This past week, I was immediately drawn back to September 11, 2001, remembering the fear I heard in my wife’s voice when we finally connected while I was working in DC and the subway (Metro) that I had just taken to work that was now underneath the attacked Pentagon. The terror attacks in France are a continuation of the fear mongering that has pervaded our social consciousness since that fateful day. We cannot give into that fear, we cannot allow extremists (who are not following Islam, but their own twisted version of insanity) to change our faith’s essential focus. We love and respect all life, in every way.
Peace is the only option for humanity. We have direct impact with our words and our actions. Our Holy Father this week took an opportunity to showcase how the world needs peace now, and that we have to fight for it with love, not weapons:
Today I wish to repeat a word quite dear to us: peace! It comes to us from the angelic hosts who proclaimed it on Christmas night (cf. Lk 2:14) as a precious gift of God, while at the same time as a personal and social responsibility which calls for our commitment and concern.
Every conflict and war is emblematic of the throwaway culture, since people’s lives are deliberately crushed by those in power. Yet that culture is also fuelled by more subtle and insidious forms of rejection. … Today I wish publicly to praise and thank those healthcare workers who, alongside men and women religious and volunteers, are caring in every way possible for the sick and their families, especially orphaned children. At the same time I renew my appeal to the entire international community to provide adequate humanitarian assistance to patients and to make concerted efforts to combat … disease.
With these sentiments, I once more offer to each of you, to your families and your peoples, my prayerful good wishes that this new year of 2015 will be one of hope and peace.
http://www.news.va/en/news/full-text-of-pope-francis-address-to-the-diplomati
I would highly recommend reading the full text of his message above. We are all in this fight together, and we will not let despair, hatred, and fear win.