Stephanie Gray: Love Unleashes Life: Abortion and The Art of Communicating Truth | SEEK2019

[Music] those that are joining us on livestream today's presenter began public speaking at the age of 18 she is a seasoned and international speaker haven't given more than 800 pro-life presentations across North America the UK Ireland Austria Latvia wah Ramallah and Costa Rica she has spoken at many post-secondary institutions and has abated with abortion advocates such as late term abortion is dr. Fraser Fellowes and dr. Malcolm Potts who is the first medical director for the International Planned Parenthood Federation in 2017 she spoke about abortion for the series talks at Google at the Google headquarters in Mountain View California she also wrote the book love unleashes life abortion and the art of communicating truth and is president of her ministry love unleashes life she currently resides in Vancouver Canada please help me in welcoming Stephanie gray thank you so much have you ever been asked by someone if you weren't studying what you're studying or working where you're working what would you study or do instead I've been asked that question and in 2011 I came up with my answer see in 2011 late summer early fall I went to California with two very dear friends and we went on a little holiday and while we were there I went to a magical place I had never been before Disneyland and near the end of our day at Disneyland we heard some music and so we walked in the direction of it and when we got in front of where the source of the sound was I looked and I knew I had my answer if I was not traveling the world speaking about abortion and assisted suicide I would be Mary Poppins in the daily parade at Disneyland supercalifragilisticexpialidocious now I'm not here to talk about Mary Poppins although I would like to say that she has an accent which is one of the reasons why I think I want to be her so much because you could speak in an accent for your job the second reason that I do like Mary Poppins is that she loves music now I'm not sure if anyone in the room here today was with me in SeaTac a few days ago but there were some seekers that we ran into there and let's just say I traveled here with my ukulele her name is joy and we pulled joy out at gate b1 at sea-tac and let's just say we were rocking it before we boarded the plane and this one young guy came up to us and he said I teach music can I join you and I looked at him he looked like he'd fit the profile of someone coming to seek I said sure I said are you going to seek he said no I'm going to Japan so I shout out to Kahn who might be watching this from Japan I wanted to reference Mary pop in my love of music because I wanted to begin in reference to a song by Hillsong it's one of my favorite praise and worship songs and the song is Hosanna and in one part of Hosanna the the song goes open my heart or heal my heart rather heal my heart and make it clean open my eyes to the things unseen show me how to love like you have loved me heal my heart and make it clean open up my eyes to the things unseen show me how to love like you have loved me in my presentation today as we reflect on how to reach the hearts and minds of people when dialoguing on the topic of abortion I want to take those three lines from that song and apply them to this topic and that first line of heal my heart and make it clean is such an important place to begin because the reality is each and every one of us have been touched by abortion there have been over 60 million abortions here in America since it became legal every year around the world there are 40 million abortions and those numbers don't only represent the youngest among us who have been decapitated dismembered or disemboweled those numbers also represent the born perhaps our mothers have had an abortion perhaps our sisters have perhaps our friends have perhaps we have there are women here today in this room who have had abortions people watching who have had abortions and the cry of our heart should be heal my heart and make it clean to lay our sin at the foot of the cross and trust in the mercy of Christ in the scriptures there's the famous story of the prodigal son who goes to his father and essentially says you know dad all the money the inheritance I'm supposed to get when you're dead yeah I want my portion now imagine going to your parents and doing that saying that and yet the father gives his son his portion of the inheritance he then leaves the family property goes away and commits a whole bunch of sins he's living a lifestyle that's not in conformity with what his father wants and he goes from being on this high to this deep low and a famine hits the land and the only job he has his feeding swine in Jewish culture pigs were like the lowest of the low animals and so here's this man during a famine starving himself feeding these pigs who have food when he doesn't these low creatures and he starts to think back to his father and his family and realizes even his father's servants are doing better than he is and he comes to the realization that he has sinned and so he goes home with the intention of saying father I am not worthy to be called your son but would you let me in on the family property is one of your servants and so he's asleep as he's approaching the father's property the father sees him from a distance he runs towards his son embraces him throws a party for him kills the fatted calf for him and then gives him three very meaningful objects a robe a ring and shoes sandals a robe was a sign that you were a person of honor a ring indicated you were a member