Having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, you highly favored one! The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women!”
But when she saw him, she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered what kind of salutation this might be.
The angel said to her, “Don’t be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
Behold, you will conceive in your womb and give birth to a son, and you shall name him ‘Jesus.’
He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. There will be no end to his Kingdom.”
Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, seeing I am a virgin?”
The angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, also the holy one who is born from you will be called the Son of God.
Behold, Elizabeth, your relative, also has conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren.
For nothing spoken by God is impossible.”
Mary said, “Behold, the servant of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judah, and entered into the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.
She called out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!
— Luke Chapter 1, verses 28-42
As we prepare to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, it’s important that all Christians realize something. In biblical times, everyone from kings to peasants understood that after conception, the mother’s womb was home to a baby, home to a new life.
The Bible acknowledges that unborn life is sacred, we are made in the image of God, and life comes from God.
How can anyone who believes in the word of God, as given to us through the Bible, ignore this reality? And yet there are some Christians — some Catholics like President Joe Biden and the 52nd Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi —who preach that we are not fully human, deserving of rights, until after birth.
Genesis 1:26-27 says: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground.
And God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
When are we created in God’s image? Pro-Choice Christians apparently believe this happens after birth.
And yet David, in Psalm 139:13, praises Yahweh when he proclaims, ‘For you formed my inmost being. You knit me in my mother’s womb.”
The prophet Jeremiah has no doubt in 1:5 when God tells him, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.”
The Bible tells us in Proverbs 6:16-17 that innocent life is sacred. “There are six thing the Lord hates, yes, seven are an abomination to him; Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood.” Psalm 106:37-38 says, “they sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons, and they shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and their daughters.”
From these verses, God has shown us that life begins in the womb and should be protected because the unborn are fully human. Believers should therefore oppose abortion as morally wrong.
In his gospel, Luke also confirms life before birth. He tells us that the “baby” leaped in Elizabeth’s womb, not a clump of cells. A baby. A living person.
When the Blessed Virgin Mary replied to the angel, “let it be done to me according to your word,” she conceived through the Holy Spirit. From that moment on, she carried Jesus in her womb.
Where does your moral compass come from?
Merry Christmas.
