I want to tell you the story of St. Maximilian Kolbe. He grew up in Poland and eventually ended up becoming a Franciscan priest. When the Nazis invaded Poland, he was unafraid to help the Jewish people of his area and so, like many priests at the hands of the Nazis, he was arrested and sent to Auschwitz. In this horrible concentration camp, Kolbe undoubtedly saw the worst that humanity had to offer. All around him was the unimaginable suffering and violent death of innocent people–mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, and children. One day, a prisoner escaped. The policy of the prison guards at Auschwitz was to randomly choose ten people to be killed when one prisoner escaped. This brutal policy was of course designed to terrorize the prisoners at the camp and discourage escape attempts. So that day they lined up all of the prisoners in the central yard and began walking up and down the lines of people. One by one, they called forward prisoners to die. Eventually they came to a man named Franciszek [Franci-zek] Gajowniczek [Gajoh-ni-zek], who cried out, “My wife! My children!”
As Franciszek was pleading for his life, the Nazi commander noticed movement elsewhere in the ranks of the prisoners. This was highly unusual, because most of the time, the penalty of breaking ranks was for a prisoner to be shot on the spot. But somehow, the prisoner strode up unharmed till he was in front of the commander. It was Fr. Kolbe. In perfect German, Fr. Kolbe calmly told the commander, “I want to die in place of this prisoner.” The commander was so dumbfounded that he actually took a step backwards. Father Kolbe continued, “I have no wife or children. Besides, I’m old and not good for anything. He’s in better condition.” Incredibly, the Nazi commander granted Fr. Kolbe’s request, and Franciszek was spared. He ended up surviving the camp and being reunited with his family.
I tell the story of Fr. Kolbe today because he is a shining example of rendering to God what is God’s, as Jesus instructs us today in the Gospel. Jesus is dealing with people trying to trap Him in His words, so they decide to try to draw Jesus into the political drama of their day. They ask Him whether it is lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar. This was a touchy subject, because the Romans were occupying the land of Israel and the Jews bitterly resented the Roman taxes imposed upon them. They were hoping Jesus would play into that resentment so that they could paint him as a political revolutionary. Instead, He instructs them to take out a Roman coin. And then asks, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” After they admit that it is Caesar’s, He tells them, “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” Here, Jesus is showing them that they are to participate in the government of their land, but more fundamentally, they are to live their lives as children of God. The two are interconnected.
It is significant that Jesus points out the image of Caesar stamped onto the Roman coin, and then immediately speaks about rendering to God what is God’s. The implication is that each of us is stamped with the image and likeness of God by our humanity. Every Jew versed in the early chapters of Genesis would have understood this, and so do we. So the teaching is that we are called, as people made in the image and likeness of our Father, to live our lives as a gift back to Him. The secret, both for the Jews He was talking to then and for each of us whom He addresses right now, is to allow God’s grace to fill us so that we can give God our lives. Not only has He stamped us with His image and likeness, but because of Jesus, we have unprecedented access to the Father’s heart through the Cross and Resurrection. We have been redeemed and washed by Jesus. Praise God!
This offering to God of our whole lives is supposed to impact every aspect of our lives. Jesus didn’t pit the duty to Caesar and the duty to God against each other. He instructed them to give their whole selves to the Lord God, including how they participated in the political process of their times.
When we think of heroic saints like Maximillian Kolbe, they give a powerful example to us of what it looks like to give our whole lives to God. St. Maximilian lived in a time where there was a pervasive culture of death which cost millions of Jews, Catholics, gypsies, people with disabilities and others their lives. He found himself sucked into one of the darkest places on earth, a camp designed for death. But in the midst of this darkness, Fr. Kolbe never stopped loving God and his neighbor, even those neighbors who were actively persecuting him. When given the opportunity, he recognized the image of God in his fellow prisoner and was unafraid to give his life for that man.
Brothers and sisters, we find ourselves in a time of great cultural turmoil as well, a time when changes being proposed to our state constitution directly threaten the lives and wellbeing of many innocent people in our state. Now is a time when God is calling us to heroically stand up against this evil for the sake of those innocents.
