By OSV News
WASHINGTON (OSV News) — In sharing the U.S. bishops’ Lenten message this year, their pro-life chairman used it “to speak to all who carry the unbearable sadness and guilt of an abortion experience” and remind them that Jesus’ love knows no bounds.
“Be assured that Jesus keeps on loving you, no matter what,” Bishop Daniel E. Thomas of Toledo, Ohio, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, said in the Feb. 19 message.
“The blessed ashes distributed on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday remind us that we are all sinners; broken, imperfect, yet very precious in the eyes of God and so well loved by Him,” he said. “The ashes are both a reminder of our need for repentance and the graces that flow from our Lord’s death and resurrection.”
Ash Wednesday, which is March 5 this year, marks for the Latin Church the beginning of Lent, a 40-day period of fasting and prayer. Most Eastern Catholic churches, which together with the Latin Church headed by the bishop of Rome make up the global Catholic Church, typically mark Lent beginning a few days earlier on Monday, which some call “Clean Monday.” The Catholic Church has long used ashes as an outward sign of grief, a mark of humility, mourning, penance and morality.
Bishop Thomas said this Lent, he wanted to “personally invite” all those suffering from an abortion “to come home to Jesus, who eagerly awaits your return, and come home to the Church.”
“Some stay away from the Church because they fear judgment of past sins,” he said. “Yet as Pope Francis reminds us in his letter announcing the Jubilee of Hope, (God’s judgment) ‘is meant to bring us to a definitive encounter with the Lord.'”
“Jesus’ voice is calling out to you as His beloved daughters and sons,” Bishop Thomas said, “and He is waiting to meet you in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. He desires a relationship with you.”
“God’s gift of hope allows you to expect His comfort as you grieve for the loss of your aborted children,” he continued, and, quoting from St. John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical “Evangelium Vitae” (“The Gospel of Life”), he added that this hope “also provides assurance that ‘you can with sure hope entrust your child’ to the Father and His mercy.”
Bishop Thomas prayed that “God plants a seed of hope in every heart that is overwhelmed by sadness and despair from participation in abortion. This Lent, the Lord’s mercy awaits you. Allow Him to heal you and lift your sadness into joy.”
He also highlighted the “nonjudgmental, compassionate help” that is available to those grieving an abortion “from experienced clergy and laypeople through the Church’s diocesan abortion healing ministry, most often called Project Rachel Ministry.” The ministry’s websites, in English and Spanish, are HopeAfterAbortion.org and EsperanzaPosAborto.org, and they have a “Find Help/Busca Ayuda” link to find a local arm of the ministry.
Through this ministry, Bishop Thomas said, “all who suffer from abortion can find a listening ear, comfort, and help.”
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