The Annunciation

The Annunciation

Dear Parishioners,

Around March 25^th each year, I anxiously await what most people receive at Christmas—an annual card from a friend. Fr. Tom has chosen to send out Annunciation Day cards instead of the normal Christmas cards. The bottom of his card this year (2023) reads:

As long as our country treats the fruit of the womb as a disposable item in a subhuman culture, I will send my Christmas cards nine months early to proclaim to the world that the child in the womb is sacred.  

In the past, his cards have given recipients other reminders:

And finally after nine months they give birth to humans who are our sons and daughters. They do not grow pre-human life forms that become human once they leave a woman. What an insult to women. That to live inside of our mother is to forfeit human dignity.

Jesus entered our world as a child in the womb of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. He revealed to us His Father in Heaven. May we recognize Him in the least among us, even our unborn sons and daughters as we seek the Face of God together.

I wrote the following poem many years ago when reflecting on the sacredness and value of each human life:

I Cried

I cried—no one heard me

Yet I cried—

For I was inside

Of my mother’s womb.

 

I longed to be held in her arms,

To be fondled and caressed,

To take milk from my mother’s breast

And to laugh.

 

Such beauty and warmth of life

I could enjoy,

Play with my first toy

And begin to love.

 

I could leave my print on the world:

Wisdom to span the ages,

As the knowledge of sages

Of years past.

Still, more than this all, I long for life

—That gift God-given—

And the chance to live in

His created world.

 

I cried—and no one heard me

For I was inside of my mother’s womb.

Little did I know it would be my tomb.

I cried.

© 1982 Edward F. Namiotka