Thursday, January 22, 2015



Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children

(Hebrews 5:25-8:6; Mark 3:7-12)

The first reading today speaks of Jesus as high priest.  It says that he was unlike any other.  For one thing he did not have to offer sacrifice for his own sins because he did not have any.  For another Jesus did not have to offer many sacrifices because the one he made – himself on the cross – was of infinite worth.

Although we cannot equate him to Jesus, Fr. Matt Robinson, O.P., compares in many ways to our Lord.  Like Jesus he was a person of great virtue – temperate, wise, but most of all kind.  He always had time to welcome a stranger or to hear someone’s confession.  Also like Jesus, those who knew him have a sense of his becoming a member of heaven upon passing from this life.  He was the salt of the earth as common as the sunrise.  He was also a light of knowledge in a great array of fields.   

Today there is special reason to recognize Matt Robinson.  The People of God recall with great sadness exactly forty-two years ago when the Supreme Court of the United States de-penalized abortion in practically all cases.  Fr. Robinson spent half his remarkably long priesthood ministering especially to those who worked to protect the unborn. He did it in many graceful ways like writing poetry.  Here is a sample of his moral sensitivity, so fitting a Dominican priest, expressed in verse: “The cruelest part is not the pain,/ Or that the blood is shed,/ But that the measure of one’s gain/ Is that a man is dead.”