Today I Believed in Spite of the Tragedies Surrounding Us

Perhaps we should all kneel before the God who created us,each one with their special tasks of living, learning, giving, and most especially dying in their allotted period of life.

We all were shocked at another shooting, not because it was new or unheard of, but a group of school students beginning a year of study and prayer to be shot down by another mentally disabled person. As Catholics we all are part of a faith driven belief that leads each one to forgive and ask God’s mercy on the participant who doesn’t understand the meaning of life.

Minneapolis will never get over the tragic loss of two young children each taking at least one bullet to their tiny body as they were part of a Holy Mass in their local Roman Catholic Church. These children have become two more members of so many children and adults being willfully murdered in a school, church or synagogue, learning and praying to their God who also cried as his beloved creatures became the targets of a Satanic onslaught of hatred against the Lord, God.

Driving through any cemetery and viewing the row after row of tombstones where the remains of human beings lie. Stop and think of what brought their life to an end. Our hope is that most are there because the age they reached could no longer reach a mature life older than 80’s or 100 years. Then look at the small patch of turf where so many young children, starting at infancy or like in Minneapolis young school children just starting to reach the age of maturity.

The words spoken by the celebrant at our funeral Mass remind each one that we were created to live our lives in a manner that prepares us for our final destiny in eternity with the Most Holy Trinity for whom God created us to live with forever. “In the waters of Baptism (name) died with Christ and rose with him to new life. May he/she now share with him eternal glory.”

Each of us will face the event of death by old age, disease ridden bodies, or unfortunate events upon children starting as crib deaths or violent attacks like these two school children in Minneapolis. Yet, it isn’t which of the above realities succeeds in removing us from this human life, there will be an angel waiting to guide us to the glory of Christ who waits to welcome us with loving arms.

“How great will your glory and happiness be, to be allowed to see God, to be honored with sharing the joy of salvation and eternal light with Christ your Lord and God ... .to delight in the joy of immortality in the Kingdom of heaven with the righteous and God’s friends.” (St. Cyprian).

Ralph B. Hathaway