of a family and not a servant and sandals were a sign of a free man someone who could come someone who could go now why when the Sun hurt his father's so much would the father do that because the Scriptures tell us he said my son was dead and is alive he was lost and is found and that is the message of hope that we need to communicate to our world that no matter what sin of commission or omission we have done as it relates to abortion whether we have had an abortion or driven a friend to a clinic whether we've been silent when we should have spoken up whatever our sin if we go to the sacrament of confession we experience the mercy of Jesus Christ his blood washing over us and making us clean then we will experience what the son experienced having gone from being dead to becoming alive in Revelation were told behold I make all things new and when we go into adoration this evening later tonight may that be one of the prayers of your heart God make me new in whatever way I've struggled make me new make me new not only do we need to ask God to heal our hearts and make them clean that realization that it's only God who can heal me part of our prayer needs to be inspire my heart give me wisdom because wisdom doesn't come from me it has to come from God and if we're going to engage people in the topic of abortion not only do we need to be merciful to ourselves and to others but we need divine inspiration a few years ago one of my spiritual directors had me read a book called the soul of the apostolate how many of you have heard of that book the soul of the apostolate a few hands I highly recommend it this book talks about how you were involved in apostolic activity ministry based work proclaiming the gospel in some capacity there is a tendency to focus on the scripture passage the harvest is plentiful but what the laborers are few and you know what we do often when we focus on that passage we make up the rest see we often think it goes the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few so I better get on out into the harvest and do all the labor the other laborers aren't around for and that's not how the passage ends the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few so what does it say pray pray therefore that the Lord of the harvest will send more laborers into the harvest the soul of the apostolate is prayer it's a realization that we need God that we have to run on his strength not our own and when we go out into the harvest and do the job other people should be doing too bad things happen bad thing number one we fill the void when we take on someone else's drop they don't see that there's a need to be fulfilled and they don't fulfill it the next problem that arises is we get so busy because we've taken stuff on that isn't our own that we start to cut back on the essential like prayer we pray less if possibly not at all and so in this book the soul of the Apostle it makes reference to something st. Bernard's said which is that we are to be reservoirs not channels reservoirs not channels if you think about a channel that body of water the water just flows through and Saint Bernard said that's like that busy soul focusing on the doing the action the getting stuff done taking on more tasks because no one else is around a reservoir is very different he said a reservoir fills up and the excess overflows and that is what we are to be like when we engage the culture when we enter into encounter as is the theme for today our job is to first be still know that God is God pray for divine inspiration and allow ourselves to be filled with the Holy Spirit and let that overflow into our work there are many prayers that we can pray but the simplest and perhaps most powerful of all is the name of Jesus I'll never forget many years ago now I was at a college campus to give a talk and there had been a buzz on campus that the abortion supporters were very angry that I was coming to their campus and so the authorities at the University got wind of this and they were concerned that this massive protest was going to happen a riot was gonna break out and so they arranged not only for security but for police protection so I had to arrive early and be given a security briefing and I met this woman who was dressed much like a student with a backpack on and I was told that she was a female police officer undercover who'd be sitting in the front row anywhere I wanted to go she had to accompany me I had to go to the bathroom she had to come along I mean she stayed outdoors but it was still kind of awkward so the plan was she would sit in the front row and if anything happened that was a disruption where they were worried that my safety was in jeopardy she was gonna jump up push me back where there was a back wall that had a door in it and on the other side of the door was gonna be a uniformed police officer now this was Canada where we have the Royal Canadian Mounted Police so you know the red jackets the horses well I mean there wasn't a red jacket or a horse but the point was this uniformed police officer was gonna be there grab me whisk me out of the building to a police car I mean what girl doesn't want to be that damsel in distress right I was almost kind of hoping for a riot no just kidding so anyways the event begins everything's calm continued on my presentation about ten minutes into it one approaches protester stands out then another one then another one and then this guy near the front starts calling out yelling he won't stop I call security to come forward because police didn't want to intervene unless it got really bad they didn't want people to know