Monday, January 25, 2016

[Photos] March For Life Buses Stuck on Penn Hiwy: Mass Celebrated in Snow!



From the Desk of Richard Thompson


These Young Pro-Life Christians Stranded for Hours on the Pennsylvania 
Turnpike Did Something Amazing
Friday marked the 43rd anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade. 
Despite threats of a massive blizzard, thousands of young people participated in the 
March for Life in Washington D.C.
On the way back home they could not escape the massive blizzard that brought 
traffic on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to a standstill for over  24 hours.  Students 
from Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, and other Midwestern states were all 
stranded on their separate buses with a highway full of people in a major
 snow storm.

They knew they were stuck in the storm and help was hours away. Undaunted, 
 these young Christians gave witness for their Faith.  They “Seized the Moment” 
and made something beautiful and inspiring happen—A Mass on the Turnpike. 

According to news and social media reports:

The students used the opportunity to minister to others, they welcomed strangers 
onto their buses – travelers who were stranded or who had run out of gas and 
needed warmth or food. The students offered people water and a place to sleep. 
They helped clean off strangers’ cars.
And then: they prayed.

Saturday morning, as the snow continued to fall, and the snowplows were still 
hours away, they did something extraordinary. A group of kids poured out of the 
buses and began gathering the snow and ice outside.
They made an altar. Out of snow. Then they took tree branches and made a cross. 
They set up a sound system to play music, and then priests pulled 
 on their vestments. Chaperons opened umbrellas to shelter them, and they 
stood on a hill along the side of the turnpike, the wind howling and the snow still 
falling, and there they all celebrated Mass together – hundreds of them, in parkas 
and scarves and snow boots, joined together.
Anyone who saw that gathering of young people saw something beautiful.
Anyone who worries about the future need only to see these young people 
proclaiming their faith and living it out loud.

Thomas More Law Center
24 Frank Lloyd Wright Dr.
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106