Abortion and the Help We Need

There’s a beautiful soul I see at daily Mass. He’s a simple guy. I’ll call him “Bob” to hide his identity — which in his humility he’d probably prefer. He is who he is: the salt of the earth… and a beacon of light to the disabled sister he cares for at home. Somewhere in his late 40s, he’s an usher on the weekends and helps out whenever the parish might need him. He’s slotted on Friday mornings for an hour before the Blessed Sacrament at our parish’s adoration chapel.  That hour of his ends when the eight o’clock Mass begins.

I arrived shortly before Mass, and soon saw him leave the chapel to head to his pew just as the entrance hymn was starting up. The simplicity he shines out makes people smile. And on this particular summer morning, his red and green sweatshirt with “Christ is the reason for the Season” across the front had already made my day. But he looked troubled this particular Friday. I wondered if something was wrong… a cold, perhaps, or maybe allergies. I made a mental note to include him in my Mass intentions.

During Mass he cherishes his role as the one who moves the table out of the way after the offertory gifts are taken up. He does it with a certain reverence, taking his time to smooth the cloth on the table after he sets it ahead of the front pew — perfectly out of the way for the Communion line. This particular morning, he was taking his time with the table and its covering. I could tell he was carrying a heavy load inside.

On the way back from Communion, he usually has a peculiarly serene smile on his face. He finds such happiness receiving back the gifts that are transformed by the priest on God’s table. But this particular morning, his consumption of Jesus didn’t seem to be strong enough medicine for his troubles.

After Mass, he’ll wander over to tell me the headlines about the pro-life news that he’s read on the internet at the library. He wears his soul on his sleeve, usually grinning from ear to ear when he’s heard of positive news in the movement. When it’s bad news that he’s come upon, he frowns and tells it to me in sad, defeated tones.

He never stops telling me how great a job our parish’s small pro-life committee is doing, and apologizes often for his inability to help the cause, except by praying or giving something up — like pop, or his favorite television show. “It’s all right, Bob. God knows you can’t drive,” I tell him — to make him feel better about not being more active. He whispered to me, once, the real reason he can’t help us more: “Whenever I get thinking about abortion too much, it makes me have a bad day.” You see, he can’t bear it when God’s innocent creations are harmed.

On this troubled morning after Mass, he appeared to be holding back tears as he approached me in my pew. “Are you okay, Bob?” I asked as he took a seat in front of me.  Still thinking (or hoping) it was just allergies, I was ready to offer him a ride to the drug store.

“Something came to me before Mass… during my adoration hour,” he told me immediately. “Something about the oil spill that is making Jesus sad.”

I know him well enough by now, and sensed that whatever “came to him” wasn’t anything geo-political or apocalyptic. I wasn’t going to hear anything elaborate and scientific, nor anything fanatical. Just the reason he was upset. With Bob, what you see is what you get. And what you hear is probably what comes to him when he’s connecting with his best friend, Jesus.

He loves animals, and the spill has been bothering him lately. He’s seen the pictures of the pelicans and the dead fish, and he wants the oil to stop leaking into the Gulf more than most people do—especially people like myself who can drive and want it to stop before the cost of gasoline begins to skyrocket.

“Tell me, Bob,” I said.

“The oil leak goes on and on and lots of dolphins are going to die,” he said somewhat prophetically. “It’s all because of an abortion, and Jesus is frustrated because of it.” I thought I heard him correctly. He said “an abortion,” and not because of abortion in general. “I wish I could let the world know. It came to me… in front of Jesus,” he added, just so I wouldn’t think he was crazy about what came to him in prayer.

An abortion?” I said. I was puzzled.

“Uh huh,” he said. “The person who has the smarts to come up with a plan to stop the oil….” Then the reality of what came to him descended on me.

“There should be a smart person in the world who knows how to fix it!” he explained.

“Yes, you’d think someone would have figured it out by now,” I agreed, hoping to steer him away from what I feared Jesus had spoken to his soul.

“There is someone,” he said, “but he’s not down there in the Gulf to help out. He or she has been aborted.”

“Oh, geez, Bob!” I almost gasped.  “Jesus told you that?” A long, quiet pause followed while his statement sent a wave of goosebumps up my arms. I truly did not know what to say. Then it dawned on me… this unsophisticated man could very well be right. With all the minds that never got a chance to go to college because of over 50 million legal pregnancy terminations, it’s quite likely that at least one of the “terminated” would have had a brain with the capacity to provide a solution.  I looked at the tabernacle and wondered why Bob’s best friend would trouble him with such a thought. I tried quickly to come up with something that would console this gentle guy who holds all living creatures so dear in his heart. Then something came to me.

“Bob, I think the Lord just told me something,” I said, breaking our silence. “We can pray.”

“I’m praying all the time,” he said soberly. “I don’t want any more animals to die.”

“Yeah, but we can pray specifically,” I explained. “If a person with the solution was aborted, then that means he is now with our Lord. And if he’s with our Lord, then he’s a saint, just like all the Saints.”

“You mean pray…  like ask for his intercessions?” he said.

“Just like that,” I answered. “He’s not gone completely. He’s somewhere in the world, just with God now. And if he… or she… would have had the solution, then that person still has the solution. We just have to ask God if that person can somehow share it with us here on earth.”

“How can we get the word out for everyone to ask him — or her — to intercede for us?” he asked me.

“I don’t know, buddy,” I said. Then I realized why he was telling me all this. I told him once that a Catholic daily website had published some things I wrote, so he thinks I’m a famous author.

“Maybe I can write something and send it in to that website I told you about, the one ran some of my stuff in the past,” I told him.

“That’s right, I forgot! You’re a famous author. Could you do that, Len?” he begged. He makes me feel so good about a little talent I often forget to share.

“I can try. It’s up to the editors. They decide if something is good enough to put up on their website.”

“I’ll start praying that they take what you write. I don’t have the internet,” he reminded me. “Can you tell me if they do. I’ll buy you coffee after Mass if they do.”

So dear reader, if you’ve followed thus far, could you do me a favor? A possible way to stop the oil leak may have come to a beautiful soul I know. It’s a “fix” which the oil company or the federal government would only laugh at, mainly because — to them — “things” terminated by abortion are not considered persons with brains. But the next time you have a moment in front of the tabernacle, could you ask God: if there is a person —  if there is a “victim-of-abortion saint” in heaven — and that person’s mind was meant to give us a solution, can he or she somehow send us the answer?

A man who cares dearly for his sister and his parish and “his” offertory table; who wears his heart on his sleeve and a Christmas sweatshirt to daily Mass in the summer; who will never be fettered by the chains of fame or fortune; who seems to have a sense about what saddens his friend Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament; and who is troubled when innocent animals die –he asked me to write this for him.

Me? I’m just looking forward to getting a peculiarly serene smile back on a face I see every day. And some pleasant conversation over coffee with a beautiful soul.

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