It’s graduation season again. I’ll be happily recalling my own, and I’ll be praying for all graduates at all different grade levels in the Class of 2018. However, it is my fervent hope that students everywhere will take the initiative to remember aborted classmates.
Several years ago, I came across a story of a graduating class which dedicated its yearbook to all the students who would have been graduating that year had they not been killed by abortion. How fitting a tribute that is. Other graduating classes have paid tribute to their abortion victims by a moment of prayer at the baccalaureate Mass or at the graduation ceremony.
And why not? Tragedies that take the lives of students are often featured in yearbooks. And I imagine Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School will have their own tribute this year. Will there not be a mention or a tribute at their graduating ceremony? Why, then, should the victims of abortion be forgotten?
Maybe some will bristle at the mention of the Parkland school shooting, but it’s a fair comparison. Some 1 million children are killed by abortion every year in the United States. If you find another single act or disaster that claims that many lives in our country alone in a single year, please let me know about it.
Inevitably, some will object to inserting such a “negative” theme into a happy day. But life is mixed up with happiness and sadness, joy and tragedy. Significant moments in our lives should not be insulated from all awareness of injustice. We need to rejoice with those who rejoice, but we should weep with those who weep. If we remember only victims who were born and then died, but are unwilling to do so when the victims die before birth, it is a sign of the deep-rooted prejudice against the unborn in our society.
As pro-lifers we remind every new generation of young people who have survived that prejudice that others did not. One million students, or about one-third of students, will not be graduating this year. They didn’t even get to show up for their first birthdays, let alone their commencements. They were killed by abortion. As survivors, those who are graduating are now taking their places and preparing to be the future leaders.
Every year, a class celebrates the sending out of a new generation. That is what commencement means. Graduations are about new beginnings. That gives us hope. Hope is what graduation day is all about.
Let’s acknowledge those will be missing from these ceremonies, those who could not celebrate with us, and let’s work to let others live. Would it not be appropriate to give the silent grief of so many people an expression and acknowledgment at the commencement ceremonies about to take place? Perhaps an empty chair at the graduation ceremony, in honor of the missing children, or a lit candle, or a short prayer of remembrance.
We can be joyful on this day and celebrate our milestones while also remembering the missing children this year and every year until abortion is abolished in this country. Let us pray for an end to abortion and the renewal of our generation with the promise of new life.
Father Frank Pavone (@frfrankpavone) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the national director of Priests for Life.
