+ The gospel passage today from St. Luke shows how Jesus,
after a night in prayer calls his disciples to himself and from a larger crowd
of them, chooses 12, whom he also named Apostles. These Twelve would be the
ones that he would specially train to know who he truly was, and to carry on
his mission when he would be removed from their midst. They would come to know
him as Son of God, the great healer and reconciler of all of mankind with God.
What is amazing is that Jesus’
own life and healing and reconciling power – by his own plan – would be
available to all who seek it – by means of connecting with his Mystical Body
the Church that he would establish before he went to heaven. And it is on a day
like this one, when we remember the events of September 11, 2001, that we might
have a key to understand the way to deal with the entire tragic situation.
All of us, successors of the
apostles, priests, and lay people alike are invited to take to heart the first
reading today: which exhorts us not to let judgment on our brothers (even
regarding those who commit the most heinous of crimes) to be blown out of
proportion, but having been washed clean
ourselves and sanctified, we let God be the final judge, the Spirit of our God;
and then, the hard part, we are invited to become healers and reconcilers in
the whole matter: which may even cause us to go contrary to our natural
inclinations for retaliation and revenge.
Yes, we remember today as the
day eleven years ago that nearly 3000 people lost their lives in three
different locations in our country, as a part of a sinister plot, having even
to do with faulty religious values – and while it is important to do all we can
do prevent such things from happening again: the best way to bring closure and
healing to survivors and to our nation as a whole is to allow the supernatural
element of our Christian faith to aid us in forgiving the offense, forgiving
the ignorance that was in play, forgiving the misuse of intelligence and
technical know-how. This is not to forget, but it is to forgive: and this
divine gesture and act of the will (empowered by grace and Christ himself) will
go far in creating a true environment of peace and happiness and true
brotherhood. For when the reaction to injury is a handshake of peace, it throws
the aggressive party off; those who are for fighting are disarmed by those who
raise their hands in gestures of peace!
May we
bear fruit doing things God’s way, rather than our own,
remembering that more violence is never the remedy for violence already done.
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