Last Saturday, a group of Holy Trinity parishioners got onto three buses and rode to San Francisco to join 40 thousand other people in marching in the annual Walk for Life. By walking, they defended the dignity of life of all people, especially unborn children who might become the victims of abortion.

During the walk, our parishioners saw other people standing at various spots along the way who were there to support a woman’s decision to choose abortion, and some of these people heckled those who were walking. Some hecklers became rather nasty in their treatment of those who were walking; even to the extent of requiring police intervention. It could have been easy for the walkers to harbor dislike or even hatred of the hecklers because of their belief or their actions.

The Church designated Monday of this week as a day of penance and prayer: penance for the violations to the dig¬nity of the human person and prayer for the full restoration of the legal guarantee of the right to life. One might ask why those who support a right to life need to repent when there has been no direct involvement in acts of abortion.

The Church asks all of us to examine our consciences to see how we may have contributed to a culture that does not value the dig¬nity of every human person, even the hecklers that were in San Francisco on Saturday. If we start to think of those who support the choice of abortion as bad people, we are not treating them with dignity. God loves and treasures all people. If we become disrespectful of people on the other side of the abortion issue, we have some repenting to do. Let us examine our hearts and love one another. Through our repentance and prayer in support of the dignity of all people we can start a humble revolution of love, especially for the innocent, defenseless unborn children in jeopardy.