I was reflecting the other day on how many U.S. presidents have been in office since I’ve been alive. Dwight Eisenhower was president when I was born, so that would be 11. My thoughts then moved to the first president I actually remembered in office, JFK. I was six-and-a-half years old when John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. I grew up in a devout Roman Catholic family, and my parents sacrificed to send my sister and me to Catholic parochial school (our youngest sister, Kari, would be born a year later). My parents loved JFK and Jackie Kennedy and their young children, Caroline and John, Jr.
I was in the first grade, sitting in the second row from the left, in the fourth seat from the front. It was Friday morning, and I was looking forward to the weekend. A third-grade girl entered the room with a message for our teacher. Sister Philip Ann, who could not have been more than 20 years old, leaned down as the messenger whispered. Then she cried out, squeezed her eyes shut, and pinched her temples with her right hand. She struggled to compose herself as a foreboding hush fell over the class. With tears welling up in her eyes, Sister turned and spoke to us: “I just received some very bad news. President Kennedy has been shot. He is in the hospital and Monsignor wants us to gather in the church immediately.”
While Monsignor Van Vegel led us in prayer a younger priest entered the sanctuary and spoke softly to him. Then Monsignor announced that President Kennedy was dead. He resumed his prayers, but this time for the salvation of our fallen president’s soul.
Over the years, as senseless tragedies have piled up by the dozens, I have discovered that it has become easier and easier to shake off the horror. I am not proud of that, but I think it is an instance of humankind’s capacity to adapt and survive. A few years after JFK’s death, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. fell to assassins’ bullets. The CBS News piped in the carnage of the Vietnam War on a nightly basis, and the graphic news coverage of subsequent wars and military skirmishes have only gotten “better.” Mass shootings at schools have become another form of horror we struggle to metabolize. Acts of terrorism, both abroad and at home, have become daily occurrences – the most recent of which (as I write this piece) is the shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., early Sundaymorning, June 12, which stands as the worst mass shooting in American history, leaving 49 dead and 53 wounded.
I don’t want to shake off the horror! I want to sit with this awful pain until it has had its way with me. Callused indifference is even worse than kneejerk solutions that mask the deeper problem of endemic sin and brokenness. I suspect that few tragedies, except 911, will ever affect me as deeply as JFK’s assassination. But I am convinced that every instance of evil and senseless violence should have the effect of “making good people better,” by which I do not mean to imply that human beings are innately good. Maybe it would be better to say, “making redeemed people better redeemers.”
Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father. You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it so that the Son can bring glory to the Father. Yes, ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it!” (John 14:12-14).
If it is true that Jesus will give us anything for the asking, and that I can do the same works and even greater works than he did, I have no choice but to pray that God will awaken me to the pain of this world and empower me to be an agent of healing, reconciliation, and Good News, for his sake and for the sake of the world he died to save.
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