Sunday is my 50th birthday. I tell you that because I’m grateful for the gift of life. I may not always be the best steward of it, but I pray that every day I get better at it, with God’s grace and wisdom and discipline.

And I have a super practical reason to share this: I ask you to help me celebrate by making a donation to the Sisters of Life.

Many of you are aware of the sisters — women religious commonly known as “nuns” (that’s not an entirely accurate label, but it will do). They dedicate their lives to God with the usual vows a Catholic sister makes: poverty, chastity, and obedience. Their unique charism includes a fourth vow: to protect and enhance the sacredness of human life.

What does that look like? Well, first of all, prayer. They have Visitation Missions in New York, Toronto, Denver, Philadelphia, and Phoenix where they encounter women who are needing someone to love them as they are navigating and unplanned pregnancy. Some of them are abortion-minded. Some have the abortions. Others chose to give birth and raise their child. Some make an adoption plan. I met one 17-year-old a few years ago outside a Planned Parenthood who was coerced into an abortion, only to turn to the Sisters of Life the next time she got pregnant. She’s got a young son now.

Cardinal John O’Connor was given the inspiration for the Sisters of Life during a 1975 visit to Dachau. Here’s how he described the experience: “I placed my hand in the oven and felt the intermingled ashes of Jew and Christian, rabbi, priest and minister.” In horror, he prayed: “Good God, how could human beings do this to other human beings?”

He felt called to do whatever he could to protect the sacredness of human life for the rest of his days.

“My life was changed radically, not modestly, not fractionally but radically when I put my hand into the oven at Dachau. . . . I knew that with all my studies and all my degrees . . . up until that moment, I knew no real theology. I learned it at Dachau. The men and women who died at Dachau shaped my adult life.”

“For Cardinal O’Connor, it was always about the individual person — what he called the dazzling value, the infinite worth of a single soul made in the image and likeness of almighty God,” a reflection on the Sisters of Life website reads. “To him, it was not that 6 million Jews and 5 million Christians were killed in the holocaust — but that 1 person of infinite worth was killed, 11 million times and that God experienced each death as His own.”

As you know, Roe v. Wade may be in the past, but the labor of loving women and babies and families continues. Now more than ever, the culture bombards women and girls with messages that prompt abortion. Shout your abortion! Regret your children! But you don’t have to be anywhere near the most strident abortion advocacy to feel the pressure and know the expectation is real — if you are young, if you are working, if you are poor. One woman who has spent decades helping women in inner-city New York once told me doctors often are on a search-and-destroy mission when a pregnant woman comes to them not speaking English, living month-to-month or worse, or facing any other adversity. Never mind that she recognizes that she is with child, that she is a mother, and wants to raise her child, or at least bring her into the world. (Adoption is, of course, not the natural course of events, but it is a courageous choice for a birth mother. And there are more couples who would love to give their hearts to a newborn. Would that babies weren’t eliminated by abortion.)

For all too many of us, the Sisters of Life are our pro-life credibility. They are a inspiring and challenging solution to the questions: What now? and What more?

So would you please help me support the Sisters? They fairly recently got their second Mother Superior. And as it happens, Mother Concepta is also a bicentennial baby, born in 1976, celebrating her 50th birthday this year too. My friend Mother John Mary — who I am long overdue to catch up with — is as well.

For the sake of the future of a life-giving country, the protection of the innocent and most vulnerable, and in gratitude for your own life and the lives of those you most love in the world, would you please donate to the Sisters of Life at this link? I’ll update you in coming days. It would be lovely if we could manage to gift them $50,000 dollars for 50 years. Even better if we can make it $250,000. (!)

Let’s do it for the sisters! Catholic nuns built so many of our hospitals and schools and orphanages in our still-young nation. We need them. We need to support them.

The sisters comfort women in unplanned pregnancies. Women come to them in myriad ways. I’ve personally made connections from outside an abortion clinic, through email, and casual conversation. Occasionally, when I’m out in the world, someone will thank me for making him aware of the sisters and their work.