they were there so security comes up this guy he won't stop I can't present and then I looked at him and he looked me straight in the eyes and I thought I am NOT looking at a human being his eyes were glazed over and I thought this man is possessed and so I just stood there and quietly I started saying Jesus Jesus and the man went silent so as we engage the culture we want to begin from a place of prayer where we ask God to heal our hearts to fill our minds with wisdom to trust in the power of the name of Jesus and then we're ready to go forth into the culture of encounter and so the second line of that song that I wanted to reference today is the line open up my eyes to the things unseen there are so many people who are blind to the truth of who the preborn child is and what abortion does to that child they are blind and we need to open up their eyes now in the Acts of the Apostles when Soloff Tarsus became blind for three days Ananias was sent to him to lay his hands on him in the name of Jesus and restore his sight now I'm not gonna stop you from laying your hands on someone you might be dialoguing with but they might stop you and so if you want to open up their eyes to the things unseen I want to talk about how you can do that without touching them how you can open the eyes of their mind and open the eyes of their heart if you ask someone a question what happens the answer very good and hopefully it's what I think the silence indicated which is they begin to think you ask someone a question they begin to think if we want to open up the eyes of someone's mind we need them to think and questions do that have you ever read a really good book or watched a really powerful movie and been moved to tears anyone get a good number of us stories change how we feel they open the eyes of our heart and so if we want to impact people open the eyes to the things unseen we want to ask good questions that make them think and tell good stories to impact how they feel because changing how someone thinks and how they feel is a precursor to changing how they behave which is our ultimate goal I want to give you some examples of questions that I have found to be helpful and stories that I have found to be powerful in opening up the eyes of the hearts and the mind one of the very common questions I'll ask people when I'm debating them specifically on the topic of abortion is this I'll say do you believe in human rights when you ask someone that question what do you think they're going to say back yes I've asked so many people that question I can tell you time and again you'll hear the answer yes I believe in human rights and so if the person says that then I recommend just grabbing your cell phone going to Google image and looking for an image of a one-celled human embryo just after fertilization and then show them that picture and once they've said they believe in human rights point to the image and say okay what about this humans rights now when they look at that one cell what are they gonna say that's not a human so then we ask another question to open the eyes of the mind to things unseen we say okay well what are her parents is the pregnant woman human is her partner human if yes wouldn't it follow that that embryo must be human as well because two human parents aren't gonna produce a cat or a dog or a fish we know that beings which reproduce sexually reproduce after their own kind dogs produced dogs cats produce cats humans produced humans so it doesn't matter what the embryo looks like what matters is who are the embryos parents and as long as the parents are human the embryo must be human now the person might say well even if technically that cell is of the species Homo sapiens that human is you reference it they may say that human is not alive so we ask another question to impact the mind we say well is the embryo growing is the one cell growing into two and four and eight and sixteen and doubling every time and if yes then we know by the embryos growth the embryo must be living if the parents are human we know the embryo must be human and if we believe in human rights then it follows that living human should have the same human rights as you were me but given that people have a hard time grasping the concept that something that looks so different can be equal to us I find it helpful to not only ask questions but to tell a story and a couple years ago I was at a debate on a college campus debating a philosophy professor and there just before the debate began again I am a walking controversy these protesters all marched in the room right before start time and they all took different positions they had big placards but they were silent so I thought okay this is fine and so then I began my opening remarks and I got about ten minutes into my opening remarks where I got to the part of my presentation where I wanted to talk about the preborn child beginning her life at the moment of fertilization the moment of sperm ink fusion so I decided to tell my audience a story to make that point crystal-clear and so I said to the audience I want you to all think about maybe a recent wedding you've been to now I want you to consider have you been to a wedding recently where when you got to the reception on the tables there were these little cameras Polaroid cameras for the guests to take photos out has anyone experienced that and a few people had and I said okay well I said you know if you haven't I just want to confirm we all know what a Polaroid camera is because we're all used to our cell phones these days and the students indeed were familiar with the old technology which