Sixteenth Sunday
We Belong to Each Other
Ephesians 2:13-18
Every time there is a public act of violence…. A politician shot at during an election rally….. Women & children bombed in Gaza with nowhere to hide…, clinics under rocket attack in Ukraine….we watch with helpless horror at an unfolding tragedy, and feel even more powerless as the response raises the temperature. And voices cry around us: Where is God in the middle of this? Where is Jesus when children are crushed by falling concrete? Hard questions with no easy answers.
It is easier to say where God is absent! He is not with the hand of would-be assassins nor with those who bomb the innocent, nor with warplanes attacking hospitals. Nor is he with those who use grievances to stir up even more hatred.
Long ago in another less violent ethnic conflict St. Paul once spoke of Jesus who brought peace between hostile nations by taking away in his own body all that divided them.
This meant three things: Firstly Jesus did not die on Calvary for just Jews or Arabs or Greeks or one ethnic group; he gave his life for people of all races. Secondly he died uncorrupted by hostility, asking forgiveness for his persecutors and not revenge; his death took away hatred. Thirdly by showing what a true human being could be like, he exposed ethnic hatred for the perversion of truth it really was, and his humanity found echoes in the hearts of all peoples.
Mother Theresa put it powerfully 40 years ago: “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
Fr.Austin scj