Why is it that joy and pain are brothers? They are, as the dance of darkness and light, moving to the unpredictable beat of our often violent, then serenely calm weather.
We really never know what life is going to be like from one moment to the next. Where can we find constancy, a guiding permanent light, a steady and sure hope? We all look for these, especially this Christmas.
Could we have a darker moment than Sandy Hook Primary School? This unfathomable tragedy becomes a focal point of all the darkness, cruelty and evil across the countries of our world. What can stand against it? How can we survive?
Maybe the answer is found in the very midst, in the heart of those terrible events. In a true sense it takes me back to Calvary, not Bethlehem, to darkness and pain and fear and death.
Yet, in the middle of that darkness, in a little washroom, is a teacher with her 25 little children, huddled, trying to be silent in the darkness with the sound of continual gunfire on the other side of the door. The teacher, in extreme fear, believes that she and the little ones are next.
What can she do? She thinks of the parents of these little ones. What would they do? And, in this moment, she hopes she is not over-reaching her position, but what she is to say, she knows, comes from her breaking heart.
“I love you. I love you. Every one of you. I love you so dearly. You are my children. I love you. Do not be afraid. All will be well. I love you. I love you.”
Later she explains, “I believed that we were next. We were going to be shot. I did not want the last sound that these little ones of mine would hear, would be the violent sound of gunfire. I wanted them to hear ‘I love you. I love you’.”
What more needs to be said about Christmas? What else do we have to do?
Peter cp
Passionist
Family Group Movement
Grace
Cottage Sydney, Australia
