Stopping the Cycle

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time/Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  Most Sundays I preach on the word of God in the Scriptures or a particular season or feast day.  But last week, during the 10 a.m. Mass, our country experienced yet another act of violence.  But this time it hit closer to home, as this mass shooting occurred in Grand Blanc, where many of you live.  I will admit that, before this past Sunday, it was always somewhere else, some other State, some other community.  
    Perhaps we can identify with the Prophet Habakkuk, who wrote, “How long, O LORD?  I cry for help but you do not listen!  I cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not intervene.  Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?  Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord.”  In the wake of these tragedies, we seek to understand how this could happen, and what we could do to bring these tragedies to an end.  
    I’m not going to suggest any political solutions today.  And that’s not because political solutions cannot do anything.  We need to examine causes and do whatever we can to stop the natural causes of these acts of violence and terrorism.  

    But it’s all too easy to get stuck on arguing about external causes and political solutions to problems which go deeper than what we see on the outside and what government can do to solve our problems, though government certainly does have a role in preventing these evils in some ways.  Whenever these evils manifest, we seem to go through the same cycle every time: sympathy for those who died or were injured; moral outrage that this should happen; divergent views on how to prevent these acts of terror from happening in the future, be it gun control, mental health funding, violent video game restrictions, or other solutions upon which we divide into two major camps: liberal and conservative.  Then, because there is no consensus between liberals and conservatives, we do almost nothing, and basically wait for the next act of terrorism, where we go through the same steps again, and achieve nothing.
    Again, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do anything in the political arena.  Government’s first responsibility is to protect life.  But government cannot solve the problem, because the problem is not, at its heart, political.  The problem is not liberals or conservatives, Democrats or Republicans.  The problem is here, in our hearts, in our souls.  The problem that we don’t want to admit is that evil exists, and we are all too comfortable with evil, only to be surprised when it reaches its natural conclusion in horrible acts of violence.
    To be clear, I composed this homily before I learned much of anything about the shooter, whose name I will not share, and who has now stood before the just and merciful judgement of God.  So I can’t and won’t talk in any cogent matter about this particular person and what could have motivated him to cooperate in grave evil.
    But the reason what we continue to go through this cycle of violence is because our society has rejected God, at least at a wholesale level.  We are unwilling to acknowledge our sins, both as individuals and as a society.  We cooperate with evil, and then act surprised when evil does what it always does, seek destruction and chaos, whereas God is the source of creation and order.
    It doesn’t start with horrible evil, of course,  It starts when we say that something else is more important than God; when parents decide that the traveling sports team is more important than Sunday Mass; when a man or a woman decides that lust on a screen seems more enjoyable than following God’s plan for our ability to create new life; when prayer is too much of a burden each day; when we try to pretend that a loving father and loving mother are not key to stable and mentally healthy children; when we treat life only as valuable as it can serve some purpose for us and our utilitarian ends; when we accept the lie that our life has no relationship to God and how he has created us; when we live in an ungodly way; when we turn away from God and exalt our will and our egos; when we do these and other smaller acts of evil, we decide that we want these evils to continue again and again, until it strikes closer to home than we wanted or ever thought possible.  
    God has plans for us to thrive.  God can bring  this cycle of violence to an end, if we follow Him.  But we have to follow Him.  External policies can help, but they cannot solve the problem, any more than a band-aid can heal a severed artery.  The solution to our national problem with violence requires us to live Godly lives.  It is that simple and that complicated.  We have to love the Lord our God with all of who we are, and love our neighbor as ourselves, even when they are difficult to love.  Men and women need to truly love each other and commit to marriage before they have children.  We have to stop demonizing those who disagree with us, but rather use logic and God’s revelation to form them to understand the truth, not simply an opinion that seems easier to follow.  We need to go to Mass each Sunday and Holyday and recognize our dependence on God, rather than pretending that we are gods and the masters of the universe.  Until this happens, there will be more examples of Columbine; Sandy Hook; Nashville; Oxford; Minneapolis; Grand Blanc.  Until this happens, we’re just spending more money on better security, which others will try to beat with better guns and weapons and tactics, which will lead to more money being spent on security, in a vicious cycle.  
    If we want this unending violence to come to an end, then we need to submit ourselves to God and His law.  It may seem like this won’t do much.  But God promises: “For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.”  If we wish to live in a safe society, then do not join the diabolical forces that seek to exult the self over God and do whatever we want and whatever feels good.  God’s vision, subjection to Him and His rule, will not disappoint.  It will transform it into the world that we want at our deepest core, the desire that God has put into our hearts for order and peace, a desire that comes only when we conform our wills to His[: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen].