Preached this morning, St. Kateri Parish, St. Margaret Mary site

Third Sunday of Advent - Today's readings  http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/121612.cfm

 

            At about this time of day 48 (50 or so) hours ago, 20-year old Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown Connecticut and, having already shot and killed his own mother at the home they shared, and he shot and killed six adults and twenty 6-year old children.   A horrific, senseless, act.  An act of unspeakable evil. 

            Over these past two days, all of America is searching for answers.  How can something like this happen?  To twenty little kids?!  To seven innocent adults.  How?

            On the TV and radio, I’ve heard folks grappling for solutions so we can make sure this can never happen again, each with their own idea of whom or what to blame.  It’s the fault of the guns.  It’s the fault of the video games.  It’s what we can expect when we kick God out of the schools, out of our nation. 

            I heard each of these within the last two days.  People search for answers, they grasp and clutch for some way to make sense of it, or fix it.

            People are rightfully shocked and saddened and horrified when something like this happens,

            But should we be?  How quickly we forget and become numb to the evil in the world around us.  We’ve not forgotten but in a sense we’ve put out of our mind the shocking image of those twin towers falling eleven years ago, with almost 3,000 dead, or the 32 who were gunned down at Virginia Tech just five years ago, or the fifteen killed at Columbine thirteen years ago.  I had to google how many were killed (12) and in what state (Coloradao) the movie theater shootings happened only five months ago!

            So forget even trying  to wrap our minds around six million innocent people exterminated in Nazi concentration camps just 65-70 years ago, or the millions killed by Stalin or Pol Pot, or the estimated fifty to seventy million killed by Mao Tse Tung, all in the last hundred years.  We basically put out of our mind the more than fifty million innocent victims of legal abortion over the last forty years here in the U.S.  Three or four thousand a day.

            Pretty horrific evil.  It’s a world filled with evil.  And it’s not just the death. 

            We know economic evil and suffering – factories closed.  Businesses shut down.  Job losses.  Suffering that hits very close to home.  Unspeakable poverty and hunger and starvation all around the globe. 

            And you and I have daily lives that are filled with pain and suffering too.  Visits to the doctor.  The hospital.  Or the cemetery.  Carrying on with life in the absence of dear loved ones.  Relationship problems.  Addiction problems.  Money problems.

            But still, when we see the faces of twenty innocent little kids on our TV screens, little kids blown away by a gun-wielding madman, we’re shocked out of our comfort zones.  We can’t imagine the pain of those parents who kissed their little ones and put them on the bus Friday morning, never to see them again.  We’re left questioning, and in pain, deeply saddened, and probably angry.

            So forgive us, Lord, if “rejoice,” which we hear over and over in today’s readings, if “rejoice” isn’t the first thing out of our mouths.  Forgive us, Lord if we don’t exactly feel up to “shouting for joy” - if it seems there’s not much to cry out with joy and gladness about.  In the face of pain, and suffering, and unspeakable evil in the world, it’s pretty easy to ask the question “What is there to rejoice about, anyway?”

            <pause>

            My brothers and sisters, forgive me if my words come across as hollow in the aftermath of Friday’s horrific tragedy, but as a people of faith, we have the only thing that makes sense of an evil, senseless world, of our often senseless daily lives.  The only answer to our questions.  The only hope.  The only thing really worth rejoicing about.  And that thing is not a thing at all – He is a person.  Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Our Savior. 

            For we have Jesus with us already and we have the promise of this season of Advent – Jesus coming once again.  Now and to come.  Now, and eternally.  God our Father loved us so much that He did not leave us trapped in our brokenness, our pain, our sin, our sorrow.  No.  He so loved the world that He gave His only Son, Jesus Christ, the promise of eternal salvation, but also the promise to heal our broken world and shattered lives right here and right now.  The promise that this broken world is not the end.

            And how did He accomplish that?  By His own senseless, violent, painful, sorrowful passion and death on the cross.  And three days later by His resurrection, by which He DESTROYED the power of death and gave us the only hope - THAT is the hope and promise of this season of Advent.  THAT, my brothers and sisters, even in the aftermath of Friday, is worth rejoicing about!

            Father John Riccardo, whom I often hear on Catholic radio, tells the story of Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan priest, and Father Kolbe’s last days in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz.  There was a rule at Auschwitz that if a prisoner escaped, ten would be put to death as payback.  One day a prisoner escaped and could not be found so the Commandant ordered that the prisoners be lined up in the yard and he went through the ranks, hand selecting the ten who would be killed – destined to die of starvation in an underground bunker.  As the Commandant selected the last man, that man, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out “My poor wife! My poor children! What will they do?  Hearing this man’s terror, Father Kolbe stepped out of line and approached the Commandant, and told him that he was a Catholic priest, that this man has a family, and Father Kolbe offered to be selected, offered to die, in place of that man.  Remarkably, the Commandant agreed, and more remarkably, that man survived Auschwitz to tell the story.  Franciszek was reunited with his family and lived more than 50 years, dying at age 95.

            Father Kolbe and the other nine were placed in the bunker, in the middle of this death camp where more than one million souls lost their lives, and the most amazing thing happened.  Within a day, the sound of singing could be heard coming from that bunker.  Singing and praying.  And it could be heard morning, noon and night.  And not dirges and laments but joyful songs and prayers.

            This infuriated the Nazis and within two weeks, guards were ordered to enter the bunker and give lethal injections to Father Kolbe and the others who hadn’t yet died by starvation.

            Today we know this man as Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the angel of Auschwitz.

            Saint Maximilian’s story, I think, shows us that as followers of Jesus Christ, you and I are called to live joyful, loving, rejoicing lives, as he did, even in the midst of the worst sort of terror, the most dehumanizing, desperate, evil conditions ever conjured up by human hearts.  Father Kolbe remained joyful to the end.  And he spread that joy to all whom he touched, all whom he met. 

            And imagine just for a moment, hard as it might be right now perhaps, what our parish and our Church and our world would look like if we lived lives of rejoicing!  We, more than anyone else on the planet, have cause to live joyfully – for we have Jesus Christ right here with us – in this assembled Body, in the proclamation of His Word, and in His Body and Blood which we will celebrate in the Eucharist.

            And if we were to live joyfully, our hope, our joy would be contagious – everyone would want to know where we got that!  Everyone would want some of that for themselves!  They’d ask us – why the hope?  Why the joy?  And we could tell them where we got that – right here at this altar!  Right here in sharing together His Word and His very Body.

            So as we pray this day for the loved ones and victims in Connecticut, let us also reflect, even in midst of our own questioning, and pain and very deep sadness, reflect on the great gift, the great hope we have in Our Blessed Lord – living in us and among us and through us, and yet still to come.  And let us anticipate the coming feast – as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ. 

            In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.