While no one is entirely certain what the March for Life in DC is going to look like this year, certainly it will not be like it has been in years past due to the COVID restrictions impacting large gatherings. So rather than attempt to write about the march as it might unfold this year, I decided to dig WAY into the archives of my past life.
When I was still a student brother at our Dominican House of Studies, I served for many years there as the ProLife Coordinator for our Dominican student community. I would like to share a snippet of something I wrote about the March for Life for our newsletter that went out to all of the friends, benefactors, and family members of our province of the Dominican friars. Though I first wrote these words around twenty years ago, they are just as true today.
“The March for Life is always an exciting and wonderful time to be in Washington. The sight of 100,000 people walking down Constitution Avenue, all there for the common purpose of witnessing to the value of all human life, is truly breathtaking. Every year, as January approaches, I look forward to the march. I look forward to the excitement. I look forward to the energy. I look forward to the packs of teenagers and the busloads of college students. I look forward to the singing and the praying, to the walking and the witnessing. I look forward to the zeal of the young, and the quiet strength of the old.
But most of all, I look forward to the day when the march will no longer be necessary. I look forward to the day when our nation will experience a true change of heart, and embrace the precious and irreplaceable gift of each and every human life. I look forward to the year when I can go to Constitution Avenue on a January 22nd and see no marchers and no signs, hear no prayers or speeches just the ordinary activity of a regular working day in the nation’s capital. And then I will know that the tragedy is finally over.”
That year has not yet come. But what we do this year, and every year, is helping to pave the way for that year. May we do all we can now, so that our children, and our children’s children, will grow up in a world where January 22nd in Washington DC is just like any other day.
God Bless,
Fr. John Paul
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