has made its comeback that little boxy camera where you insert cards you take a photo the card comes out and in a few moments you're seeing on the piece of paper what you had looked at in front of you and so I said to the students when the card first comes out what do you initially see and someone said you know we'll black smudges I said okay so now I want you to imagine something I said by way of introducing my story I said I want you to amass instead of going to a wedding where there's a Polaroid camera you already have a Polaroid camera and you're going on a holiday and I said I want you to imagine you're going on holiday to where my dad is from actually where I'm going to speak in just a couple months you go to Scotland okay right not only do the British have an accent but the Scots I think quite frankly you've got better accent than those who are from England right so imagine they said to these students that you go to Scotland and in while you're in Scotland you go to a very very famous place right it's called Loch Ness now what's in Loch Ness the monster right so I said to these students imagine on this boat tour you're taking photos with your Polaroid camera and a couple hours into your trip when you look over your shoulder you suddenly see Nessie all the humps and bumps are sticking out of the water and so you excitedly point your Polaroid in the direction of the Loch Ness monster you snap a photo and the little card comes out now just as the card comes out I said to the students Nessie goes underwater now I ask the students mid-story would you be upset that she's disappeared what do you think they said a few people said yes so I said okay but let me ask you another question I said what would calm you in your frustration and then someone said well that you have the picture I said right I said look your students with debt and you're looking at this you're shaking that little piece of paper and you're thinking this is gold I'm gonna sell this to newspapers magazines I'm gonna make money pay off all my student debt this is it great and so you're shaking this little piece of paper and I said let's imagine there's a tourist on the boat tour with you who's never seen a Polaroid camera before they don't know how the technology works they excitedly grab the card from you to have a look at Nessie but in their mind they're not looking at the Loch Ness monster in their mind they're looking at black smudges and they think the photo didn't take properly so with a lot of disappointment they rip it and toss it in the lake would you be upset okay rate the Scotch temper comes out I don't know if got a redhead in here today but the Scots often or the redheads come from and there are wee bit faced so imagine you have red hair and you get a little angry and you get frustrated at this person for destroying your picture and they look at you like you're crazy and they say it was just black smudges why do you care so much about black smudges and you'd likely reply it wasn't just black smudges everything about the image of the Loch Ness monster was captured in an instant it just needed time to develop and at that moment all my protesters stood up and started chanting my body my choice my body my choice for 40 minutes until security got them out in the debate continued but their choice of that very moment to interrupt the debate tells me the power of stories the story made the point abundantly clear that at the moment of sperm egg fusion is when each of us began just like the Polaroid picture we simply needed time to develop when I dialogue with people about abortion sometimes I find they focus on the dependency of the preborn child that the child needs the mums body to survive and can only survive with the mum making abortion in their minds justifiable you know pro-lifers will often say well you know if a newborn baby needs to be taken care of we wouldn't allow those people caring for the trial to kill the newborn baby so just because the preborn child is dependent and needs to be taken care of it doesn't mean we should allow the mother to kill that child and often the abortion supporter will say yeah but if it's a newborn baby someone else could come along and care for it so if you're caring for the baby and you don't want to care for the baby you can't kill the baby but just pass the baby along but when a woman's pregnant she can't pass the baby along so if she doesn't want the baby that's why abortion is allowed and I've often thought the argument they make to justify abortion in that case is actually a strong anti-abortion argument and here's why we can answer that by way of a story I'll say to someone imagine that you are trained and doing the Heimlich maneuver although I think it has a new name now I forget what it is but you know what I mean someone's choking and you unchoke them okay so imagine I say that you you are trained in how to do the Heimlich maneuver you're at a restaurant with a friend and someone in the restaurant begins choking but the person who's choking is at a table of people who are paramedics and they're all having lunch together so one or several of those paramedics begin to get up and do that Heimlich maneuver and save the person's life you're sitting over here you've done nothing by not intervening have you done something wrong no because you knew there were other people around who could and did help that person now let's change the scenario it's just you and your friend you're trained in the Heimlich maneuver you're having dinner in your home with this friend your friend begins to choke you do nothing there your friend dies have you