At the end of summer 2024, I was in Western Europe and Western Africa on different missions. While in Europe, I was about to offer Holy Mass a pro-life center and I noticed after donning my alb and cinture that I had the rest of my vestments on a car seat (see above picture.) As it was a pro-life center across from an abortion center, the car seat was clearly destined for a poor family who would say “no” to abortion after being abortion-minded. (Notice I don’t say that we hope they would say “yes” to life, as saying “yes” to life already happened the minute they chose to unite as man and woman.)
In any case, I pulled out my phone before Mass and snapped the above picture because Mass vestments on a car-seat at a pro-life center beautifully demonstrates how each vocation in the Catholic Church relies on each other. Priests need families and families need priests. Obviously, I came from a family, but I also need friends and donors like you all. (I made some new friends in Iberia as you can see in the picture below.) But pro-life centers also need priests.
Why do pro-life centers need priests? The sermon I gave there in Europe to a group of young adults was that at one point about ten years ago (even in my pro-life apostolate as a priest) I knew abortion was horrible, but I did not believe that witches and satanists were inside abortion centers using abortion as a satanic sacrifice. But the evidence is now overwhelming that abortion is often used to gain earthly power through a “sacrifice” to real demons. Because abortion entails the separation of the blood from the body of a child, it is a diabolical inversion of the Mass. Why? Because St. Gregory Nazienzen wrote about the Divine Liturgy: “The priest sunders with unbloody cut the body and blood of the Lord, using his voice as a sword.”
God-the-Son in His mind-blowing generosity sacrifices His innocent self to God-the-Father in the unbloody sacrifice for the salvation of human souls. Satan requires the innocent blood (though tainted with original sin) of a baby in abortion for his own ego and the destruction of human souls. This is more than an interesting connection for a blog post on the inversion of grace. It shows why we need the Mass, especially the TLM with all the language of sacrifice (purposely removed from the vocabulary of the NOM) to counter the effects of the evil sacrifice of abortion. Both are sacrifice. Both are the separation of body and blood.
Also, the graces help the sidewalk counselors. Just before Mass, one of the young women in the above picture counseled a young woman to leave the abortion center as she was going into it across the street. We actually waited on her to start Mass (because I was waiting on no priest but me!) But this is the beauty of converging vocations that God programmed into true Catholicism. It brought me to tears how well she did in her sidewalk counseling, in fact.
In the same pro-life center, I blessed this statue of Fatima for the workers. (Hint: We weren’t too far from the actual apparitions of Fatima, wink wink.)
(I didn’t ask anyone to snap these pix, but they sent them to me anyway.)
Above is the producer of Sound of Freedom. Leo flew me to Western Africa on his dime to be a chaplain on the set of a new movie also being distributed by Angel Productions. The subject of the movie is classified! Leo (a TLM Catholic himself) and his troop took care of me and greatly encouraged me in my vocation. But I brought them the sacraments. It’s more proof of this “convergence of vocations,” as I call this post. God keeps showing me how He set up families to need priests, and priests need families. It seems to be some type of synergistic positive feedback cycle of vocations that only God could design in Catholicism.