Live Action founder and president Lila Rose spoke to the Catholic crowd of 50,000 at the National Eucharistic Congress on July 18, sharing her story of converting to Catholicism and inspiring Christians to trust God and ask Him to use them to do His work.
Rose spoke about her experience as a teen reading about St. Joan of Arc. Inspired by the saint, Rose asked God to tell her how she could live for Him as St. Joan did. It was around this same time, said Rose, that she learned about abortion, which she called “the greatest human rights crisis of our day.”
“[A]s I discovered more about the problem of abortion as a young teen, I began to pray this prayer to our Lord Jesus: ‘Lord, use me. Use me to do something to save lives. Use me.’ It’s a very dangerous prayer to ask God, all powerful God, to use us tiny little creatures for His will because, guess what? He will do it. He will allow us to be part of His plan. That is how good our God is. We give Him a little inch… and He will transform our lives.”
Rose went on to speak about founding Live Action while she was in high school and about how she began investigative reporting on abortion while in college.
“I saw the darkness and the evil in our world,” she explained. “We struggle with our own personal sins as human beings and we struggle against the consequences of sin in our families, in our cities, in our nation, and it was dark. And yet, during that time I saw God use even the difficulties —even my own weaknesses — for good. That is the power of our God.”
Rose said that after completing her first investigative report, she returned to her dorm room and checked her email. There was a message from “an international corporation that does abortions” threatening to sue her.
“I remember getting to my knees in my dorm room and saying, ‘Lord, I don’t know what I’m in for here, but I trust in you. Help me trust in you. Every step of the way God … used that challenge to help the work multiply and reach now many more millions of people with the truth about not just the evil of abortion but the truth about the beauty and the goodness of human life, of marriage, and a family.”
She called on the crowd to stand up for life. “There are 50,000 people here in the stadium tonight. Imagine if each one of us asked our Lord, ‘Use me.’ If we said, ‘Do whatever you want with me Lord.’ Imagine what God can do. I believe that we can end abortion in this country, that we can build a culture of life, that we can transform the nation into one of life.”
Rose concluded her speech by sharing the story of another Joan — Joan Andrews Bell, who has been arrested more than 200 times for peaceful pro-life activism, and at age 75, is currently in jail for protesting abortion at a late-term, no-restrictions abortion facility in Washington, D.C.
Rose compared the two “Joans,” noting that, as St. Joan of Arc said she would not have done anything differently even if she knew she would be burned for it, Joan Andrews Bell refused to accept probation because “to accept probation would be to accept the lie that I have harmed society by trying peacefully, prayerfully, and non-violently to save children from the brutal death of abortion.”
Rose continued, “Joan Bell’s peaceful resistance echoes the spirit of the martyrs.”
“My brothers and sisters, may we humbly ask our Lord together to use us,” said Rose, “to use us to stand up in truth to speak the truth, to walk with love, and to have the gift of the spirit of the martyrs, and may we ask our beloved Jesus in the Eucharist to give us the strength to follow His call.”
