugar, fruit, and gold to Exxon Mobil, American Sugar, United Fruit, and J.P. Morgan for financial gain. The military and its contractors thus ‘own’ and have ‘property rights’ over soldiers as a commodity. Like women, soldiers too are dehumanized. Militarism’s dehumanizing of sons is camouflaged by the owner class sanctifying its gainful commodification of sons. It commodifies them and sells them as heroes. Men who kill are great, courageous, salvific. A religion of blood sacrifice that makes money from coercing men into killing and dying in war will do the same with women in abortion. Thus, this pro-death culture tells us: Soldiers sacrifice for God and country but pregnant women shouldn’t sacrifice for a fetus. No soldier is expected to refuse any sacrifice no matter how great but no woman should be expected to carry a baby she doesn’t want. Soldiers sacrifice their lives killing others because it sets us free but women shouldn’t sacrifice nine months birthing another because it enslaves them. Cowardly soldiers can devise a rape culture that abuses women about keeping or aborting the rapist’s baby but courageous women shouldn’t create a healing world birthing babies or gifting them to others. The danger of a soldier’s life requires courage to fight on while the danger of a pregnancy requires opting out by termination. Soldiers trained to kill are becoming the best they can be but pregnant women counseled to keep their babies are being coerced. Trained soldiers who kill are noble and a blessing but unwed women who give birth are foolish and welfare leeches. War is necessary but giving birth is optional. Kill in war and kill in abortion and Militarism will propagandize you a hero, while it sacrifices you for plunder. Militarism will never respect women for birthing and living. Militarism will never allow women to nurture themselves nor their baby boys to become as Christ, life-givers. It will instead always coerce women to be trained and to train their baby boys as Christ’s killers, soldiers. Under Militarism in its conservative form, women are heroes when they fight and kill their own identities, submit to the feminine stereotype, and reproduce for the patriarchy. Under Militarism in its liberal form, women are heroes when they fight and kill their own identities, submit to the masculine stereotype, and kill for the patriarchy. Whether they fight and kill a life in their own souls, on the battlefield, in their state’s death chambers, by cutting social programs, or in the abortion clinic it is when men and women are coerced to fight and kill that this pro-death world acclaims them as heroes.
We have lost our communion with joyful powerful women like Mary and Elizabeth and the peacemaker sons they nurtured. Theirs is a labor for life in a world that does not celebrate life nor life-givers. It certainly does not celebrate women or men who reject its warmaking and death to joyfully embrace peacemaking and life. Women do not need to be another of Militarism’s heroes. We need to be our own miraculous life-giving human beings – as we are born to be. We are born to be witnesses to men that they too are born as life-givers. Together we can give birth to a miraculously pro-life world.
Prayer: Spirit, the joy of life leaps within me every day.
Question: What is the labor I am willing to do to give birth to a joyful pro-life world?
December 23, 2018 Gospel Luke 1:39-45 Fourth Sunday of Advent