Father, Forgive Them

Today is the anniversary of that terrible day when the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision was made, when judges ruled that it was legal to murder one’s child in the womb. How horrible, despicable, inhumane and insane of humanity to believe that it is okay to discard a human life before it is born. Yet, every day, a mother, in her teens or older, with or without the child’s father, enters an abortion clinic to kill her child. An accomplice is ready to help her accomplish her plan.  Five thousand (5000) children sheltered in their mother’s womb  are killed each day in the U.S.  That is 1,825,000 a year in the U.S.A. alone.

On the cross, as executioners were killing Jesus in the most inhumane way possible, as inhumane as methods used to kill unborn children,  Jesus prayed: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).  So, too, I believe, Jesus prays today, pleading with His Father for our forgiveness when we, too, hurt others, killing them physically or torturing their spirit or their minds in the womb or out of it.

His pleas might sound like this:

Father, forgive them, when they kill their children in the womb, for they know not what they do.

Father, forgive them when they euthanize an elderly person treating them like trash to throw away. They know not what they are doing.

Father, forgive them when they use children and young people as objects of pleasure and profit! They know not what they are doing.

Father, forgive them when, in the name of Allah, they behead or torture another human being and demand ransom for that person’s life. They know not what they are doing.

Father, forgive them when children are, or anyone is,  beaten, physically or sexually abused, emotionally or verbally tormented with words that kill the spirit of that person. They know not what they are doing.

Father, forgive them when they kill or threaten to kill the Michael Browns, the Trevon Martins and others  of our societies confronted by policemen and assumed to be criminals or perceived to be dangerous. They know not what they are doing, not really.

Father, forgive those who sell babies for organ parts, for they know not what they are doing.

Father, forgive those who sell children into the slave market of organized labor, for they know not what they are doing.

This litany of crimes against humanity could go on ad infinitum.  Thank God that “Jesus is always able to save those who approach God through him, since he lives forever to make intercession … for [us] (Hebrews 7: 25-8:6, today’s first reading).