It's such a special privilege for me to be in your midst this morning. I'm touched by the reverent and very spiritual way in which you obviously participate in the Eucharist
with the wonderful music to support our prayer and worship.
You and I know that we were confronted with the mystery of monstrous evil on September 11th. And most of us are still numbed by the shock of the original events and their immediate aftermath. The shock usually leads to anger and the desire for quick vengeance. But Christ, as recorded in the Scriptures, introduces a strong word of caution about that.
The most haunting question for us all has to be: Why? Why has God allowed this terrible evil to happen to us? It is helpful for us to be mindful that God is present in all that happens but he does not want directly moral evil. As a matter of fact, in so many ways, he has spoken to us about how we are to avoid moral evil, whether it be in our own lives or in resistance to it in the lives of others.
He only permits moral evil to take place because he so respects the human freedom that he has given to us. And, ultimately, he wants to draw a greater good out of the evil that has taken place. What this might be staggers our imagination today. But we must, in faith, recognize that that is his purpose.
What will help us is to focus our gaze on the crucifix. The greatest evil this world has ever known was our killing of our God. There will be no greater evil since then, there never was a greater evil before that. And what has God done? God has transformed that evil into the greatest of goods we could ever hope for: the Gift of Redemption, the forgiveness of our sins and the grace to live a new life in Him.
Now, we know that the acceptance of that gift is always uneven. Christ had no sooner expressed those extraordinary words on the cross Father, forgive them
for they know not what they do -- than one thief accepted the gift and one thief rejected it. And so, unfortunately, it always will be.
What then should be our truly Christian response? First and foremost, it must be faith in the midst of darkness. Faith is not understanding, it is darkness. But it is still clinging to our God, recognizing that he has already won the fundamental victory over moral evil. We want to tap into his victory.
And so we're called first to hope; to hope in the ultimate triumph of light over darkness, good over evil, God over the demonic. For we are engaged, as St. Paul reminds us, in a spiritual warfare. The battle, Paul says in Ephesians, is not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers. So God wants us to resist moral evil in ourselves and in our world with all our strength.
But this resistance should never take the form of vengeance. It is, rather, a struggle to contain, neutralize and resist the moral evil that can still take place.
We are challenged by today's Scripture to enter into some self-scrutiny. We have considered ourselves to be the most rich and powerful nation in the world. But have we always been appropriately responsive to Lazarus at the door who would have gladly eaten of the scraps falling from our table? Can we hear the warnings of Amos the Prophet? Can we ponder the admonition of Paul today to pursue righteousness in our own lives and in the way in which we now respond?
What might it mean to pursue righteousness?
Jesus has revealed the face of the Father as the one who seeks justice within the context of mercy. The Father's primary desire for you and for me and for everyone who has ever walked this earth is our salvation. He wants us to experience eternal life with him. He wants us freely to accept it. He wants us to resist anything that stands in the way of that. But then he also uses punishment as a far less noble but still effective means to encourage us to repent, to change our lives, to accept the gift of redemption.
You know, as human beings we have a tendency to consider forgiveness and punishment as opposites. Probably growing up as children, we might even have said to our parents, "Why do you punish me if you forgive me?" or "If you punish me, you don't really forgive me." But that's not the way it is with God.
In God, justice and mercy are united. Punishment and forgiveness are conjoined. And punishment is repayment for evil done so that the right order may be re-established.
Sometimes I think we forget, to our own peril, the teaching about Purgatory. In Purgatory, we will have been forgiven. The guilt of our sins will have been wiped away. But we will still be undergoing punishment, purification, so that we can enter into the fullness of God's life
so that the right order can be restored.
This understanding of justice and mercy is what you and I are invited to share in as we treat one another. We must be primarily interested in the conversion and the change of life of those who participated in, conspired to perpetrate the horrendous evils inflicted upon us on September 11th. This is the offer of redemption. But we also have to be realistic in recognizing the likelihood of accepting that offer may be limited.
And our government also has the responsibility to punish the offenders proportionately -- there has to be a proportion and without targeting innocent victims so as to contain moral evil, protect innocent people everywhere and restore the right order. This calls for strength and restraint at the same time.
Is it too much for us to hope that the devastating tragedies of September 11th might lead us as a people to a renewal of faith, morals and spiritual life as we find the myth of our self-sufficiency exploded? We are not as self-sufficient as we may have thought ourselves to be. We are dependent on God and we need to live in this world concretely as men and women truly dependent upon God, respectful of life from the first moment of conception to the last natural breath. We need to respond with strength but in a judicious way.
Do you remember the words that the Church placed upon my lips as I offered the opening prayer of this liturgy today? "Father, you show your almighty power in your mercy and forgiveness." Those are part of the opening prayer of today's liturgy.
There's one other truth we need to recognize. Fanatical men who engineered the horrendous events consider themselves martyrs to Allah. We need to remember the example of Saul who became Paul.
St. Paul, as Saul, thought he was serving God when he persecuted the Christians, when he partook in the martyrdom of Stephen, when he went on the road to Damascus to ferret out and kill Christians there. And Christ brought him to his knees, offered him the gift of redemption and he became the great apostle to the Gentiles.
May I conclude with a direct quotation from the words of our Holy Father? On the day of the tragedies, Pope John Paul II sent a message to our President expressing solidarity with the American people, prayers for those who had lost their lives and their families. And then on the next day, at his weekly General Audience, this is what he had to say:
Yesterday was a dark day in the history of humanity, a terrible affront to human dignity. After receiving the news, I follow with intense concern the developing situation with heartfelt prayers to the Lord. How is it possible to commit such acts of savage cruelty? The human heart, unfortunately, has depths from which schemes of unheard of ferocity sometimes emerge, capable of destroying in a moment the normal daily life of a whole people.
But faith comes to our aid in these times when words seem to fail. Christ's word is the only one that can give a response to the questions which trouble the human spirit. Even if the forces of darkness appear to prevail, those who believe in God know that evil and death will not have the last say.
Christian hope is based on this truth.
At this time, our prayerful trust draws strength from it.
Amen.
