Has there been a time in our lives where the healing love and mercy of the Catholic Faith are more in need? I could see my daughters in the young girls that were enjoying Ariana Grande in Manchester, England, this past Monday evening. Their innocence was shattered minutes after the concert concluded, as an explosion rocked the arena. Watching the footage of these young people and children running for their lives, having been targeted for no real reason other than hatred, brought me back to my first experience with terror, the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985. As a 9 year old, I was exposed to the horror of scared passengers on TV that were leaving Egypt for the US. I turned and saw my 9 year old witnessing the same faces, only this time, many of them were the same age as hers. I just wanted to hold her and tell her it was going to be alright.
With the amount of hatred in the world today, where ideology seems to be pulling us further and further apart, our faith clearly illustrates we need to stand together and for each other, all of us. There is no separation of God’s love for every single person on earth. We are all made in God’s image and likeness and he did not make a mistake. And Jesus gave us the greatest commandment of all, to love each other as he loves us. It can be very hard to love someone that is shouting at the top of their lungs something that we despise. Or that believe something counter to our beliefs. But that is exactly what Jesus has asked of all of us. As we discussed last week, our communications efforts illustrate our love and mercy. Pope Francis has gone a step further this year:
I pledge the assistance of the Church in every effort to build peace through active and creative nonviolence. On 1 January 2017, the new Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development will begin its work. It will help the Church to promote in an ever more effective way “the inestimable goods of justice, peace, and the care of creation” and concern for “migrants, those in need, the sick, the excluded and marginalized, the imprisoned and the unemployed, as well as victims of armed conflict, natural disasters, and all forms of slavery and torture”. Every such response, however modest, helps to build a world free of violence, the first step towards justice and peace.
– Pope Francis (https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/peace/documents/papa-francesco_20161208_messaggio-l-giornata-mondiale-pace-2017.html)
Let us all pledge to never let the violence of hatred turn our own hearts against others, or allow the acts of terror to make us apathetic to the needs of those around us. And let us pray for the victims of hatred and their families so they can feel God’s love coming from us.