The sisters provide weekend retreats for all ages. They have a ministry that helps women who have had abortions find healing. The sight of roses placed before an altar in one of their convents during one of their post-abortion healing retreats is powerful — each rose represents a child who was aborted. When you realize how few women were present and how many roses are there, you realize how enslaved women can become to our abortion regime. In a convent in Manhattan, pregnant women and moms with their newborns live with the sisters, where the sisters mother the mothers. The convent in D.C. is a prayer ministry. And sisters in all the convents — and studying at Franciscan University in Ohio — do many things for God and His people.

I also encourage you to treat yourself to a free subscription to the Sisters’ quarterly Imprint. It’s a beautiful (physically and otherwise) publication. And lest you worry you are costing them money, your gift to yourself is funded by the Knights of Columbus, who are committed both to the protection of human life and the Sisters of Life. I frequently run into Patrick Kelly and his wife, Vanessa, at the sisters’ Connecticut retreat house (owned by the Knights) and other pro-life events. (Patrick is the head of the Knights of Columbus.) Carl Anderson, Patrick’s predecessor, and his wife, Doreen, are also regulars where Sisters of Life are.

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You can sign up for Imprint here and read recent issues online here. Do get it coming to your mailbox. Surprise a friend or two, too.

One last thing: Every Sister of Life has a little sign in their cells (convent sleeping quarters) — a quote from Cardinal O’Connor: “There is no Sister of Life without joy.” I probably first got the idea for fundraising for the Sisters of Life because Facebook nudges you to do one for someone on your birthday. And another fact about the sisters: They know how to celebrate birthdays! Because each one of us is unique and made in God’s image. I’m only going to turn 50 once, so I have to give it the old college try here, so to speak. Would you help us reach $250,000 for a religious community who could change our culture if they had the resources to reach more young people, and house more moms? The sisters become part of women’s lives — so much so that I’ve encountered sisters teaching teenagers how to drive and going on college visits. What had once been an unplanned pregnancy and sometimes a pending appointment at an abortion clinic is now joy — and reaching adulthood!

On the medal each sister wears around her neck is this sentence: “And nothing would again be casual or small.” It’s from one of Cardinal O’Connor’s favorite poems: “I Sing of a Maiden” by Fr. John Duffy, C.Ss.R.

As the sisters have explained:

When God became Man, “nothing would again be casual or small, but everything with light invested, over-spilled with terror and divinity.” Now, every human experience has meaning in the plan of God. No ounce of suffering escapes His merciful gaze. Each person is a wonder to be loved and delighted in. Nothing — and no one — is casual or small, because Christ is Lord of all.

When God became Man, “nothing would again be casual or small, but everything with light invested, over-spilled with terror and divinity.” Now, every human experience has meaning in the plan of God. No ounce of suffering escapes His merciful gaze. Each person is a wonder to be loved and delighted in. Nothing — and no one — is casual or small, because Christ is Lord of all.

Just about every time I am with the sisters, I am convicted that their charism of joy for life is for all of us. It can transform our culture. It is what being the light of Christ in the world means. Yes, they help individual lives — but the impact on all of our lives would be a game-changer. Get to know them. Support them. Donations big and small and in between will be put to good use. Maybe I can even get a sister or two to make a little video a few weeks from now if we meet the goal — maybe sing a song. There are some magnificent voices among the sisters.

Speaking of: Here’s a song that you will want to have as the background music to your life. (And here is the Litany of Trust prayer by the Sisters of Life it is based on. There’s a 30-day retreat book, too.)

And, again, here’s the link to donate to the Sisters of Life for the official K-Lo 50th anniversary FUNdraiser. Giving an impressive gift to the sisters would be a blessing for me on my 50th birthday – a one-time experience! Do it for life. Do it for the United States as we approach her birthday. Do it because you long-termers might appreciate I might do something like get a politico to have a conversation about Star Trek or something quirky to celebrate reaching the $50,000 and/or $250,000 goal! ) Do it because we need to do more to make sure people know there are beautiful — and plausible, possible — alternatives to abortion.

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