Today’s Readings
Today and tomorrow we read about the difficulties that Abraham and Sarah had in conceiving a child. This is not a difficulty unfamiliar to many husbands and wives today. The sorrows and struggles of humanity have not really changed so much in the past 4000 years. Tomorrow we will read about the solution that Abraham and Sarah come to. It is a bad solution, which, again, is not so dissimilar to the solutions that many couples grasp at today. They decide to use a surrogate mother.
The Church has always stood strongly against all artificial birth control, both that which is intended to prevent conception and that which seeks to conceive a human being outside of the natural order that God has set down within marriage. In vitro fertilization, a surrogate mother, egg donation, artificial fertilization – these are all wrong. They are a betrayal of the intimacy proper to marriage. They are a betrayal of the dignity due to the beginning of all human life.
That it was wrong when Abraham did it and it is still wrong today is revealed in the words spoken between Abraham and the Lord. Abraham says to the Lord, “You have given me no offspring.” He shows that he knows that children are a gift from God. When we receive gifts we must receive them, not reach out and grasp.
Is it fair that some couples conceive easily and others are unable to conceive after years of trying? Is that fair? No, its not fair, but a lot of things in this world are not fair. It is also not fair that there are children without parents to care for them. A couple may use various moral methods to help them conceive in the true way, but, if they are still not able to conceive, they should consider what God wants from them and for them rather than demand what they want.
Indeed, after doctors who use their God-given abilities to kill children, there is no medical field as filled with corruption and greed as fertility clinics. Conception in a cooperative act between a man, a woman, and God. Fertility clinics promise that they can replace God in that equation. They cannot, but they demand large amounts of money for trying.
As Jesus tells us today, we should look at the fruits. Ishmael was Abraham’s son, and Abraham loved Ishmael, but Sarah was jealous, sad, and angry. Any person who was conceived through artificial means has the same dignity as every person, but that is what God has provided: life. What man has added, the grasping, the greed, the grief, these are rotten fruit, which is not even to mention the bodies of conceived but unborn babies cast aside in a blind desire for a perfect child.
Daily Homilies
