As most of you know, I try to go to pray at the third largest Planned Parenthood in the world here in Denver, CO. As I have written before, they kill 10,000 babies a year. So, every other week, I go there to do minor-exorcisms, my Divine Office and the Rosary. My team of sidewalk counselors is usually better than me in English, but my team often uses me for the Spanish-speaking or French-speaking couples entering the center who may be abortion-minded.
On the way to the abortion center one day this summer, I was listening to the Liturgy of the Hours audio-version just before pulling in to the parking lot. The readings were about King Jehoshaphat coming against the Moabites, Ammonites, and Meunites in 2 Chronicles 20 (the Second Book of Paralipomenon in the Douay-Rheims.)
There, God tells the King through a prophet of Israel: “Thus says the Lord to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s… You will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.’ Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them, and the Lord will be with you.”
Notice that God frequently tells Israel not to be afraid in battle. But rarely is the message that Israel “will not need to fight this battle.” Then, the Bible continues with these words:
And when he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed those who were to sing to the Lord and praise him in holy attire, as they went before the army, and say, “Give thanks to the Lord, for His steadfast love endures forever.” And when they began to sing and praise, the Lord set an ambush against the men of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah, so that they were routed. For the men of Ammon and Moab rose against the inhabitants of Mount Seir, devoting them to destruction, and when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, they all helped to destroy one another.—2 Chr 20:21-23.
With this having been read to me by an app while driving, I pulled up to the abortion center. I frequently do minor-exorcisms, but this day, I noticed from the audio readings in the Bible above that gratitude was what God required for Israel to defeat her enemies. As seen above, the King and all his subjects simply pray as they approach the battle: “Give thanks to the Lord, for His steadfast love endures forever” (Ps 135/136.)
So, God Himself destroys all the enemies of Israel in that very battle. In fact, the last few verses above reveal that the Ammonites and Moabites destroyed each other. This happens without the armies of Israel needing to do much of anything except praise God in gratitude for His faithfulness.
Switch gears for a minute. Because the abortion mill is in Democrat-run Denver, there are homeless people everywhere who get very little care from our socialist government structure. Many of the homeless are on drugs. That day, my team of Catholics came across a gentleman who had been rolling around in the brambles and thorns all night.
We found him missing at least one foot (from diabetes?) nearly seizing after he had fallen out of his wheelchair sometime in the night. He was barely coherent, obviously on something.
My friend wanted to call 911, but I told her they wouldn’t do anything since he was conscious and breathing. She called anyway. Denver Fire and EMS showed up, but he refused treatment, so they left him there on the north side of Planned Parenthood.
In their defense, I suppose Denver Fire and EMS cannot transport every homeless person zonked-out on one thing or another. But Denver paramedics (for whom I worked twenty years ago) entirely missed the fact he had his lower intestine hanging out of his lower abdomen. His guts hanging out was apparently a prolapsed colon following a failed colostomy surgery awhile ago. Had Denver EMS been the excellent paramedics on the streets (before these covid-duds were hired in 2021) they would have certainly discovered his colon hanging out from a simple body sweep of both abdomen and torso.
In any case, after Fire and EMS departed, we knew we had to do something. So, we got him back in his wheelchair and into the shade from the hot gutter in which he slept. (Denver has hotter summers than Los Angeles. Search it if you don’t believe me.) Having first gone into paramedic-mode by lifting him and moving him, I realized I better do something priestly, too. So, I knelt down and started praying for him. (I didn’t ask anyone to take the above picture, but someone snapped it. We later found out his name was “Al” and he did give me permission to write this article about him much later.)
As I prayed for him, I started with a few words of gratitude for his life. But that was only one sentence in gratitude. I quickly moved on to petitionary prayer for the salvation of his body and soul. I made up prayers in English, as Al doesn’t speak Latin. In fact, I didn’t think he understood anything I said in any language, especially anything since he was so zonked-out from the night prior.
But after my own vocal prayers, to my great shock, Al started praying his own extemporaneous prayers. To my even greater shock, every single one of his prayers was based in gratitude. Not anger at God for having slept all night in a thorn-filled gutter. Not even petitionary prayer to God for all the many needs in his life. Al just started rambling all the things he was thankful for in his life. At that moment, I understood part of why God wanted us to briefly leave our pro-life prayers in front of the abortion center.
A little bit after this, it all clicked for me: Just as the Israelites defeated their physical enemies through prayers of praise and gratitude, so also God was showing me that we Catholic pro-lifers would defeat our spiritual enemies at the abortion center through prayers of praise and gratitude. Just as I had heard on the audio Liturgy of the Hours on the way to the abortion center. Just as I had learned from Al, who was not quite sober yet.
But he did finally sober-up that morning, once we got him in the shade. As he began to talk, we discovered that he had a lovely personality. You see, I’m not just writing that he had a “lovely personality” because we’re looking for a humble-brag. Rather, we discovered Al had a powerful story and a very engaging sense of humor.
The women on my pro-life team then went to a supermarket and got him food, clothing and other supplies. A deacon and I stayed back with Al. That’s where we discovered the GI problem I described a few paragraphs above. He strangely claimed the city hospital would not do surgery on him for it til he kicked certain habits in his life. But Al said he could “push it back in” later. It didn’t sound like a good idea, but I wasn’t his babysitter.
In any case, we did what we could for Al. And he did a lot for us: He taught us to thank God through every circumstance in life, including languishing alone all night in a hot Denver side street full of brambles and thorns. As we looked up while helping him, we found an enormous hawk looking at us. The picture does not do it justice, but if I had to estimate the hawk’s size without exaggeration, I would guess it was about four-feet from beak to tail-feather and about six-feet in wing span.
A couple weeks later, a friend in the backyard of a rural foothill home here in Colorado asked me a question that probably reads as very hippie-esque to you, but she said: “Does God ever send you animals?” I was surprised at the question, but I decided to answer it, even if my answer sounded as crazy as the question.
I explained with words similar to these: “Yes, every time there is enormous spiritual attack in my life, it seems God allows Satan to send crows my way. Literally black crows. Sometimes entire murders of them. I used to fear them, but now I know God is allowing this so I can brace for the spiritual attack with more prayer. On the other hand, when God wants to show me that I’m on the right track, he always sends me hawks or falcons. Maybe part of the reason why God sends me this gift is my website ended up being called ‘Peregrino,’ which is obviously similar to the name ‘Peregrine,’ as in Peregrine Falcon (the fastest animal on earth.)”
That strange day at the abortion center, I think we got to see the hawk (or falcon) as a small approval from God to keep doing pro-life work, but to take care of the poor when the opportunity presents itself in the Big-City or elsewhere.
But most importantly, we learned from the Bible and from Al that one of the greatest forms of spiritual advance and spiritual warfare is to approach God with praise and thanksgiving. That’s not charismatic gobbledygook. This insistence of gratitude as a form spiritual warfare is a notion we see all throughout the Bible and the lives of the saints.