done something wrong absolutely what's the difference between the two scenarios other people were around in the first scenario that lessened your responsibility no one else was around in the second scenario that heightened your responsibility so it is with the pregnant woman precisely because she may not or cannot hand that preborn child to someone else that heightens her responsibility when it comes to the abortion debate I find not only does the topic of dependency come up but the topic of the preborn child being diagnosed in utero with some type of disability often comes up I was at floor in canvas in Florida a few years ago and a student came up to the microphone and said my step-mom had an abortion because she was told her baby was going to die at birth are you telling me she was wrong so my first response was to express sympathy and I said well I'm sorry for the suffering that your stepmom went through and I don't pretend to know what that must have been like I can only imagine how difficult that must have been and I said your question is a fair one I'd like to but if you'll bear with me I think I can best answer your question by asking you some questions would that be okay he said sure and I said okay I said I want you to imagine something I'll get back to your original question but then I told a story I said I want you to imagine that someone you love on the opposite end of the country maybe California calls you up and says I've just been diagnosed with cancer and I've been told I have four weeks left to live I said to this student now in this scenario this imaginary scenario you love this person you enjoy staying in touch with them visiting them when you're told that they only have four weeks left on this earth I said which of the two options would you pick option 1 wait until week 3 day 6 to hop on a plane and go say goodbye to this person you love or option 2 take the next flight out and savor every moment of every day of the next four weeks with this person that you love which would you pick he said option two I said me too I said here's what I think this says about us what I think it says about us is we recognize when we have a minimal amount of time left with someone we love we want to maximize the minimal time we don't want to cut short the already short time we have now that that story has made the principle clear I said let's apply it to this situation your stepmom found herself in UC before she was told her baby was gonna die at birth when she thought that this pregnancy was gonna carry to term without any problems she probably had in her mind maybe 50 60 years with her child but in that one moment where she was told your baby's gonna die let's maybe say halfway through the pregnancy so in 20 weeks she finds this out at 20 weeks she's got 20 more weeks to go when she's told your baby's gonna die at 40 weeks halfway you're at the halfway point your baby's gonna die at birth she went from having 50 or 60 years to only 20 weeks why would we want to cut short the already short time she has wouldn't we want to savor every moment of every day of the next 20 with the child that we love now someone might respond back wall but when the baby dies at birth she's gonna grieve the child it's gonna be sad and I say okay but if she has an abortion won't she grieve the child and it'd be sad and when the first Christmas comes along in either scenario when she remembered the child grieved the child would be sad and when the first birthday or what should have been birthday comes along either case when she grieve the child remember the child and be sad yes so having the abortion does not take away the sorrow it does take away the gift of time what questions can we ask what stories can we tell to open up the eyes in people's hearts and minds to the truth of the pro-life message sometimes when it comes to a poor prenatal diagnosis it's not simply a case of the child dying at birth but rather that the child will live a life perhaps as long as you were me but a life of disability a life of physical or genetic difference and I would suggest that in situations like that what we need to have is a change in perspective knowing that we can't take for example the the extra 21st chromosome away from someone with Down syndrome that we have no cure for that genetic condition we can't change that reality nonetheless we can change our perspective on the reality instead of looking at the negative we can look at the positive someone I met about eight or nine years ago it was now who taught me the power of perspective by his example as a man by the name of Nick voyage some of you may have heard of Nick he's from Australia but now lives here in America and is a motivational speaker Nick was born without arms or legs and I know someone who knows someone who knows Nick and so when he came to Canada it's all about who you know and so I reached out to my connections to see if we could get a meeting and sure enough he was willing to meet with with my colleagues and I and as I have learned Nick's store I have seen the power of perspective although Nik is a happy and optimistic person today he wasn't always that way when he was a child in elementary school he was bullied and he was taunted and he was made fun of and he was so overwhelmed by his disability by what he could never do that one day while laying in the family bathtub he thought about rolling over and drowning himself in an act of suicide thankfully Nik never acted on that temptation and as time went on he became the motivational speaker he is today he's happy optimistic joyful he's married has four children what's