We nod our heads when we read in the Gospel of Matthew:

Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. (18:5)

Where do we find hope as members of this church whose leaders have too often not received the child as Christ?

Yes, we may reasonably ask why the media must focus on the Catholic Church, when respectable fathers of families travel to Indonesia and other countries to have sex with children, thereby supporting the lucrative human trafficking and child prostitution industries.  And when many others simply stay home and rape their own daughters.

It is undeniable that the Catholic Church is the organization that people love to hate.  However, in the Church we lay claim to a higher sort of life.  It is doubly shocking when persons who proclaim goodness are found to have wallowed in or abetted evil.  So perhaps the media can be forgiven for being particularly hard on those who represent the Church.

“Where was God?” countless victims ask.  “Where was God when I was being abused?”

We must not attempt a facile response, and indeed any words seem inadequate in the face of such heartache.  The only response, I believe – though it is not an answer to the question of why it happened – is that God was where God always is when the beloved is being betrayed and harmed: right there, in sorrow, in pain.  Right where God was when Jesus was being crucified.

As for a reason why, Christianity offers us no answer except for the reality of human freedom – a gift which is too often misused.

Sin, even when we think it is private, is always communal in its effects.  While those who have not been abused can never totally understand the experience of those who were, still we all share in some way – though a far lesser way to be sure – in the consequences of the evil.  We are a wounded Church this Easter season.

But if in the Crucifixion of Christ we are given a promise of presence – of a God who shares in the grief and pain – in the Resurrection we are also offered the assurance that evil does not have the last word.  Evil will never have the last word. In spite of all appearances to the contrary, the love, goodness, and holiness of God are stronger than even the most horrendous evil.

Do we just sit around and wait for that day when all tears will be wiped away?  No, of course not.  We must take strong, practical action to prevent abuse – and where possible to ease the suffering of those who have been abused – even if that means changing time-honored ecclesial structures.  And we must nurture the spiritual life, so as to grow in union with the Risen Christ, for this is the only way that the divine goodness and loving-kindness will be more clearly manifested in the daily life of the Church.

“By his holy and glorious wounds,
may Christ our Lord guard us and keep us.”

Preparation of the Paschal Candle at the Easter Vigil

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself
and God our Father, who loved us
and through grace gave us
eternal comfort and good hope,
comfort your hearts and strengthen them
in every good work and word.
(2 Thessalonians 2:16-17)

Let us pray for those who grieve, as well as for those who are suffering physically, psychologically, or spiritually from the attack on September 11, 2001.

Let us work for peace, so that violence may disappear from the earth.

Sister Elizabeth and I recently returned from New Orleans, our first visit there since Hurricane Katrina.

Our own house, the Cenacle Retreat House on the lakefront in Metairie, was spared major damage. Unlike other parts of town — Lakeview and St. Bernard Parish in particular— most buildings in our neighborhood look unchanged — except that the street is lined with FEMA trailers, so you know the houses were flooded and are unlivable.

One day Sisters Rosalie, Elizabeth, and I drove to Pass Christian, Mississippi, where Sister Rosalie’s family home was located before Katrina. The house was completely destroyed by the storm surge. Now when you walk where the house used to be, you see not only beach poppies and Easter lilies sprouting in the sandy soil, but also spoons and forks and pieces of broken china. The Pass Christian town center is made up primarily of trailers housing banks, library, and city government.

For a good part of the next day I felt like weeping, and my stomach was upset — a delayed reaction to the hundreds of miles of devastation we had seen the day before. I can only try to imagine what it is like for the people who live with it every day, for whom wreckage is the new normalcy. Listening to some of them, I had the impression of a citizenry that had survived a war, with the resulting damage to property and wounds to the psyche.

While we were there, the Times-Picayune printed an article about modern-day “carpetbaggers,” who, after first looting the damaged houses in New Orleans, are now back, stealing shutters, doors, and other historic architectural elements. And this week the National Guard has been called back in, following the murders of five teenagers and an adult.

Where is goodness amid the destruction?

We had just gotten out of the car at the empty lot where Sister Rosalie’s family home had been when a man stopped to ask us if we needed help.

“No,” we said, pointing to Sister, “she’s just come to see the old homestead.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” was his reply, full of understanding and sympathy.

Simple acts of kindness have abounded, although the crimes, true to the pattern of the news media, have received more attention.

Less than two months after the storm, Daniel P. Aldrich, writing on the Jewish web site, aish.com, said:

In explaining what happened to us, I have sought to show my children that our losses provided us with a chance to experience chesed — kindness — from others…

Aldrich added that the experience of Katrina “has reinforced our belief in the innate goodness and kindness not only of Jews but of the American people as a whole”; and he goes on to tell about an incident in Atlanta, when he was trying to buy gas and having trouble with his credit card.

As a nearby woman heard my wife and me talking with the sales clerk about leaving New Orleans, she walked up, smiled, and said, “I want to give you this.” In her hand was a winning lottery ticket and her collected earnings. … This was one of the myriad of kindnesses showered upon us by strangers, friends, and family alike.

Goodness is found, too, in the courage of people carrying on with life amid the pain. In the neighborhood of the Cenacle, residents tend their lawns, mowing around the FEMA trailers. In Pass Christian, the townspeople rejoice over the opening of their new trailer library.

Life goes on.

My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.

Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
have gone over me.
. . . . . . . . . .
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God;
for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.

(Psalm 42:6-7, 11)

When the earth begins to tremble,
Bid our fearful thoughts be still.

I have never been in an earthquake and can’t even imagine the sense of helplessness there must be when not even the formerly solid earth can be relied upon. What I have experienced, though, is what I believe most of us go through at one time or another in our lives: moments when the very underpinnings of our way of being in the world are shaken.

For me the earth has seemed to tremble:

during times of deep grief — of loss so profound that afterwards life will never ever be quite the same (the death of a loved one is an obvious example of this kind of earth-shaking grief, but there are others);

during times when I have become acutely aware of my own sin in a particular situation — times when the foundations of my self-image, my complacency and self-sufficiency, are shaken — and after which I can no longer apprehend myself or the world in the same way.

My desire in situations like these is usually for everything to return to the way it used to be. But that can never happen. Nor should it happen. That would be to unlearn what we have learned about ourselves and about life.

Always and without fail, the unshakable rock in our fear and grief is God. God’s mercy is our unwavering comfort. And the source of our security, when all around us and inside us trembles, is God’s grace present and working to bring us through to a new and more enduring peace.

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

(Psalm 46:1-3)