I realize that in speaking about Issue 1 and the broader question of abortion, that we touch upon a subject which has personally impacted some of you. I know that some of you here with us have been involved in abortion. I want you to know that I love you. The Lord loves you. The Church loves you. We do not condemn you. I only pray for your healing from that decision, that you would know that your child is in the arms of God and that He only desires to heal those deep wounds in your heart. I pray that in Confession you find the merciful heart of Jesus, overflowing with love for you and saying, “My beloved daughter, my beloved son, you are mine. You are forgiven!”
When we approach Issue 1, this is something beyond just the political. This issue touches on some of the deepest moral questions: questions of human dignity, life and personhood. Regardless of where we fall on the political spectrum, we are all called to stand up for what is right and true.
There are many problems with the language of this proposed amendment, but I want to focus on just a few. The proposed amendment reads, in part:
Every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion.
The State shall not, directly or indirectly, burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against either an individual’s voluntary exercise of this right or a person or entity that assists an individual exercising this right, unless the State demonstrates that it is using the least restrictive means to advance the individual’s health in accordance with widely accepted and evidence-based standards of care.
First, the language speaks of “individuals,” and how their rights should not be interfered with by any State laws. There is no restriction based on age. This opens the door for minors to be constitutionally allowed to procure abortions without their parents’ consent. And lest we think this is farfetched, there was recently an attempt in California to strip away parental consent laws with regard to surgeries on minors’ reproductive organs. And our proposed amendment also covers these types of surgeries, because it speaks of reproductive decisions using the term “not limited.” All types of things can be included under the umbrella of “reproductive decisions.” This is extremely serious. The language of this amendment opens the door to unrestricted access by minors without parental consent to abortion and surgeries that can permanently maim their developing bodies.
Brothers and sisters, we find ourselves at an important crossroads in our state. We have the opportunity to stand up and say that we don’t want these things for our mothers, fathers, and children. Notice that nowhere in the proposed constitutional amendment do we hear about mothers, fathers or babies, just “individuals.”
When we speak about moral principles, it is easy to think of them only in hypothetical terms or in generalities. But all morality is ultimately practical and personal. By “personal” I don’t mean private, but that moral choices affect real persons. I ask you to join me in voting ‘no’ on issue 1 not just because of a principle, but because of real people.
I am voting ‘no’ because of my half-cousin Lara, who was born out of wedlock to extremely young parents. Under the world envisioned by the promoters of Issue 1, she would likely not be with us today. I am voting ‘no’ on issue one because of the women and men I personally met as a seminarian working at Bethesda post-abortion healing ministry. I saw firsthand how shattered their hearts and lives were because of their abortion decisions. Even though their lives moved on, they carried around broken hearts for so many years. I witnessed how these women, some of whom had had more than two abortions, found healing. But I would love to live in a world where that ministry isn’t necessary, where unborn babies aren’t killed and women, men and doctors not traumatized through abortion. I will be voting ‘no’ on issue one because of Chloe Cole. As a young teenager, Chloe had her body surgically transformed because doctors and therapists told her this would relieve her discomfort with her developing female body. She now mourns the fact that her body is irreparably damaged. In her testimony before Congress, Chloe said: “I needed compassion. I needed to be loved.” I don’t want to open the door for minors like Chloe to be told that they were born in the wrong body and that their only hope is body maiming surgery.
Brothers and sisters, we have the chance to live as beloved sons and daughters of God in this time, to give our lives back to Him by lovingly but firmly standing up against a constitutional amendment that poses real threat to vulnerable people under the guise of “reproductive freedom.” There is nothing freeing about sin. It enslaves us and leads to suffering and death. Let us be men and women who stand up for the God-given dignity of life in every area of our lives, especially in how we vote.
+ Heavenly Father, thank you for your love for each of us, for making us in Your image and likeness. Jesus, thank you for coming to save us from sin and death. By your grace, continue to make our lives new. Holy Spirit, give us the courage to stand up for the dignity of life in a society threatened by the culture of death. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen. +