With tens of thousands of people gathering on the National Mall for today’s March for Life, the topic of life – and of life-affirming or life-threatening policies and legislation – will take center stage in the national discussion.
Even if the March doesn’t receive prime time coverage, each marcher is standing as a witness to one another and to those who run the most powerful country in the world, of the inalienable truth written on our hearts that life is sacred.
Life isn’t just another cause. Without it, everything – every other right and freedom we value – becomes purely academic. This is why threats to human life require such urgently pragmatic responses, campaigns, and strategies that point us toward the character of life itself: the vivid, inescapable immediacy of human life as the site of our encounter with God.
At Belmont Abbey College we have a visible reminder of the intimacy of life through MiraVia, a residence for pregnant college students that supports them as they complete their education. Young women and their babies receive loving assistance that doesn’t end at birth, or even with the child’s first eighteen months. They grow and thrive for themselves, for each other, and as members of the Belmont Abbey community.
MiraVia reminds us that taking up the cause of life ultimately means embracing something beautiful in itself. It means rejoicing in our shared and individual lives: in the mother who completes her education and prepares for a future rich with possibility, in the child for whom everything is new, and in their inexpressibly vibrant participation in each other’s lives.
This is also why the March for Life remains the largest human rights demonstration in the world. It isn’t just a protest. There’s a contagious joy in the gathering, an exuberance that finds outlet in song, in prayer, in friendly reunions. It embodies the shared hope and miraculous responsibility of life, of being alive, each and all. The March for Life is full of what it wishes to safeguard; it’s a demonstration in the truest sense of the word.
Whether you are able to travel to Washington, D.C. today or not, I hope you’ll join me in praying for those gathered there for the love of human life. And if you get the chance today, consider taking a moment to reach out to someone who’s participated in the beauty of your own life. Just for the joy of it.
