On dark days, the sun still rises. In the darkest night, the moon still shines in a sky of stars. On a day of national sorrow, somebody will be born and her parents will be glad. Some family must have lost a parent on VE Day and so national joy happened with local sorrow.
The people of Paris mourn attacks, but in Paris today babies are born, natural death comes, and wedding anniversaries occur. Is it selfish to attend to the joyful events or to feel more genuine sorrow over the personal loss than the national tragedy?
It is not.
The cosmos is not a movie with only a few plot lines and the complex dance God has created continues whatever humanity does. The good that God brings, through the severe mercy of natural death and through the joyous grace of new life, continues whatever abuse we make of the free will God has give to humanity.
The Islamic State cannot stop God’s plan, hasten His actions, or change the rhythm of the world in any fundamental manner. All that the Islamic State can do is twist good things, especially people, and break up beauty, goodness, and truth. They commit great evils, bringing justice on themselves, but God will care for His own and redeem what they try to destroy.
No soul is lost or forgotten in His divine love and He has eternity to mend the crookedness the Islamic State has made.
Meanwhile, some are called to respond with justice on the breakers, the smashers, those who make the smooth places rough, and the straight crooked. Most of us pray that the dead rest in peace and find mercy and for justice with mercy on the evil men who murdered them, but we must also live our lives.
Today is the funeral for my dad’s sister, our beloved Aunt Jeanne. We know that she is with God, her life was in Christ and the Good Shepherd never loses one of His lambs. We are sorrowful, but hopeful. Her bliss does not compensate for the truth of the old hymn: we will meet, but we will miss her.
The pleasure and pain of real life before Jesus faces us today directly. We love our neighbors in Paris through prayer and any help we can give them, but our immediate task is to mourn this family loss.
I stand in solidarity with Paris, but my tears today are for my family.
And so it goes: if you have a wedding, rejoice. If today is your birthday, do not be afraid to celebrate. Humanity must, before Jesus returns, carry many emotions at once. We have many moral duties, but we must never forget our first moral duty is to God and under God to those God has directly called us to serve. God has given me an Auntie to mourn and I do not dishonor the dead of Paris by focusing on her good life and peaceful death.
Every day my own Church is reminded of the suffering of our members in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. The Islamic State and other evil men target them every day. Bombs go off in Damascus, Beirut, and other cities daily. Yet this Sunday we will find joy in receiving the Body and Blood of Christ: life to our souls.
The very paradox of our times is in the feast of communion: it was the death of Jesus that provided life for our souls. He gave up His life in Divine solidarity with our pain so that we can celebrate every Sunday that death is not the end. We celebrate life, because He died. We sorrow that this was necessary, but are glad of the great good that came. It is why Good Friday is good and why the joy of Christmas and the birth of the Christ child carries a foretaste of the death of the Christ.
All deaths are local to the people involved, but cosmic to God. All deaths are part of my human family and worthy of sorrow, but some are a local pain. They are closer to my own dear home.
We mourn, we rejoice, we sorrow, but not as those without hope.
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