Heart Aches
11th Sunday of the Ordinary Time – Heart Aches
Sometimes the world just makes me sad. You, too, I bet.
About a week ago, news broke that a popular YouTube couple, influencers whose names I never heard of up until this moment, publicly declared that the child they recently conceived and had celebrated via a social media announcement was aborted after having been diagnosed as “possibly having Down Syndrome.” They weren’t even sure this was the case.
I did not watch the couple’s entire announcement, but the clips I did see show the fear and vulnerability at having received unexpected news. Said the mother to TMZ: “No one wants to hear that something is wrong with their baby.”
Certainly we can sympathize with the heartache. Most of us know what it is like to have one’s world turned upside down, especially when it comes to the health and well-being of someone we love. We don’t want to see others suffer, nor do we want to suffer. I am not denying this fact, even in my own life.
But I have been wrestling a lot with this particular story for many reasons – both obvious and maybe not so obvious – and Matthew’s statement in today’s Gospel about Jesus’ heart being moved with pity for His people is what I am clinging to in this time of anger, sadness and frustration.
We should be righteously angry that another innocent life was taken; that we humans decided once again who is worthy to live and who is not. I understand that the topics of reproductive rights and abortion are both uncomfortable to discuss in publicand often multi-layered in those talking points, but here’s the bottom line: Who says there is something “wrong” with a child who is born with Down Syndrome?
One of my former students – herself a mother of a beautiful boy who happens to have Down’s – took to her own social media page and in full transparency offered the following response to the YouTube couple: “Don’t you dare speak for my child or the countless others who raise such beautiful human beings. There is absolutely nothing ‘wrong’ with my son. They feel, they love, they have challenges just like all of us – and they are worthy.”
So yes, we should be righteously angry that we are choosing across the broad spectrum of life who should live and who shouldn’t. From abortion to euthanasia, the death penalty to high-tech medical tampering: we must pray and examine our collective conscience in order to ask the question: are my choices in line with God’s? Is this decision just and moral?
Hand-in-hand with this emotion comes much sadness, as well. My heart – even in the midst of anger – holds much sadness: for the unborn baby, most definitely. But I am also sad for this young couple: sad that they didn’t know they would have had support bringing the child to birth; sad that they didn’t consider adoption; sad-and-angry that they chose such an announcement if it was done for publicity and ‘likes’ and an increase in followers.
There’s pity here: a pity that Matthew uses in a way that means “twisted guts;” a pity that mirrors the heart of the Good Shepherd, gazing upon the vast field of his lost and broken sheep. For in the end, it’s not just this couple who are hurting. We all are, in one way or another.
You and I: we have all sinned. We have done things, said things, permitted things that have flown in the face of God’s commands and have nearly destroyed others or our very souls. We are no better than this couple who has terminated their pregnancy. We are no better than the person we hate the most right now.
But – and this is the key of Paul’s letter to the Church of Rome – what is redeemable in us and what makes us healed and whole is the Sacrifice of Christ who died to reconcile us to the Father and save our souls from an eternity of hell. He died so we may live, and He died so that we can become, in Father Henri Nouwen’swords, “wounded healers” for others.
That’s such a powerful understanding: that the sins and wounds we bring to Christ’s Cross through the Sacrament of Reconciliation become the very instruments He then uses to save other lost sheep who are drowning in the muck of their sinfulness. After all, take a look at the ones Jesus chose to become those first wounded-and-redeemed healers: fishermen who denied Him; angry and jealous revolutionaries who hated the government and outsiders; men who weren’t always faithful; disciples who sinned and had messy lives.
We are those Twelve, too, in our own way and our own time. Stumbling, fearful and sinful.
And yet, once these apostles sought the Heart of the Shepherd for healing, the Lord then sent them out boldly – to cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse lepers and drive out demons. God used them to heal others in His name because they knew the power of His healing love in their own lives. They couldn’t offer what they themselves were unwilling to receive, right? Isn’t that the same for us?
All around us – in these pews, in our families and in our neighborhood (to say nothing of the world) – there are countless lost sheep who feel like lepers, believing they are unwanted and not welcome due to choices made about divorce and sex and abortion and a host of other messy life issues. We who have known their pain – and we who have been forgiven of these very same acts and redeemed in and through the Blood of Christ – should we not be the very ones to walk with them in theirs, allowing Christ to use us as His instrument of healing?
All around us, the walking dead exist, far worse than that which is portrayed in Hollywood filmography. These zombie-like humans walk through life dead to faith; dead to mercy; dead to authentic, loving relationships. Should not we who have felt this way at points – feeling like a shell of our true selves – shouldn’t we offer a witness of resurrection and true life by the joy wenow live as followers of Christ? Perhaps this thought today specifically: Am I being asked to share with someone close to me the healing I have found – the new life that has come – by returning to Church, to the Sacraments and to Christ?
And as for casting out the demons, Lord knows they are having a field day lately. They know their time is short – and they know that God has already won – but they are determined to drag to hell as many souls as possible before Christ returns, and the ways in which these demons manifest are often very sly and subtle: destructive gossip; pornography; selfish greed; hate that clings to every decision made … you name it. When we allow God to destroy those very things inside us, then we can certainly witness to others that it is possible – that God heals every hurt and destroys every sin when we humbly come to Him in prayer and confidence. Confident in His Love and Mercy. Confident that there is nothing that can’t and won’t be forgiven.
But we must first bring it to Him … and then help others do the same. Wounded-healers healing in Christ’s Name.
Which brings me full-circle to the influencer couple who terminated the pregnancy of a child with Down Syndrome. We can be upset by the decision and clutch our pearls, or we can pray a Rosary for them. We can shake our heads in disgust, or we can contribute to the Cecil County Pregnancy Center and Down Syndrome resource agencies. We can scream at women who have aborted babies and tell them they are heading for hell, or we can listen to their hearts while remaining true to our faith and our God.
You know something? When Jesus stood there that afternoon in Galilee and felt his guts twisted by the lost and hurting sheep of humanity, it would have been very easy for Him to condemn them all (and us) to hell. Instead, He chose the route of mercy by picking up the Cross and offering redemptive, healing Love instead.
How could we chose any differently?
Right now, there’s an influencer couple who could certainly use a lot of that Love the Shepherd has come to offer.