“Above all,” Pope Paul
VI once wrote, “the Gospel must be proclaimed by witness.”
This power of witness
is very apparent every January when tens-of-thousands of faithful citizens
gather in our nation’s capital in order to actively protest threats against human
life, particularly the practice of abortion.
It was quite a
privilege, then, for me to join in with this great ‘cloud of witnesses’ on
Friday morning at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C. for a rally in support
of the sanctity of all human life. The message during the rally was clear: we
give witness to the pro-life movement by being joy-filled disciples of Jesus
Christ!
The rally was followed
by Mass, which was celebrated by Cardinal Wuerl of the Archdiocese of
Washington, D.C. Together, as the Body of Christ, we lifted up our prayers for
the unborn and entrusted them to God our Father. The very act of our gathering around
the table of Word and Eucharist gave witness to our faith in a God who is peace,
justice, and mercy.
Normally, the seminary
community would participate in the March for Life but, because of the impending
blizzard, we left immediately after the Mass. Despite the shortened schedule, all
of us who had gathered in D.C. were still able to give witness to the pro-life
cause.
We must remember that our
witness to the beauty and goodness of God’s precious gift of life does not only
occur once a year at the annual rally, Mass, and March for Life. Rather,
through the witness of our everyday lives as disciples of Christ, we give
testimony that all people – including the poor, the vulnerable, the
marginalized, the elderly, the disabled, and the unborn – have value because
each person has been made in the image and likeness of God.
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| Seminarians Bill Beechko, Charles Rennekamp, Jonathan Kuhar, and Ryan Glenn at the March for Life. |
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Ryan P. Glenn is a
seminarian for the Diocese of Scranton. He is from Mountain Top and a member of Saint Jude Parish. He is in Third Theology at St. Mary’s
Seminary in Roland Park (Baltimore).
There, Ryan enjoys
reading and studying about the vision and mission of the Church in light of the
Second Vatican Council. As part of his pastoral formation, Ryan serves as a 5th
grade catechist and member of the R.C.I.A. team at St. Joseph Parish in nearby
Cockeysville, Maryland.