changed not his lack of limbs he's lacking those today that he lacked in the bathtub what changed was his perspective he asked himself how can this obstacle become my greatest opportunity how can this obstacle become my greatest opportunity the power of perspective I remember watching an interview with Nik in which he talked about how he was reading the scriptures one day and came upon John chapter 9 and it's in John chapter 9 where the disciples see a blind man and Jesus is nearby and they say to Jesus why was this man born blind was it his sin or his parents sin that caused him to be this way and Jesus responds it was not that this man sinned or that his parents sinned but rather so that the glory of God be made manifest and Nick said I was reading that passage and I thought that's why I don't have arms and legs it saw the glory of God can be made manifest in me whatever the disability whatever the difference how can the obstacle become an opportunity how can we use it to manifest God's glory not only do we have to ask God to heal our hearts and make them clean to help us open up other people's eyes as well as our own to the things unseen but the cry of hearts needs to be show me how to love like you have loved me a few years ago I was on a different college campus and during Q&A a student got up to the microphone and said what about rape if someone hasn't consented to the sex they're now pregnant they should be allowed an abortion shouldn't they and remembering the power of opening up the mind the eyes of the mind to things unseen through questions I thought I'll just be really short and sweet so my typical answer is as I said to her while I agree with you that rape is a horrible injustice and we need to support and care for victims of sexual assault and I think we need more serious consequences for the attackers I said a question I have to ask myself is this is it fair to give the death penalty to the innocent child she was not so convicted by that question and she said yeah but so I thought okay maybe I need to open up the mind of her heart the eyes of her heart not just of her mind it's why maybe she needs a story and so I said okay I said well let me flesh my answer out a little more I said let's imagine and that you know so or that someone we don't have to know her let's imagine there's a woman who has consensual sex with her husband on a Monday the following day when she's coming home from work she's raped by a stranger in a month's time when she finds out she's pregnant she doesn't know who the father of her child is could be her husband could be the rapist so I said let's imagine she hopes it's her husband's child carries through with the pregnancy and when the baby is born they do a paternity test and the test results show the child's father is not her husband it's the rapist I ended my story with a question would we allow that woman or anyone to kill the newborn child because of the father's crime she said no of course not so then I said why then would we allow a woman or anyone to kill a preborn child because of the father's crime she said yeah but you made that up I mean like that would never happen so I thought oh I have more in my arsenal I got it I got something for you that's what I thought to myself so I said well actually I said yes the scenario I gave you was made up but let me tell you about a New York Times article there was a New York Times article interviewing an abortionist by the name of dr. Wicklund who did an abortion on a woman who'd been raped but in the article it said dr. Wicklund described her horror when doing this abortion afterwards when she had to put the baby parts back together to make sure she got all the parts out as she was doing this she realized the pregnancy was further along than she or the woman had thought and in that moment the abortionist realized she didn't kill a child conceived in rape she killed a child the woman conceived with her husband and even the abortionist was horrified having told a real story I ended it with the question if it's horrifying to kill a child conceived in love isn't it equally horrifying to kill a child conceived in violence because the common denominator is in each case there's a child she said yeah but nothing was getting through to her I finally had to say I would happily speak with you but I'm gonna have to do it one on one because there's a long line of students who in fairness need to be able to ask their questions to she respected that sat down I handled the other questions and at the end of the evening boom she came up to the podium and wanted to speak with me and as we carried on the conversation I began to wonder if perhaps I couldn't get through to her because the problem wasn't here I started to wonder if it was here could I be speaking to a victim of sexual assault I wondered to myself and so she and I were going back and forth I I finally said to where I said you know I friend who was molested as a child my friend never even told her parents she told me and maybe for friends as in college she started to be reminded and traumatized by memories and they said being one of the few people that knew this I went with my friend to get help and I journeyed with her to healing and I said you know what became very clear to me is that when someone's been sexually assaulted they've been traumatized and if they get pregnant and have an abortion that abortion won't take the original trauma away and the girl looked at me with a sadness in her eyes and said yeah 10 years and counting I said I'm so sorry for your suffering and at that moment the whole direction of her