Mother of Mercy and of Love

Therese Marie Green
WinePress Publishing
95 pages, $7.95 (U.S.)

Three brief diary entries in 1975 of a pregnant, unmarried 19-year-old pressured into having an illegal abortion is the first stirring witness in author Therese Marie Green’s transformation.

She had tender conversations with the “living one” inside her, and acknowledged more than a month later that “my little one is gone.” In 1986, she received the Sacrament of Reconciliation and healing prayers. Although still personally unable to write her story, she shared the entries in her diary at the time.

It illustrates, like the other stories, as Ms. Green states “how people suffering deep loss, hurt, and destruction from abortion and other offenses against life came to recognize God’s love and compassion for them and to receive reconciliation and healing.”

Ms. Green’s book of witness and prayer illustrates God’s love and healing touch through four approaches, namely, Scripture, Biblically-based prayer, stories, and symbols. Photographs depict “healthy family relationships leading to a spiritually mature and morally principled adult.” In the smooth flow of stories and prayers, she reassures us that God’s love is present for each of us all the time, in every fact and circumstance of our lives.

It is interesting and helpful that the book may be read in any order. One person may want the stories first, another the prayers. One can go back to it a number of times during the day for the many prayers for repentance, reconciliation, healing, and reclaiming one’s godly self-image. Even people who consider abortion only a political issue remotely connected with their lives, can connect with the prayers, that of opening oneself to God’s Grace.

The other testimonies include the following: a woman who had an abortion while in her twenties and subsequently married the father of that aborted child, a woman involved with a married man when she was in her 30s and had multiple abortions.

The fourth story is about a man who had lived through years of alcoholism and had fathered a child and financed the baby’s abortion. Fifteen years after the abortion, he was weighed down with an unusual amount of guilt. “I had even resorted to several kinds of treatments to find relief from this sense of sin and unworthiness.” He concluded that when approached by the author with the idea of his contributing, he realized he has a real spiritual bond with his child who has preceded him to heaven. “The breach brought about by the abortion has been healed, and I pray that my dear son Matthew will intercede for spiritual help and guidance for me on my earthly pilgrimage.

Ms. Green has prayed with several other people working through the pain of abortion. she said that many are not ready to share their stories publicly, but that “all have said that one of the great burdens they carry is the inability to find someone to listen and to hear their stories.

It is important that these stories and testimonies to god’s love be told to encourage others suffering similar pain and loss to seek and accept the same comfort and healing and restoration in the heart of Jesus.

This is a gem of a book.