Fr. Don's Daily Reflection
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 2020 face a harsh challenge in events such as a massacre in Sri Lanka. For the people attending Easter Sunday Mass a year ago in the targeted Catholic Churches, along with those people in hotels, 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 2020 in Sri Lanka as well as in the killings at the mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in mid-March? In New Zealand and around the world people found ways to show solidarity with Muslims against terrorism. And now in Sri Lanka in the face of bombings which left more than 300 dead and nearly 500 wounded, there are hopeful sights. Massive queues of people line up to give blood, to help— more than the authorities can even 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 of the person, the blood that flowed like a river in Sri Lanka is of one color. No matter where or in what place people 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. Coronavirus is attacking every corner of the world, all members of the one human race. Solidarity with each other shows itself in our observance of measures to protect all of us.
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!”
