31.01.25 75.000 Alasan untuk Bertobat: Perjalanan Bernard Nathanson

Friday 3rd week in ordinary time "Mk 4:26-34" And he said, "The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how. The earth produces of itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come." And he said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? 31 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade." With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything. Seeds take time to sprout and grow. The rain and the sun make them grow at the proper rate. Sometimes we might wish them to grow faster but we can't change nature. It would be of little help if the farmer went to a shoot of grain and started pulling at it to make it grow faster. It could actually kill the plant outright. A good gardener is patient. He knows when to plant, when to water, when to fertilise and when to reap. As the Gospel says, "when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come." Souls take time to change. Bernard Nathanson was a medical doctor, director of the "largest abortion clinic in the Western world," as he described it. For thirty years, he oversaw the destruction of about 75,000 foetuses. But God planted the seed in his heart. He was moved by hundreds of pro-lifers selflessly praying for the unborn (and for him) with constancy. He was changed definitively when he saw for the first time an ultrasound scan with a foetus moving inside its mother. He left the abortion clinic and little by little started to defend the life of the unborn. It took him more than 17 years to find God but he was eventually baptised in December of 1996. He spent the rest of his life making up, as he said, for his sins, defending life at all cost. He talked many times about the deep pain he felt for the lives he had taken. For years he fasted and travelled all around the world offering sacrifices in reparation for his past life. He entrusted himself to the Mercy of God to be able to go to Heaven, or at least to be allowed to visit all those babies he killed and say to them: "I AM SORRY!" Overall, it was a long process. Forty years of misery. But through the persevering prayer of Bernard’s friends and others, once the seed sprouted, he raised an amazing defence of life. Mary, Refuge of Sinners, may I learn to be patient: If God has patience with souls... why shouldn't I?