Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”

The hope and joy at the heart of Easter in 2021 face a harsh challenge in events such as deaths in Ukraine or in Miami. For the people touched in any way by such events, the magnitude of the challenge to hope and joy is incomprehensible. Yet it is important that Christians can place current and horrific tragedy within the larger hope promised in the resurrection of Christ.

Can we find hopeful echoes of the power of the resurrection Easter 2021 in such killings worldwide? In such horrific events we are happily surprised that people find ways to show solidarity with those crushed by the events. People queue up to give blood, to help— more than the authorities can handle. Everyone it seems has one intention, to help the mourning and the maimed, seeing them simply as fellow human beings. What harms one, really harms all; we are one body. “The color of skin makes no difference. What is good and just for one is good and just for the other.” (Native American origin.)

No matter what the skin, or what the faith, the blood that flows is one color. No matter where or in what place we bleed, it comes from members of the one human race. One God makes us all. So also our enforced distance from our friends brings home the same truth.  The pandemic attacked every corner of the world, all members of the one human race. Solidarity with each other shows itself in the measures we may still need to take for the protection of all.

Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”

Reply to Fr. Don at: DTalafous@csbsju.edu

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