Hope For Post-Abortion Women From Pope John Paul II

What did Pope John Paul III say to women who have had abortions?

I would now like to say a special word to women who have had an abortion. The Church is aware of the many factors which may have influenced your decision, and she does not doubt that in many cases it was a painful and even shattering decision. The wound in your heart may not yet have healed. Certainly what happened was and remains terribly wrong. But do not give in to discouragement and do not lose hope. Try rather to understand what happened and face it honestly. If you have not already done so, give yourselves over with humility and trust to repentance. The Father of mercies is ready to give you his forgiveness and his peace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. To the same Father and his mercy you can with sure hope entrust your child. With the friendly and expert help and advice of other people, and as a result of your own painful experience, you can be among the most eloquent defenders of everyone’s right to life. Through your commitment to life, whether by accepting the birth of other children or by welcoming and caring for those most in need of someone to be close to them, you will become promoters of a new way of looking at human life.

It is Jesus...

“It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal”.

              – Pope John Paul II

Hat Tip: The Anchoress

Removing the Bullet of Bitterness

In Unconditional, Brian Zahnd retells the story of Pope John Paul II forgiving the man who shot him in St. Peter's Square.  The doctors removed the bullet from the pope's body, but the pope himself removed the bullet of bitterness from his heart by forgiving Ali Agca the attempted assassin.

In his hatred, Ali Agca fired bullets of hate into the body of John Paul II, and though the  bullets almost took the pope's life the hate never touched his soul.  John Paul II responded with whispered words of love and forgiveness - words that lodged in the soul of Ali Agca.  Those words seem to have transformed this troubled man.  They certainly caused multitudes around the world to ponder the possibilities of forgiveness. (page 56)

Then, on page 64 Zahnd applies that story to the rest of us:

"The only way to remove the deadly bullet from our heart is through forgiveness.  This is how you prevent yourself from becoming a victim twice over - first a victim of injustice, then as a victim of systemic bitterness...

...When you are the recipient of hate, there is always the danger that you will allow yourself to be defined and deformed by that hate. The only way of exorcising the demon of hate is through the purgative of forgiveness.  Allowing forgiveness to purge the unforgiveness in our hearts is what enables us to move beyond injustice and not be chained to it for life."