Proverbial Piety

Published in The Compass, August 1, 2010, vol. 5, issue 7

            This feature of the Compass offers some brief reflections on the spiritual life, taking as it’s parting point, each time, some verse in the scriptures, especially from the book of Proverbs. The translations are my own, from the Greek Septuagint; you may find some differences with the English Bible you use at home, and this is the reason why.

            We began last month to consider this Proverb, and stated that there were three points which recommended themselves for discussion, namely:

1. The immorality of contraception
            2. The evil of abortion
            3. A prophecy of Christ’s passion

 
We discussed that first point last month, which we could summarize as follows: contraception is a type of anti-life destruction which can only induce tears and distress, which Christ prophesied in his sentences to the “Daughters of Jerusalem” (cf. Luke 23:28-30).

            Now we consider the evil of abortion, in light of this Proverb. I now quote that passage of Luke which I just cited, because it is helpful to have it before the eyes in order to proceed more clearly:

[Jesus said,] “For the days are surely coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that have never bore, and the breasts that have never nursed.’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘cover us’ [kalypsate hemas]. For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

             So great is the distress, shame, guilt and frustration of those who have voluntarily made themselves sterile by abortion, that they will wish the earth to “cover” them. They want “destruction” by the earth “covering” them, referring to the words of the Proverb. But they don’t want graves or caves; they want mountains and hills to flatten themselves over their bodies, and this is curious. Where else in the scriptures to mountains and hills flatten themselves?

            In Luke 3:5 we find, “Prepare the way of the Lord… every hill shall be made low” (Cf. Is 40:4). The “mountains and hills” are where the sheep get lost (Jer 50:6), so their flattening would eliminate that peril. The leveling of the hills, the “destruction” of the hills, is a Scriptural image of the coming of Christ the Savior. To invoke the leveling of hills and mountains is to invoke the coming of the Lord; but to wish to be buried in the process beneath the mountains is to invoke his judgment upon oneself. And so it is that the experience of many sees the perpetrator of abortion condemning herself or himself, if her or his conscience is at all alive. They are unjust by their sins; without God’s grace and mercy, the only option for them is to be destroyed and covered up, their voices never to be heard again. (But that is without God’s grace, yet even for the repentant, mercy awaits!)

The mouth of the evil man will be closed up by the earth; either because by the mouth both the persuasion and politics of death are proliferated, or because the mouth is the orifice by which chemical contraceptives are taken, and seed is consumed in sinful union.

            Furthermore, the word-structure of the Proverb stresses its prophecy regarding the evil of anti-procreation. Life is opposed to destruction, because procreation is opposed to abortion and contraception; hand is opposed to mouth, because those hard-working men and women who praiseworthily take up the duties of raising a family are not just all words, but full of works, the works of love; just is opposed to unjust, as eternal life is given to the just (meaning here more than the quality of exercising the cardinal virtue of justice, but more amply, the holy, those who fear God), and eternal destruction is awarded to those who kill and frustrate God’s designs for life.

            Through the intercession of Mary and Joseph, may God spare the world the scourge of abortion, and may he bring the perpetrators of this sin to reconciliation with him through contrition and sacramental absolution!