Here at St. Columbkille we’re mourning the death of our principal, Dr. Cheryl Blue.
Tragedy struck on a national level in the terrorist attack Monday in Boston and again last night at an explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas.
Sometimes it’s hard to not become saddened, discouraged or even angry about all the pain and loss of life. Sometimes it’s hard to not question why God allows these bad things to happen.
But we are Christians, who know that God’s plan of salvation does not spare us from suffering. He made suffering part of that plan, the cross that leads to the Resurrection. The Father sent His Son to show us the Way. Jesus took on all our pain and death and transformed it.
“The power of Christ is able to control fiercer storms than those of the wind and sea. It is able to still the torrents of evil of the whole world in the stillness of His own heart. It is the power which enables Him to command the floods of all the sorrow in the world and hold them within His peace. It is the power which not only gives life back to the dead, but can change death itself into life. It is the power of divine love.”
Those words, from the 20th century author and mystic Caryll Houselander, struck me during this horrific week, particularly the second-to-the last line.
“It is the power which not only gives life back to the dead, but can change death itself into life.”
God can take all the death we saw in the past week and change it into life -- a life that is eternal and more glorious than anything we can imagine.
That is power of the Resurrection. That is why Christians have hope, even in the midst of evil and death.
Inspired by this Year of Faith we will be posting columns like this from Susan Szalewski about exploring and/or deepening our faith. Watch for it on Thursdays.
The kind of response we have to events such as the violence in Boston last week is definitely a challenge for believers. There is a temptation, I think, to go rather quickly to the resurrection story and to give an appearance that we somehow gloss over the sorrow. The paschal mystery is both the death and the resurrection, and I sometimes feel we as believers go too quickly to the resurrection, as if we are somehow discounting the very real experiences of death and sadness. There is an aguish to human experience and we need to recognize and own that experience. The God who raised Jesus is also the God who lay with him in the tomb.
ReplyDeleteAnother challenge will be how we as Catholics respond to the perpetrators of this violence. Will we support the death penalty for the remaining suspect or will be respond according to the God of mercy and of life?
Gene Ulses