Ron Kelsey is the archdiocesan consultant for the pro-life office. You can email him at: profile@archkck.org or call him at (913) 647-0350.
by Ron Kelsey
As the Mother of Life, the Virgin Mary plays a central role in building a culture of life in our world.
She began her pivotal role with her “fiat” (“let it be done”) and bore the Child who would later defeat death and redeem our fallen world. And her lifesaving role continues today.
As I write this column, we are celebrating the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This is the only Marian apparition where Mary appeared pregnant.
As Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mary appeared in the 16th century as a pregnant Aztec princess to Aztec Indians and to a culture that sacrificed infants and adults to their false gods.
With her appearance and intercession, the human sacrifices ended and millions of Aztecs subsequently converted to Christianity. Our Lady of Guadalupe is now officially proclaimed by the Catholic Church as the Protectress of Unborn Children, and we most assuredly need to pray for her intercession to end the unprecedented massive scale of the killing of our unborn children by abortion in our world today.
Archbishop Naumann dedicated the pro-life efforts of the archdiocese to Our Lady of Guadalupe within the first few months of his installation as our archbishop. And from my personal experience in the pro-life office, she has been working at what I like to call “warp speed” toward building a culture of life within our archdiocese.
The most recent example of her efforts occurred, appropriately, on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe when Wyandotte Pregnancy Clinic in Kansas City, Kan., received an unexpected generous donation of a 3D sonogram machine for its mobile pregnancy clinic.
Sonogram machines have demonstrated that they are powerful tools to help a woman, who is considering abortion, bond with her unborn child and then choose life. Therefore, it is no surprise that Mary, Protectress of Unborn Children, would assist with the placement of sonogram machines in pregnancy clinics.
We can be certain that Mary, Our Mother of Perpetual Help, will assist each of us in whatever pro-life efforts that our state in life affords us. We simply need to ask her to help and intercede for us — for example, when we pray for a respect for life, when we donate to a pregnancy center or maternity home, when we vote pro-life, when we educate our children and others about the dignity of every human being, when we visit the elderly, when we stand in peaceful witness at an abortion clinic, etc.
She will magnify our tiny efforts, if we but make ourselves available, and turn these efforts into herculean results. Of this we can be assured. She is our friend in high places.
Mary, Mother of Life, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Protectress of Unborn Children, pray for us.
