Grief and the Sorrowful Mysteries

I don't normally like to pray the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Holy Rosary.  But I was grateful for them yesterday when the news of a mass shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut shocked the nation.  Twenty children dead, all of them first graders.  My daughter and I were on our way to the library to meet up with some friends when my husband told me he had heard the breaking story on the radio.  We don't have TV reception, but I watched the coverage on the library's television.  I had brought my Rosary with me, and I began to pray.  Walking through Jesus' agony and brutal death, keeping tight under Mary's mantle, I found comfort.  There was something I could do for the victims and their families and friends, even for the shooter himself.  I could pray.

Reactions to a shocking grief such as this vary.  Some, like me, will cry.  Some will be very angry and want to find someone to blame, some way that what happened could have been controlled, prevented.  Still others will under-react, as if nothing all that big has happened.  There are even those who will take advantage of the horror in order to further a political agenda.  One friend of mine on the social network wanted to know where God was when those children were gunned down.  If someone would explain it to him, he said, he would be in church the next day.  We live in a fallen world.  We have the gift of free will, to choose either to do good or evil.  We want to know why.  But we may never have all the answers.

There may be a day to take political action, to protest against guns or poor school security.  But today is not that day.  Today is a day to mourn, to grieve, to pray.  It may also be a time for contemplation, even the beginning of a radical reorientation.  Some will pull their children out of school and educate them at home.  I am grateful today for the freedom to homeschool in this country, and glad for having made that choice.  But mostly I feel shocked into a deeper reality.  We only have today, and there are many who will no longer be walking this earth by the time the sun goes down.  How we choose to spend each and every waking day does matter.  How we treat one another and our relationship with God is top priority.  If we choose to hate the shooter, or the government, or the laws, or the guns, we miss the point.  The only reality is Love.  That is the only place we can go if life is to have meaning, if we truly want to understand.  Pick up your beads, get down on your knees, and talk to the One who is Eternal Love.  There is your solace, your peace, your strength, and your hope.