Almost Time for Another Baby!

When I was in college, I came across a prayer card with a prayer for unborn babies.  The prayer was written, I believe, by Fulton Sheen.  The intention of the prayer was more specific than petitioning for an end to abortion or more respect for human life, it was a prayer to save a specific unborn baby, who was likely to be the victim of abortion.  The prayer card instructed you to say the prayer every day for one year to save one baby.  Once a new year started, you were working on saving another baby.  Below is the prayer:

O Virgin of Guadalupe, Grant us the Grace to love and respect life in it's beginnings with the same love with which you conceived in your womb the life of the Son of God.


Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I love you very much.  I beg you to spare the life of the unborn baby, that I have spiritually adopted, who is in danger of abortion.  


The prayer and it's purpose immediately appealed to me.  Not only was it about babies, it was about saving an actual baby.  When I began this daily prayer it was around this time of year - late January - near the horrid anniversary of Roe v Wade.  So each year as fellow Catholics, and many Christians, pray, march and protest to end abortion, my spiritual baby is born and I begin praying for a new spiritual baby.  I forget the exact year I began this tradition, but I think I will start praying for my ninth spiritual baby next week!

And while I was blessed enough to conceive, carry, birth and be in charge of raising and nurturing (along with my husband) our beautiful baby boy, I still have a very special soft spot in my heart for all these spiritual babies.  Every January, I am filled with joy knowing that one more of God's special souls has been saved and I am working on helping to save another.  I sometimes think about these spiritual children of mine, wondering what they are doing now, that they have narrowly escaped an untimely death.  I think about how blessed the world is to have them in it, but how few probably realize, that although God gave them life, they almost did not live.  I wonder sometimes too, do I know these children?  Have I come across them in my daily life?  They do not know who I am nor I them, but I pray for them and love them.