Our nation continues to reel from the recent deadly shootings of Catholic school children at Mass in Minnesota and the murder of Charlie Kirk last week.
We pray for the victims and their families, as well as the perpetrators and their families.
This terrible violence upon us rips at our hearts and the fabric of our society.
We are in a time of hatred, conflict, and division, which has become spiritually and physically deadly.
Called to love without limit
A profoundly disturbing aspect of the Charlie Kirk murder is the ghoulish delight that many people are taking in his tragic and violent death.
Posted videos show individuals singing and dancing with joy because this husband and father of two was brutally murdered.
Some wish harm on his family and anyone who agrees with Kirk’s ideas. Some think that he got what he deserved because of his opinions.
If these malicious thoughts were held by only a few deranged individuals, perhaps it would be less troubling, but such is not the case.
Thousands of people have posted such sentiments on social media and gained thousands more likes.
Such rejoicing in death should disturb us all, both as Christians and Americans.
Christ teaches us to love without limit, to forgive our enemies, and to pray for those who persecute us.
The American ideal has always rested on the fundamental principle that well-intentioned people can disagree with each other, debate ideas in the public square, and find common ground. This conviction has always held our country together.
Sadly, recent events show how far such a belief has been eroded in the cacophony of hatred and division.
Building a culture of life
In his 1995 encyclical, The Gospel of Life, St. John Paul II called on everyone, believers and people of goodwill alike, to build a culture of life, in which every person from conception to natural death finds welcome, nurture, dignity, and rights from a society grounded in the moral law and the pursuit of the common good.
The pope contrasted this culture of life with the culture of death. He saw the deepest roots of this fundamental conflict in “the eclipse of the sense of God. When the sense of God is lost, there is also a tendency to lose the sense of man, of his dignity and his life” (21).
These words came from a man who lived and suffered under the brutal tyranny of both the Nazis and the Communists, two evil ideologies that sought to destroy human dignity, murdered millions of people, and wanted to eradicate any vestige of authentic religious belief.
St. John Paul II knew what he was talking about.
Now is the moment for us to stand up for truth over lies, love over hatred, forgiveness over revenge, and faith over nihilism.
Only the love of Jesus Christ, poured out in His blood on the Cross, can heal our nation and our hearts.
In His death, Jesus became the scapegoat so that we no longer should scapegoat anyone. Jesus forgave His killers, so we can forgive our enemies. Jesus died so that we can live.
Only a renewed sense of God, His love, and purpose can help us reclaim our common and fundamental human dignity, as persons created in the image of God.
Only when our culture recognizes and nurtures the profound sacredness of all life, including the unborn and the elderly, the homeless and the mentally ill, the poor, and the stranger, can we reclaim the shining ideals that founded our country as a great experiment in liberty and truth.
Only the Divine Mercy flowing from the Cross can quench the hatred and evil that currently afflict us.
We pray for our country and for all those who die by violence every day. Peace will only follow a conversion of the heart.