UNBORN WORD of the day

Respect Life Sunday – October 3, 2010

Topics addressed in this year’s Respect Life Program reflect a diversity of pro-life concerns (we have added  links to some excellent pamphlets/bulletin inserts from the Respect Life Program):

• the death penalty and Divine Mercy
• end-of-life care Caring for Each Other, Even Unto Death by Marie Hillard
• infertility treatments in line with Church teaching Hope for Married Couples Who Want to Have a Child by John T. Bruchalski, MD, FACOG
• sexual trafficking
• population control Make Room for People by Steven W. Mosher
• depression and suicide among youth
• the promise of pro-life youth The Promise of Pro-Life Youth by Megan Breen and Samuel Vasquez

Here are two links to the USCCB website that give complete details on the Respect Life Program.

Click here for an overview of the program and here for materials that can be downloaded.

What I find especially interesting about this year’s program is the emphasis on Our Lady of Guadalupe in the 2010 – 2011 Respect Life Program Liturgy Guide.

Page 10 of the Liturgy Guide is about the Miraculous Apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The following is a quote from this article:

“Our Lady of Guadalupe has been honored by twenty-five popes. She has been formally declared Patroness and Mother of the Americas. Informally, she is honored as Patroness of Unborn Children because she appeared to Juan Diego as a pregnant woman and, in the seven years after the apparitions, approximately eight million Aztec people converted to Catholicism, and abandoned a culture of death that had practiced human sacrifice, including infant sacrifice.”

There is also a beautiful nine day Novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Liturgy Guide. Day 3 has a short reflection on Our Lady’s Pregnancy.

Day Three

Mother of God, your ribboned sash identified you as a pregnant woman, a woman who bore the Christ Child to a world in darkness and who through two millennia has borne the light and love of Christ to a world that has largely rejected Him. May the love of your Son awaken a hymn of thanksgiving and praise in all pregnant mothers,as happened long ago in the home of Elizabeth and Zechariah.