My Lord, the baby is dead!
Why, my Lord—dare I ask why? It will not hear the whisper of the wind or see the beauty of its parents’ face—it will not see the beauty of Your creation or a flame of a sunrise. Why, my Lord?
“Why, My child—do you ask ‘why’?” Well, I will tell you why.
You see, the child lives. Instead of the wind he hears the sound of angels singing before My throne. Instead of the beauty that passes he sees everlasting Beauty—he sees My face. He was created and lived a short time so the image of his parents imprinted on his face may stand before Me as their personal intercessor. He knows secrets of heaven unknown to men on earth. He laughs with a special joy that only the innocent possess. My ways are not the ways of man. I create for My Kingdom and each creature fills a place in that Kingdom that could not be filled by another. He was created for My joy and his parents’ merits. He has never seen pain or sin. He has never felt hunger or pain. I breathed a soul into a seed, made it grow and called it forth.”
I am humbled before you, my Lord, for questioning Your wisdom, goodness, and love. I speak as a fool—forgive me. I acknowledge Your sovereign rights over life and death. I thank You for the life that began for so short a time to enjoy so long an Eternity.
Mother M. Angelica, courtesy of EWTN.com
Editor’s note:
The Church explains that (except for the Blessed Virgin Mary) all babies are conceived lacking grace and separated from God, in a state of spiritual deprivation, due to the inherited remains of the sin of Adam and Eve … Original Sin.
The whole matter is (typically) remedied shortly after birth, by the holy Sacrament of Baptism.
This presents a theological problem for the miscarried or the stillborn, since Baptism is available only to those who have been born alive, and since one who has not been baptized is (normally) considered unsuitable for Heaven.
Since we have no definitive, divinely revealed information as to exactly how God deals with this particular type of occurrence, all we can do is rely on God to do what is best … and in faith … consecrate the spirit of our infant child to God’s infinite mercy and tender love.
The routine practice of our Catholic faith seems to hold out even more genuine hope for us, in these cases.
Parents (particularly the mother) who remain in a state of grace, who regularly attend Mass, and who worthily and regularly partake of Holy Communion and other appropriate sacraments, have every reason to trust that God will take special charge of any child who might (for whatever reason) fail to survive the entire process of conception, gestation and live birth … since through our sacramental life of grace, the child in the womb is no stranger to God, who not only indwells our soul, but also nourishes and sanctifies our physical body (including the baby in the womb).
There is “precedent” for God acting in this way, since that is essentially what happened to John the Baptist (while still in-utero) the moment the Virgin Mary (already carrying Jesus in her blessed womb) first approached her cousin Elizabeth (John’s mother).
Here’s the biblical account:
Luke 1:39-44 And Mary rising up in those days, went into the hill country with haste into a city of Juda. And she entered into the house of Zachary and saluted Elizabeth. And it came to pass that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the infant leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost. And she cried out with a loud voice and said: Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy.
The Church has always considered this to be the moment that John the Baptist, still inside his mother, was himself first baptized.
What Jesus did for his cousin John he will more than likely also do for his faithful Catholic brothers and sisters.
So … even absent the Sacrament of Baptism, under extraordinary circumstances, we have great reason to believe that the same Christ who we receive bodily in Holy Communion … who knows us and loves us … is not likely to ignore or reject the little child dwelling inside the womb of a faithful, grace-filled, Catholic mother.
Our faith informs us, in light of all this, that God, because he is good, just, and merciful, will accomplish whatever might be necessary, through his abundant grace … to grant the baby eternal salvation and peace … lovingly taking the infant to himself.
Matthew 19:13-14 Then were little children presented to him, that he should impose hands upon them and pray. And the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said to them: Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me: for the kingdom of Heaven is for such.
Mother Angelica obviously knows and loves God, and in her prayer for these special babies, she faithfully takes Jesus at his word. For a number of very good reasons, faced with the profound tragedy of a miscarriage or still birth, we should too.
