So we have a woman who is beyond child bearing age. Her husband just had a stroke and cannot talk, there seem to be no other effects to the stroke. Experts look at the situation because they are concerned. Is the couple capable of raising the child. If anything happens to them, which seems likely, statistics show that he will end up being what is known as court involved. So the community is deciding whether to offer the option of abortion to the mother. Most likely, she will be against it, but they want to at least offer the abortion. All the risk factors are there. The health of the mother is a factor, the father may soon die or may be unable to support himself now that he is mute and in the death of one or both parents in the advanced age, there is a great risk factor for the child to grow up as a delinquent.

I am sure you do realize that the child I am talking about is John the Baptist.

If you look carefully at today’s gospel, we can see in two places where thinking simply as humans raises questions about what is the proper decision here. First there is the advanced age of Elizabeth, to the community at the time and to ours as well, Zechariah would have appeared to be the victim of a stroke.

Meanwhile, Mary clearly raises an important question when she asks Gabriel how she could be the mother of a child. In both cases, we have the human reasoning and the invitation to go beyond simple human reasoning and to think in the line of faith.

This is what it means to be Catholic. We are not called to throw our human reasoning out the window, but to think beyond it and follow the prompting of God and most important, to trust in Him.

Let me take the first scenario of John the Baptist. The scene I bring forth actually does happen and I had a friend and his wife who were forced into testing by the medical community at a local university that actually endangered the life of the unborn babyl. The doctors wanted to advise him and his wife to abort the child if the testing proved positive. He was livid when he discovered, after the fact, how much his child was endangered. Meanwhile, a study that came out about fifteen years ago encourages aborting children who may be raised in environments that are conducive to their becoming court involved.

Mary raises an interesting issue and Joseph later raises it as well. The solution in every case is to trust in the Lord, to follow his ways and to remain obedient to Him. It is not to cast human reasoning out, but to build upon it and to act upon it in light of our faith and our trust in His ways. Take God out of the picture and live on just human reasoning and you will find the decisions above to be made on a regular basis. What are  those decisions based on? Statistics and lack of hope. You might as well be saying: “The computer says we must abort  this child because statistically he may rob our house.” When we admit a higher truth and a higher reality that goes beyond just human reasoning, we begin follow a different and more difficult track that responds to a higher authority and a greater truth because it is filled with something that computers do not understand, never ending hope.

We have a hope that we live with and that hope must transfer to our decisions. We have a way of looking at the world around us and that point of view must transfer to our decisions. We walk with Christ in all that we do, this must be our trademark. This means that we maintain a hope where others do not. When others dismiss someone as a lost cause, we do not give up. When others criticize us for our point of view, we continue moving on. Living the Christian faith means more than just following rules, it means living in a hope and a truth that leads us to believe when others give up. It means believing that Christ has a mission for everyone even when the world gives up on them. Finally, it means when all is said and done, praying for the person that everyone else gives up on that they may see the inside of the gates of Heaven. We live in Christ’s hope and the world does not get it.

The world teaches us to eliminate God from our lives and that means just make human decisions with no input from our faith. What will be the cost of doing that? A loss of hope in ourselves and in others.

This would be a good week to spend some time looking at those who have fallen through the cracks and to ask why. We can ask how Jesus looks at another person and ask for the grace to see the person in the same way. This may not mean helping them as the world does, but it does mean, loving them as Christ does. Christ, remember, embraced those the world rejected and He was rejected by those the world embraced. Can you pray for the grace to see the world as He does and to choose to live in a way that others may not understand but that Christ calls us to be?

When all is said and done, that might be the greatest thing you can do for Christmas.

God Bless You,

Fr. Robert J Carr