Abortion remains a hot topic in our national milieu.  There are protestors and anti-protestors, court rulings and appeals, marches, bumper stickers, and a multitude of other ways by which this issue keeps spilling out into the public forum.  If we take a step back for a moment, however, out of the ideological cage, we just might appreciate how confusing and poorly framed all of this fanfare really is!  How many so-called pro-lifers, for instance, carry out spiritual abortions on a daily basis: not following through on intentions, abandoning relationships, or repressing feelings and emotions that never see the light of day?  Likewise, how many so-called pro-choicers shut down the conversation, put a ban on curiosity and other genuine acts of wonder, lay down artificial boundaries in debates, or categorically reject any appeal to the transcendent?  Let’s therefore admit that the political label we are hiding behind simply masks an insecurity and start getting in touch with our human fertility.  We shall discover a spiritual embryo within, a unique capacity to think and choose, which, when taken to full term, constitutes the fullest expression of life.  Lord Jesus, teach me to conceive without shame, to be pregnant but not afraid, to give birth with great ease, and to spend my eternity, like you, in a state of perpetual and patient motherhood.  Amen.

The principle of double-effect is a fascinating moral concept that reveals much about the nature of reality.  My intention, indeed, could be very clearly set on the protection of human life, but the intruder into my home may suffer a fatal wound from my defensive posture.  The elderly woman in the middle of the street may break a bone when another person heroically pushes her out of the way of a semi truck.  And who could possibly know the heartache of a mother who has an operation to relieve a complication of her pregnancy only to find out that she has lost the fetus?  While moral science can often be presented in one-dimensional and pietistic terms—giving the impression that life is merely a series of punishments and rewards—the principle of double-effect offers an interesting layer of texture and depth to our humanity.  My intention, indeed, only ever exists situationally, circumscribed within a larger framework; to make an authentic moral decision is thus a profound act of trust that all things truly are brought to their proper end by the hidden movements of grace, even if they do not make sense in the moment (Rom 8:28).  Lord, revive my moral life this Lenten season; lead me to that low place where the wonder of your providence may be known; relieve me of the urge to control outcomes so that I might rest in the constant peace of loving you.

The head, the heart, the gut, and the feet.  Stacked on top of one another, this spiritual axis functions as the meaning-making apparatus which allows us human beings to change, to grow, and to transcend the seeming limits of our personalities.  Just like the angels ascending and descending Jacob’s ladder—or, more aptly, the Father sending down the Son, raising him on the third day, then sending the Spirit back down fifty days later—the pattern of our salvation is the constant drama of rising and falling.  Our feet, indeed, step into the wide open spaces of life where we consume, through our senses, experiences, which are then processed at the levels of feeling in our guts, emotion in our hearts, and cognition in our brains.  But as we have learned from our spiritual ancestors, we cannot just linger in the Upper Room!  We must, instead, be willing to part from these dazzling abstractions, back down the mountain, to ground level where we can literally move in the direction that leads to life.  Let’s therefore get comfortable with the ups and downs of our interior life this Lenten season and start practicing an obedience of the feet.  We shall learn to feel at home in our bodies, in this life and the next. 

Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

Guilt can be a tragic way of life for some.  Because of a lack of awareness of one’s own goodness, a person starts staging bold—ablbeit unconscious—assualts on another’s psyche trying to take by force what they cannot access in themselves.  It may start as kind and nice (“Your friendship means the world to me”), but it usually turns manipulative (“I don’t know what I would do without your friendship”), and ultimately brutal (“You are a phony for not being my friend”).  While we may go the appeasement route of showering them with constant attention and affirmations, or the entanglement route of giving them such proximity to our inner lives that they feel like it is their own, we do our guilt-mongering sisters and brothers a great disservice if we fail to redirect them back to their own intrinsic goodness.  Therefore, the next time such a one comes banging on the door of our hearts, demanding an external fix to their internal problem, we can remember that Christ, who himself is the door (Jn 10:9), instructs us, as difficult as it may be, to stay closed (Mt 6:6), so that we might serve as a trustworthy and steady backdrop for anyone who sincerely desires to work out and accept their own human goodness.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.