By Dave Andrusko

As I write these remarks the Washington DC metropolitan is on Red Alert. Not used to snow to begin with, the specter of up to a couple of feet of the white stuff landing on us is enough to send everyone to the local grocery store to stock up on enough food and supplies to last the rest of the winter. I say that by way of explaining that the NRLC office is closed Friday, and I am writing this edition on Thursday evening.

A few hours ago I wrote a few comments about the almost comically-inept You Tube video PPFA put together by way of a "response" to the yet-to-be seen Tim and Pam Tebow ad for the Super Bowl. As it happens Tim was also delivering the closing prayer at the National Prayer Breakfast.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast.

President Obama, as has his predecessors, delivered a prepared speech. But, to be honest, I found the remarks of his fellow pro-abortionist, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the same dais, much more intriguing.

Judging by what Clinton said Thursday and previously, she appears to have been genuinely moved by her meeting with Mother Teresa. In 1994 Mother Teresa delivered a no-hold-barred pro-life speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in front of Clinton, her equally pro-abortion husband, then-President Bill Clinton, and Al and Tipper Gore.

Hillary Clinton talked about being summoned afterwards by Mother Teresa and working with her to establish the Mother Teresa Home for Infant Children. It takes nothing away from what Hillary Clinton may have contributed to this noble project to remember what Mother Teresa said to the many power brokers assembled at the Hilton Hotel 16 years ago.

"But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because Jesus said, 'If you receive a little child, you receive me.' So every abortion is the denial of receiving Jesus, the neglect of receiving Jesus."

I was not there, but author and columnist Peggy Noonan was. Here's what she later wrote:

Well, silence. Cool deep silence in the cool round cavern for just about 1.3 seconds. And then applause started on the right hand side of the room, and spread, and deepened, and now the room was swept with people applauding, and they would not stop for what I believe was five or six minutes. As they clapped they began to stand, in another wave from the right of the room to the center and the left.

But not everyone applauded. The president and first lady, seated within a few feet of Mother Teresa on the dais, were not applauding. Nor were the vice president and Mrs. Gore. They looked like seated statues at Madame Tussaud's. They glistened in the lights and moved not a muscle, looking at the speaker in a determinedly semi-pleasant way.

I claim no insight into Hillary Clinton's heart or soul. But as she made clear yesterday she takes her Methodist faith seriously, especially John Wesley's famous admonition to

"Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
in all the ways you can,
in all the places you can,
at all the times you can,
to all the people you can,
as long as you ever can."

Secretary Clinton quipped, "That's a tall order," followed by (alas), "And of course, one of the interpretive problems with it is, who defines good?"

I thought of that "what is truth?"-esque statement as I read the remainder of her speech, especially the part where she observes, "All religions have their version of the Golden Rule and direct us to love our neighbor and welcome the stranger and visit the prisoner."

I would never be so foolish as to rank Jesus's parables. I would only say that the parable of the Good Samaritan is my favorite, the one that has taught me the most.

Maybe everybody else but me already realized this, but it was not until a few years ago that I really got a handle on a hugely important truth. Jesus never responds to the expert in the law's question, "And who is my neighbor?"

Instead, Jesus turns the question back on him--and back on you and I. "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

The question was not whether the man beaten by robbers "qualified" as his neighbor–someone he had a moral obligation to help-- but whether he (and we) take on that obligation by acting as a neighbor to him.

We can, if we wish, walk around (in this case) the unborn child, pretending that he/she is a stranger and therefore someone we have no obligation to try to protect. We can, like Secretary Clinton, twist ourselves into knots (over abortion) by telling ourselves the question is, "who defines good?"

But if you are, like Clinton, reared from infancy in a community of faith, you cannot choose to act like the priest or the Levite of Jesus' parable.

You--we–must choose to be the Good Samaritan.

Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com.  Have a great weekend.