“The Lament of Rachel”

From Zoe for Life

May God bless you. A word about the Moleben that we just served.

Just recently was the 38^th  anniversary of the Roe versus Wade decision, that dark day in our country when the idea that murdering a child is a right given to us by the Constitution and is a right that is part of our right of privacy.

Now the idea has come about, and had been nurtured now for 38 years, to rewrite language to talk about being “pro-choice”. There have been fifty million children aborted since the Roe versus Wade decision.

Ironically, the person involved in Roe versus Wade, had lied about her pregnancy, she had said she had been raped; she had not. The pregnancy was from fornication. And she had had the baby, and the baby was already two years old when the decision came down. She has since repented and become a Christian and is very much pro-life, Of course, that is not something that is well known, I think.

Fifty million children!

I want to tell you that as a Christian, you must not allow the times to influence you. Right now we are in the midst of the rewriting of language; even “God” means something different now than it did only a few years ago, and “Christian” means something different.

Now, there are those that say that:

You can be a Christian and be pro choice;

You can be a Christian and abort your child;

You can be a Christian and be a practicing unrepentant homosexual.

These things are not possible, brothers and sisters.

You can be a Christian and be guilty of any sin and repent from it. You can be a Christian and be weak in some area of your life, maybe even for a long period of time, and struggle against this weakness. But you cannot be a Christian and give in wholly to the way of the times and believe: That one can be pro-choice and that it is correct for a woman to take that which is in her womb, a human being created in the image and likeness of God, and kill it.

Now, in any room of people that I may not know well, it is always possible that there are sins that you haven’t even remembered or perhaps that you are ashamed of that I don’t know about. Any sin that you commit, whether it be abortion or any other sin, you can repent from it and God will cleanse you completely. And God will give you healing, but only if you recognize what is right and what is wrong.

Our country does not want to do that anymore. They cloak things in high-sounding language like being pro-choice or having a right to privacy, when actually they are covering up the stench of sin.

Another word used nowadays is “homophobia” as if to believe that what the Gospel teaches, what the Bible teaches about homosexual relations, somehow makes a person a bigot and a phobic person. We’re not afraid of anybody. We just know what is right and what is wrong, that is, what ultimately leads to eternal life or eternal death.

And I want to make it clear to you that these sins, these sexual sins which are inundating our country,- (and abortion is really a sexually-related sin), are part and parcel of people wanting to have whatever pleasure they wish without any consequences, without any responsibility for what they do. These sins are polluting our country and polluting us. We must stand against them.

Now, even if we struggle against these sins, perhaps not always successfully, if we recognize that they are wrong, fundamentally wrong, then God will help us.

On this day I believe – Is there a march in Washington, D.C., today? Isn’t that right? It’s tomorrow. This march, if you’re careful, you’ll see that this march will be vastly underreported in mainstream media. They will say that there are fifty thousand, a hundred thousand people, when there may be well over a million, because the world does not want to admit what is right and what is wrong. This happens year after year, that this event is underreported, or that they find one kind of crazy person on the fringes of the crowd and says crazy things and try to make that to be what all people who believe in the sanctity of life are like. Don’t believe these things, brothers and sisters.

Believe the truth. Believe that God made life in the womb and that any fetus is made in the image of God.

And if any of you ever had any struggles with this, believed opposite to this, believed what the world says about it, the lie that the world tells, or have submitted and had an abortion; I beg you to speak to me.

This is a terrible tragedy for a woman as well as the child because there are two victims in an abortion. The greater victim, the one that is harmed the most is the woman, because our world tells them: It is your choice, it is your right, it is even sometimes your responsibility, and  it is a good thing, but the heart tells something different, and so there’s this conflict that occurs.

God wants your heart to be right with what you do, what you are. So may God help us and help everyone to find the truth about abortion in the world. So that’s why we served this small Moleben. I can’t go to the march, but at least we can raise up our voices.

And I want to make it clear to you, absolutely positively, killing a child in the womb is abortion or willful abortion and is a sin, and it is something that is very serious; it marks the soul until there is repentance. With repentance, everything can be erased; everything can be made new. Without repentance, it marks a person and makes it very difficult for them to live.

So my heart really goes out on this day for the millions of aborted women. That’s actually the medical term, women who have had an abortion are “aborted women.” This always sounded funny to me, but that is the medical terminology.

So women who had abortions, all of those women who have been told one thing; and their hearts, perhaps quietly, perhaps loudly, is telling them another; my prayer for them is that they would realize that they sinned and repent so that they would be cleansed and their life would begin anew.

Priest Seraphim Holland 2011    

Transcribed by the hand of Helen. May God save her and her loved ones.

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This homily is at:

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http://www.orthodox.net/catechism/orthopraxis_2011-01-23+sanctity-of-life-sunday+christians-must-not-accept-abortion-and-sexual-immorality-being-redefined.doc

Audio: http://www.orthodox.net/catechism/orthopraxis_2011-01-23+sanctity-of-life-sunday+christians-must-not-accept-abortion-and-sexual-immorality-being-redefined.mp3

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