“We treat Jesus and refer to him all the time as if he’s just a woman, feminine all the time: he’s weeping all the time and he never picks a fight and he certainly never wins any, and he’s just so nice, like a greeting card…No! He is a lion, he is fierce. There is a reason that every single man I have ever met on the planet loves the movie ‘Braveheart.’ And every single normal woman I have ever met on the face of the earth loves every single man like that.”
That’s Gianna Jessen, who spoke to 850 people March 8 in Denver at the Catholic Charities Beacon of Hope Gala for Lighthouse and Women’s Services. Jessen is an abortion survivor who says she has the “gift of cerebral palsy” and refers to herself as “God’s girl.” The gala raised more than $500,000 for a range of women’s services provided by Catholic Charities, including the Lighthouse Women’s Center, which offers a lifeline to women in crisis pregnancies, right across the street from Planned Parenthood.
Following Jessen on stage, I remarked that the new face of poverty is a single woman and her child, and that the thing that is missing is men. They’re just not there.
We need men to focus on their families and to provide an example, to stand up and be counted as the Christian men that we are, to not be afraid to use the word ‘Jesus’ in a daily conversation, to bring our faith into our daily lives.
This is an era of absent men.
It takes a brave man to be charitable and to put his family first. Because society tells us to put yourself first. To be a steward, to be a warrior for Jesus, a man must defend and protect his family. Are you loving your family and raising your sons to be honorable men, to love women, to defend women? Are you raising your sons and daughters to be chaste and—if called to marriage—to seek a spouse for lifelong marriage? Are we open to God’s gift of children and not mangled in the false promises of contraception and abortion?
It’s time for brave hearts.
With three weeks left in Lent, resolve to write down your answers to those questions, one each week.
Visit Catholic Charities of Denver online at www.ccdenver.org or call 303-742-0828 to learn more, volunteer or make a donation.
See video from the Lighthouse and Women’s Services gala at http://www.ccdenver.org/beacon-of-hope-gala/#mediaarchive.
