O Man, Thou Art Dust

"You are dust, and to dust you shall return."

"Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel."

For Catholics, these phrases may be familiar. These are the two statements that are made during the Ash Wednesday services around the world as Catholics receive ashes on their foreheads as a sign of repentence and sacrifice as they enter the 40 days of fasting, prayer and alms giving that make up the season of Lent.

Last night I was almost sick as our nation voted to make health care a federally funded initiative at the expense of human life. My own tax dollars could kill a baby at any time. This is wrong in every way. The necessary good of making health care affordable and available to the many who suffer without it will not and cannot be outweighed by the absolute truth of LIFE being a fundamental and intrinsic good that must always be first! It is prior in the order of nature and it must be prior in the order of law. You cannot kill children as a part of caring for those already alive. This is totally illogical, and it is what our government decided was best "for the people" last night.

I don't have much to say about this other than I have been unable to breath or eat much since. My hands are shaking and my stomache turning. How can they be so blind? How can we allow a genocide to continue, and not only continue, but advance?! We should be taking out laws that make it legal to KILL anyone, much less fund for more of those murders! I just can't handle it.

However, we are dust. In the end, Jesus Christ has already defeated death itself. He became death and by it triumphed for all eternity as he rose from death to life. For the Eternal Life could not be in death, and so death was destroyed forever. So no matter what evils are surfacing and whatever battles are for us to fight, we know in the end who the victor is. "My Immaculate Heart will triumph." The Blessed Mother is the only place for me to find refuge and peace in a world that not only rejects all these "little ones" as good, but refuses to acknowledge their existence at all.

Let's end with a prayer by St. Aloysius Gonzaga, patron of youth, to Our Lady:

O Holy Mary, my mother,
into your blessed trust and custody,
and into the care of your mercy
I this day, every day,
and in the hour of my death,
commend my soul and my body.
To you I commit all my anxieties and miseries,
my life and the end of my life,
that by your most holy intercession
and by your merits
all my actions may be directed
and disposed
according to your will
and that of your Son.
Amen.

O Blood and Water which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fount of Mercy for us, I trust in You.