Pro-life group launches campaign to pray for abortionists’ conversion

Front Royal, Va, Sep 30, 2008 / 01:15 am (CNA).- The pro-life group Human Life International (HLI) has launched an international campaign to promote praying the St. Michael prayer for the conversion of abortionists.
“The fight against the culture of death is primarily a spiritual battle,” said HLI president Fr. Thomas J. Euteneuer. “Human Life International knows that with the aid of St. Michael, abortionists around the world will convert from their cooperation with evil.”
“Nowhere are the words of St. Paul that ‘our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens’ (Ephesians 6:12), more evident or obvious than in the abortion battle,” he continued.
“As a pro-life organization we are naturally concerned with the babies killed by abortion and their mothers who are ravaged by it. But we are also concerned with the eternal souls of those caught up in this evil, the abortionists, and others who promote it. We want to see them in Heaven, and as a priest that is of ultimate concern to me.”
HLI is asking people to sign a pledge of support for the campaign and to pray the St. Michael prayer daily, especially after each Mass. The organization also asks people to send copies of the pledge to parishes to be inserted in the weekly bulletins.
HLI has produced St. Michael prayer cards in English, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese. More information is available at www.hli.org/st_michael_prayer.html.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897)

"I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul." These are the words of Theresa of the Child Jesus, a Carmelite nun called the "Little Flower," who lived a cloistered life of obscurity in the convent of Lisieux, France. [In French-speaking areas, she is known as Thérèse of Lisieux.] And her preference for hidden sacrifice did indeed convert souls. Few saints of God are more popular than this young nun. Her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, is read and loved throughout the world. Thérèse Martin entered the convent at the age of 15 and died in 1897 at the age of 24.
Life in a Carmelite convent is indeed uneventful and consists mainly of prayer and hard domestic work. But Thérèse possessed that holy insight that redeems the time, however dull that time may be. She saw in quiet suffering redemptive suffering, suffering that was indeed her apostolate. Thérèse said she came to the Carmel convent "to save souls and pray for priests." And shortly before she died, she wrote: "I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth."
[On October 19, 1997, Pope John Paul II proclaimed her a Doctor of the Church, the third woman to be so recognized in light of her holiness and the influence of her teaching on spirituality in the Church.]