conversation changed we went from talking about abortion intellectually with me just ask your questions like how are you doing do you feel safe I asked or is the person who hurt you still in your life could I help connect you to counseling or extra support if you feel that you need it and I watched her soften in front of my eyes and I was reminded of something my friends at the group justice for all have said when someone asks about rape they're not asking if the baby's human they're asking if the pro-lifer is human do we care as much for the person in front of us as we rightly care for the child in the womb in 1 Corinthians 13 we're told if I speak in the tongues of men and angels but do not have love I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal show me how to love like you have loved me in that passage in Corinthians it goes on to define love the first two words used to define love as love is patient love is love is patient love is kind if you struggle because you find in your encounters with others that you can be impatient and unkind I have a recipe to fix that and the recipe to fix that is the prayer of st. Francis midway through the prayer we say Oh divine master grant that I may not so much seek to be understood as to understand where is this person coming from David be right a few years ago had me read a book called influence the psychology of persuasion and in this book it has a little thought experiment it has the reader imagine three buckets of water in front of them one is cold water in it one is lukewarm water in it one is hot water in it now imagine I put my right hand in the hot water in my left hand in the cold water now imagine I take them both out and put them in the middle bucket the hand which came from the hot water is going to think the new bucket of water is cold the hand which came from the cold water is gonna think the new bucket of water is hot interestingly they're both wrong the new buckets lukewarm but the previous experience he's coloring the present interpretation if you're dialoguing with someone and you're having a hard time opening up the eyes of their mind in their heart with the questions and stories like I gave you if they're perhaps frustrated or angry you want to pause you want to ask yourself what temperature was the bucket of water they were in before I met them where are they coming from what is their story but a week ago I watched a very powerful foreign film with English subtitles called a man called ov a and in this film it tells the tale of a very angry man but it's the film unfolds and I won't give out the spoiler you realize just how much pain and anguish he carries in his heart one of my friends has rightly pointed out to me anger is a secondary emotion anger is a secondary emotion you see that in a man called Obie you see as the story goes on the angers a cover it's deep down that we see his real heart and what's going on in it and so if you find yourself encountering someone who's angry who's rude pause don't take it personally and say to yourself this is a secondary emotion what's the deeper one what's the primary one how can I love as Christ loved me I can be patient I can be kind I can seek to understand I remember once speaking with a student named Noah and Noah was very angry at me and no one was talking really really really fast and so we're always talking really really really loud and so I did the exact opposite I talked to slower and quieter and it was hard for me to get a word in edgewise but there was this one pause in his rant in which I very gently said and I prayed that God would give me the gaze to look at him with the eyes of Christ and to look in him and see Christ even in his anger I looked at him and I said Noah what does someone who thinks like you wants someone who thinks like me to understand Oh divine master grant that I may not so much seek to be understood as to understand st. John Paul the great once said suffering unleashes love when do we love others step outside of ourselves isn't it when they're suffering there need either vulnerable they're struggling whether it's the preborn child my personhood in the right-to-life who's suffering or whether it's the born person in front of us coming from a life of pain or bad choices who's suffering emotionally these are opportunities to unleash love and when we love others in their pain it can transform their lives and that is to love as Christ loved because that's the Gospel message we sinned separating ourselves from God we were suffering but what did that do our suffering Unleashed God's love through Jesus Christ who dying and rising gave us life so in the face of others suffering let us begin with prayer be ready to have strong minds and hearts to help open people's eyes to the things unseen but let us never forget love to be at the heart and let their suffering unleash our love so as to transform lives and so I'd like to end where I began if we think about reaching the culture with the pro-life messages sometimes a hard pill to swallow people don't like to hear the truth but as Mary Poppins once said a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down let your prayer love in your heart and Christ in your gaze be the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down god bless you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: FOCUS Catholic

Views: 23,191

Keywords: stephanie gray, pro life, catholic, focus catholic, catholic church, college, catholic conference, christian, catholic youth conference

Id: izSojrtbMIc

Length: 48min 5sec (2885 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 06 2019