When speaking of the tribulations we are to expect in the “end times,” one thing that Jesus said is that “the love of most will grow cold” (Mt. 24:12). This grievous state of affairs arises “because wickedness is multiplied.” We do not know if we are in the end times of this world, yet there are signs that love is growing cold. There are many, but I’d like to focus on one of the most significant ones here.
Today, on the Byzantine calendar, is the feast of the Holy Innocents (it was yesterday on the Roman calendar), the infants who were murdered because it suited the will of a petty tyrant. One can perhaps understand why love might grow cold toward, say, an unjust aggressor in war, or some other malicious enemy who is an imminent threat to one’s life or family or property, or perhaps a hard-hearted and evil-minded government that legislates immorality and persecutes the righteous. But things have degenerated to an intolerable and even inhuman extent when a mother’s love for the child in her womb grows cold, so cold that she is willing to destroy her child—and not only that, but actively promotes the wholesale slaughter of the unborn as if it were a “right” of women, and an indication of their freedom. The government smiles upon the carnage, some people make lots of money off of it, and others rise to power in promoting and supporting it. Love in America, and in many other countries, has truly grown cold.
It has been said that if the most defenseless and innocent of human beings do not even enjoy the right to life, and if the society in which they are conceived is not interested in protecting them, then none of us is safe, none of us can expect to have rights for much longer. Where do you draw the line? Elderly, disabled people are gradually losing their right to life as well—in some countries they are already being killed without their consent. Make sure you maintain good health and marketable skills, or you might be next!
I recently read an article in the December, 2011, issue of Catholic World Report, about the routine killing of unborn babies who are discovered to have some sort of disability. When prenatal testing reveals some abnormality, the vast majority of doctors urge abortion, and the vast majority of mothers kill their (suddenly) unwanted children. But not all. The love of all has not yet grown cold.
A woman named Nancy Mayer-Whittington has written a book entitled, For the Love of Angela, about her carrying to term a 
daughter with a fatal diagnosis (the girl lived only a few minutes after birth). I haven’t read it (yet), but it looks like it is something quite worthwhile, and perhaps helpful in rekindling love in some parents’ hearts. Of course it cost her much in suffering the loss of her beloved daughter, but this is a price that anyone who believes in love, believes in the value of humanity, ought to be willing to pay. It is sad, but rich, as someone I know used to say. And this love is repaid in ways that will reach into eternity.
She writes that those few moments after her daughter’s birth (which also provided the opportunity for her baptism) were “the most wonderful and heartbreaking of my life.” She continues: “Seeing Angela alive, holding her, telling her I loved her, had made everything worthwhile, all the grief, uncertainty, and confusion. The decision to proceed with the pregnancy had been the correct one. I now had the face of my infant daughter forever etched in my memory.” Her doctor had told her that she was the first among all his patients who had discovered their child had a life-threatening condition who decided to give birth to the child.
Another mother who loved, Maria Keller, reacted strongly to her doctor’s insistence that she abort her son who had a fatal condition. The doctor somehow though she would feel better that way. “I just exploded,” Maria said she responded. “I told [the doctor], ‘Listen, my baby has this condition, but how is me killing this baby going to make it all better? How is me killing him going to make me happier?” The unassailable logic of a mother who loves.
It is perversely ironic that we celebrate today the sacrificed lives of infants whose mothers tried to protect them from those who would destroy them, because the mothers loved them. Today it is the mothers themselves who refuse to protect and love them, and who choose to destroy them (though in some cases, others forcibly pressure or coerce them to do so against their will). No need to fear someone coming to your home to kill your children (unless you live in China). You can take matters into your own hands and just drive to Planned Parenthood or some other house of horrors, rid yourself of the inconvenient problem, and feel your heart turn to ice.
Do not, then, wonder about crime and violence and terrorism and STDs and the insanity of our lust- and greed-driven society. What do you expect? Love has grown cold. If mothers kill their own children at the rate of several thousand a day in our country alone, is it logical for anyone to be surprised that atrocities abound and that whole societies are coming apart at the seams? Don’t be shocked or outraged at the next shooting spree you read about at some school or shopping mall. We have created the monster. Love has grown cold.
You don’t have to tell me there’s little statistical link between abortion and other violent crimes. Evil begets evil; it’s like a poison gas that diffuses everywhere. You won’t know where it comes from, but it’s there, and it affects all of us—unless we put on the “armor of God” (Eph. 6:10-18) and stand for the truth, stand for human dignity, and refuse to let our hearts turn to ice through selfish choices, choices that harm or even destroy others. Innocent others.
Wickedness is multiplied, as the Lord said, and the love of many has grown cold. His only answer to this was that the one who endures to the end will be saved. Let us then endure in faith, in prayer, in trust, in practicing and promoting Christian morality, in refusing to accept the status quo of a society whose love has grown cold—so cold that it hates its own children. The government now wants to impose contraceptive (& abortifacient) insurance coverage as part of a preventive health package, as if pregnancy, as if a beautiful child made in the image of God, is some disease that women have to be protected from.
Support the efforts of those whose hearts still love the innocent, who witness to the truth about human life and love, who endure to the end in resisting evil that has been declared to be a “right.” Do not let your love grow cold, and God will protect you from the bitter moral and spiritual winter that has descended upon our country and much of the world. The Lord knows those who are his, and the Holy Innocents bless from Heaven those who stand up for the innocents here on Earth.