More on this very sensitive matter here
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November 15, 2009
Categories: Books & Publications, Catholic Q & A, Events, Human Rights, Inspirational, Marian . Tags: baby, baptism, birth, Blessed Virgin Mary, catholic, Catholic-Church, death, EWTN, faith, father, fetus, god, grace, heaven, holy communion, infant, Jesus Christ, John the Baptist, love, mercy, miscarriage, mother, Mother Angelica, original-sin, parents, prayer, sacraments, stillborn . Author: Hosted by Doug Lawrence . Comments: Leave a comment
Reader Paul comments on “Those in danger of death are presumed to be repentant…”
See the original article here:
“Those in danger of death are presumed to be repentant…”
Paul writes:
We are all quite damnable sinners and our life style and actions may be far less than we hope them to be. As death approaches perhaps we should be in terror of our eternity especially if we think about God and his judgment upon our wretched selves.
It is not that I disagree with this point. Indeed it is strangely comforting to remember that God is All Just and everything we do we shall be called to account for. Many wicked people would do well to tremble at this thought and perhaps the fear of eternal damnation may allow grace into their hearts before it is too late. After Death it will certainly be too late to repent and if a soul refuses grace all its life and at death spits hate upon whatever grace is offered its fate may be what it desires. As C.S.Lewis noted; “hell is a door locked from the inside”.
Nevertheless, we should not be afraid of our final judgment. Rather we should welcome it and go blithely to Our Lord. That is not because we are mentally deranged but as Christians we believe in something even greater than Judgment . . . We believe in Hope.
This virtue comes not from what we do not know but from what we do know.
It is about knowing that God is Love and essentially is revealed by Jesus as a God of infinite mercy and compassion. Hence the thief on the cross asks “Jesus remember me when you go into your kingdom“. The response of Jesus is one of sublime mercy when he promises the thief eternal salvation that very day. It is not that the thief has asked for repentance because he fears final annihilation but because he dares hope that this man crucified beside him so unjustly is a king after all.
And if the Gospels are Good News then we must recall what they are good news about? That Jesus understands us and seeks out the company of sinners rather than condemning us and blasting us into oblivion because of this or that action.
Mortal sin is constantly being re-evaluated by the Catholic Church. We simply do not understand the eternal consequences of any temporal act. There are some actions that are heinous and these are universally abhorred. Yet our understanding of these has and does change in time because we are creatures of time and place. For example, Abortion is a horrible sin but not all people that have had an abortion are of equal guilt because time and sense make the individual culpable or less so. The act is monstrous but individuals take greater or lesser part by their understanding. Again for example, suicide used to be considered always a mortal sin but today we are more gentle in our understanding that we simply do not know the reasoning or intelligence of a person that takes their own life. It would be insensitive and immoral for us to dismiss the hope of paradise because of any action of which we are ignorant of the full story.
Instead we have come to understand that God is not about Judgment but about infinite understanding, kindness, gentleness, mercy. Our hope is therefore that our loving father whom knows us intimately will forgive us more often then we fall, prostrate with our own stupidity.
All people of good will are potentially redeemable and it is the will of Our Lord that we shall be saved and not condemned.
When we see the Sacred Heart of Jesus we are told that he loves us beyond all reason or rational consideration. The Sacred Heart does not require us to offer a prayer in word, a simple longing look for example is enough to bring grace of salvation upon us. We will never earn Paradise but Jesus gives us his everything so that we can obtain it. It is Love that we face at death and it will require us to open before it every window in our soul. We can never escape Gods justice and his final judgment upon us but as Christians we must not be afraid to embrace his Love. If we can do this then we believe that Salvation is assured no matter our faults or errors at death.
To turn from Gods grace is unfortunate and could be disastrous but we must never forget “God is Love” and that should encourage us to go into the light and give us faith to welcome our Risen lord.
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April 25, 2011
Categories: Books & Publications, Human Rights, Inspirational . Tags: death, faith, god, God is Love, grace, hope, Jesus Christ, judgment, love, mercy, reader comments, repentance . Author: Hosted by Doug Lawrence . Comments: Leave a comment