Three Days of Remembrance

Guest Post by Pro-life Leader Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life

This is a powerful week.

This Thursday, September 10^th marks the first anniversary of the murder of Charlie Kirk. The next day, September 11^th, marks the 25^th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on our country. And on Saturday, September 12^th the pro-life movement in America marks the “National Day of Remembrance of Aborted Children,” when people gather from coast to coast at the gravesites of children killed by abortion.

That’s a lot of deep grief. The human soul aches under the burden, the human mind searches to understand the meaning of it, and the human heart yearns to find and walk the path out of the snares of these evils.

There is a deep connection between these three consecutive observances. We can think of it as a spectrum.

In the middle of the spectrum is a fundamental choice: to kill or to refrain from killing. Most of us never kill. We are hard-wired against it, and it takes a lot of force to cross that boundary. That is why professional soldiers have to be intensively trained to overcome the natural reluctance to kill, even when that killing is morally justifiable.

This fundamental dividing line is the difference between civilization and barbarism. It is also the spiritual dividing line of which St. John speaks in his first letter:

“For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother…We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:11-15).

Charlie Kirk was hated, not because he hated anyone, but precisely because he persuaded so many not to do so, but to embrace instead the light and life of Christ. That spiritual mission was more important to him than the good political influence he exercised.

Moving further to the dark end of the spectrum, we find not only those who murder, but those who do so thinking that by doing so, they are serving God. Jesus foretold it. “The time is coming when those who kill you will think they are doing a holy service for God” (John 16:2).

That is what the Islamic extremists did on September 11, 2001, and what they do every time they cry out “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greater”) while murdering people.

This deepens the evil of murder, which is bad enough on its own, such as when someone murders out of anger, revenge, or the pursuit of sadistic pleasure.

The Islamic terrorists are worse. They try to put a divine stamp of approval on killing innocent people; they try to make it an act of worship and obedience; they turn religion into violence.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (and similar words from Osama bin Laden) explain this mindset. “We win because we love death more than you love life.”

That shows us both the problem and the solution.

On the Judeo-Christian foundations of Western civilization, we have the cornerstones of love, life, and freedom. This worldview acknowledges the human dignity of every individual, and the right to life as given by God himself.

It also acknowledges the eternal spiritual struggle between life and death, good and evil, light and darkness. Like it or not, we are part of that struggle. We don’t choose the battle; it chooses us.

To live in freedom is to also accept the fact that some will attack us for it. It is not that we have offended the attacker or that they hate us personally. It is that they hate what we stand for. To choose to live in freedom, then, is to choose to be on the battlefield.

That battle flared on September 11, 2001. And twenty-five years later, the battle still rages. The battle also flared on September 10, 2025. Charlie Kirk was killed wearing a shirt that said “Freedom” and holding a microphone by which he was proclaiming its meaning. He was on the battlefield, and he was pushing the enemy back.

And then you have the abortion industry and its advocates, pushing via propaganda campaigns, extreme laws, and even state constitutional amendments an unlimited, unfettered right to abortion even for healthy mothers carrying healthy babies in the final weeks of pregnancy.

We are not blaming here the moms, many of whom are known to us, who were confused and got an abortion because they felt there was no other choice.

I’m talking about the fanatics who love death more than we love life; who not only want abortion legal, but who try to shut down, by laws, court challenges, and even violence, the peaceful, loving work of pregnancy centers all over the country. They want to force parents out of the abortion decision of a minor, force taxpayers to pay for the procedure, and stop any reasonable regulations.

Women are not served by this abortion fanaticism, and neither are the babies who are killed. On Saturday, September 12^th, in a national observance I co-founded in 2013, people will gather at gravesites and mourn these children.

And we will recommit to what we find on the best end of the spectrum I have traced… Not to take life in the name of God or anyone else, but precisely to give our own lives, in union with God, that others many live.

It’s the next line of the Scripture I quoted earlier:

“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for one another” (1 John 3:16).

That’s the solution. That’s the game plan. That’s what should get us through this powerful week, and through our whole lives.

Frank Pavone is national director of Priests for Life and the national pastoral director of Rachel’s Vineyard Ministries and the Silent No More Awareness Campaign..