GOD CAN FULLY TRANSFORM LIVES

Things designed for good can be used for bad purposes. Art in its proper context captures images of beauty in the world or perverted to promote evil such as pornography. Books can teach and enlighten while others promote falsehoods or hatred.

Sometimes that which is life affirming in one context can be life denying if misused in another context. A drug originally intended to try to save life can also be used to kill.

For example, my doctor put me on the drug called methotrexate for the treatment of multiple sclerosis. My immune system is over-active and the methotrexate moderates my immune system. That is only one purpose of the drug. Methotrexate is actually a chemotherapy drug used to inhibit cell division in the treatment of leukemia, breast and lung cancer, head and neck cancers and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

In the treatment of MS and cancer, methotrexate is used to preserve r enhance life. Unfortunately, methotrexate is also used to induce early abortions – precisely because it interferes with cell division.

Otherwise good people can be corrupted to commit terrible evil. They may succumb to do evil by the temptation of money or ideology or lust or acclaim. There are a multitude of vices or circumstances to tempt well-intentioned people to do wicked things. That is the bad news about humanity.

DIVINE TRANSFORMATION

The good news is that God can transform the worst people into saints. History is replete with examples of both. Archbishop Fulton Sheen said, "No character, regardless of the depths of its vice or its intemperance, is incapable of being transformed through cooperation of divine and human action into its opposite."
We see this plainly when people with medical knowledge use it to perform abortions or engage in euthanasia. Medical knowledge should only be used to heal or preserve life. Every doctor who performs abortions abandons the proper intent of medicine and the Hippocratic tradition.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson (1926-2011) was a successful obstetrician-

Dr. Bernard Nathanson

gynecologist who became an abortionist. In 1969, he co-founded the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion. By his own admission, Nathanson was responsible for 75,000 abortions.

A GREAT CATHOLIC MOMENT

By the mid-1970s, he changed his views on abortion, ceased performing them and became profoundly pro-life. In 1996, this one-time atheist was baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church. Prominent Opus Dei priest Father John McCloskey said Nathanson's conversion was "one of the great Catholic moments of the 20th century in the United States."

Although Nathanson knew he was completely forgiven, until his death, he seemed tormented by the realization and memory of the great evil in which he had been involved and promoted. Yes, God forgave Bernard Nathanson completely, but did Nathanson completely forgive himself?

To the end of his life, Nathanson worked to stop what he had previously worked to establish – widespread abortion in America. I pray that he fully allowed the redemptive work of Christ at the cross to free him.

Nathanson's last 15 years should have been lived in the liberty and freedom Christ offers. All that passed before was forgiven in his Confession, repentance and faith in Jesus Christ and washed away in the waters of Baptism.

Such a dramatic change of heart is what the cross can achieve. As Fulton Sheen reminded us, there is no character so bad that he or she is incapable of being transformed by God into its opposite. That should be cause for great rejoicing for us all.

One day when I was a child I asked my father why we call the day that Jesus died Good Friday. After all, Christ went though the most horrible torture, crucifixion and death. My father responded, "It may have been bad for Jesus but his death was good for us."

He was right. Christ died that we might live. The most horrible death of our Lord on the cross settled the human problem of evil, sin and alienation from God so that we could have forgiveness and have eternal life.

LET YOUR SIN GO

Is there some sin that you have confessed, yet you have not forgiven yourself? Have you taken something that was intended for good and used it for evil – such as sexuality?

Confess it, repent and look forward. Let your sin go.
If God has forgiven it, who are you to keep remembering it? Forgive yourself and let God fully transform your life to be a new creature in Christ.