One more in the win column!
Posted by Matt Yonke, March 4th, 2008
Two thoughts and a quote for today. First, the good news.
Connie Betz, one of our dedicated sidewalk counselors was at the Planned Parenthood last Saturday morning and flagged down a Hispanic couple. She was able to use our Spanish counseling pamphlets to communicate as they spoke almost no English at all.
She spoke with them in the Dominick's parking lot for a while before they went into PP. After about 20-30 minutes, they came back out and, with what English they had, told Connie that they did not have the abortion and were not going to!
Connie said their demeanor was completely changed after they left. They were noticeably upset before going in and on the way out were beaming with joy.
Praise God who can overcome any obstacle, including language barriers, to save His little ones!
The Weight of Eternal Destiny
On a not unrelated note, a thought about how we deal with others.
Whether we are trying to convince an abortion-bound mother to choose life, talking to our friends, contending for the truth on a blog, or ordering dinner at a restaurant, we must remember the inherent dignity of the person we are talking to.
Everyone we talk to is created in the image of God and if we understood the depth of what that meant, we would be more careful with our words.
This quote from C.S. Lewis's excellent essay The Weight of Glory, which I would strongly encourage you to read in its entirety, says it much better than I could. Let's consider this in the way we deal with one another, both online and in real life.
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.
It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.
This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.
I was blessed to witness this miracle of God's grace as He worked through the pro-life sidewalk counselors to save this Hispanic couple's baby on Saturday (3/1/2008) morning. Thanks be to God!
I encourage everyone to pray that God will guide this Hispanic couple during this pregnancy. I pray that He leads them to any physical, financial, spiritual, emotional assistance that they need. I pray that they will take advantage of the wide range of free help available from a crisis pregancy center.
I am inspired by the courage and compassion of Connie and the other sidewalk counselors who were involved with this rescue operation. I pray that God will bless them and protect them in their work.
March 4th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Jesus said to them in reply, "Have faith in God.
Amen, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it shall be done for him. Therefore I tell you, all that you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours. When you stand to pray, forgive anyone against whom you have a grievance, so that your heavenly Father may in turn forgive you your transgressions."
Mark 11:22-25
March 5th, 2008 at 4:17 am
Today we had another turnaway. A young Hispanic woman drove in with two other passengers and parked a few minutes. One of the prayer partners and I were praying for St. Therese's intercession, and they drove out without ever getting out of the car.
Thank you, Jesus.
Prayer request: For the families of the deceased NIU students, for the students wounded and grieving, and for the clergy to help them towards healing.
March 8th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
From A Friend Of The Little Flower:
My hat goes off to the Prayer Warriors from St. Peter's Catholic Church In Geneva, IL. Thank You.
You come with a prayerful mindset and offer prayer as an instrument for the stopping of abortion at
Planned Parenthood.
Prayer should be the goal, the means, and ultimately the end–the end being the thing accomplished while
pro-lifers are out there. Prayer will bring an end to abortion. The comission to pray is not secondary to our
opposition to the death culture; it is the opposition to the death culture.
Prayer will now avert the killing and will continue to stop the killing in the future. A woman in pursuit of an abortion is most likely to respond to the Holy Spirit working within her. The Holy Spirit miraculously and through the sometimes clumsy prayer efforts of the pro-lifers assembled there will evoke turn-aways.
A sage and long-time pro-life friend Orin Cooper once said this about turn-aways: "A woman who responds to our efforts there (at the abortion clinic) will most certainly have already had the hand of God on her. It is up to us to lead her along the right path" through, you guessed it: prayer!
The following prayer "The Miraculous Invocation to St. Therese" (who is now spending her heaven on earth in intercessory prayer on our behalf) is effective in producing turn-aways:
O Glorious St. Therese, whom Almighty God has raised up to aid and inspire the human family, I implore your Miraculous Intercession. You are so powerful in obtaining every need of body and spirit from the Heart of God. Holy Mother Church proclaims you "Prodigy of Miracles… the greatest saint of Modern Times." Now I fervently beseech you to answer my petition (mention here) and to carry out your promises of spending heaven doing good on earth… of letting fall from Heaven a Shower of Roses. Little Flower, give me your childlike faith, to see the Face of God in the people and experiences of my life, and to love God with full confidence. St. Therese, my Carmelite Sister, I will fulfill your plea "to be made known everywhere" and I will continue to lead others to Jesus through you.
I believe the young women entering the clinic are especially dear to St. Therese because she was a young "girl" herself when she entered religious life (only 15 years of age.) Being a "child" of the Little Flower the babies are brought under her intercessary care as well in this prayer–a prayer for God's intervention on behalf of the family.
Continue to pray this prayer for the women entering the abortion clinic and so too for the side-walk counselors. Ask for them God's direction, protection, and especially God's sanctification. Sanctification is God's continued revelation of Himself to us.
Padre Pio said that we need four things (all accomplished through prayer) in order to "hear" God and to enjoy His "presence": "to love," "to listen," "to understand," and "to be in awe of Him." Understanding of God comes from God. Ironically, three of the four things that we do in order to "hear" God we do ordinarily in our everyday relationships. With the exception of the last, of being "in awe of Him," we are already exercising the tools we need to converse with God everyday. The last of the four is the most important. Having an "awe of Him" is our reminder of His sovereignty. He is an "awesome" God. It is no surprise that this has long been a theme song for Pro-life:
"Our God is an awesome God!"
Thanks again to the prayer warriors at St. Peter's (Geneva, IL).
Thank you Jesus.
Prayer Request: For the intentions of Connie Betz (sidewalk-counselor)
Please pass this on!
From: A Friend Of The Little Flower
For: Reproduction and Distribution
May 15th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
St. Therese, St. Maria Faustina, St. Padre Pio, pray for us!
When I was counseling not too long ago, I was praying to St. Padre Pio, and then all of a sudden I had this vision of Rose petals coming down on top of the Planned Parenthood building. I thought that St. Therese must be near. As I prayed to her the next thing that I was made to realize was that the flower petals were not there to make the building inside smell good, but instead they would bring about the reality of what takes place inside, the stench of death.
These Heavenly people who lived Saintly lives on earth are here to help us, to intercede for us, just as we would ask a good friend to pray for us.
May 15th, 2008 at 6:07 pm