On my way back from Fireside Chat, I was continuing to listen to Ralph Martin's book, "The Fulfillment of All Desires."
As I was driving home thinking about the conversation there and processing what has become an evergrowing litany of senseless violence (the Charlie Kirk assasination being just [one of] the latest links to be forged), Ralph Martin, in talking about something Saint John of the Cross wrote (and mirrored by Saint Bernard of Claivaux) said the following (I might be paraphrasing a bit):
"When God could not find divine love in His creation, He inserted divine love into His creation through the Incarnation."
He goes on to challenge us to insert divine love into places and events where it has been stifled. What a challenge!
In the past few weeks, we have seen children shot in a church, a war refugee attacked and killed in a bus completely unprovoked, a selfish act in a stadium that has ruined the person's life, and now a coward's bullet strikes down a man whose young wife and two children are reduced to shock and sorrow.
How do we insert love there!?
But we must, if there be any hope for healing.
Vengeance begets vengeance. Whether it be in the heartlessness of those who see political advantage in any crisis, those whose cleverness is meant to demean and destroy, or in the almost callous commentary that dehumanizes all parties involved.
How do we bring healing? How do our words and actions act as a balm against the perpetually provoked inflammations?
Our faith is truly tested and exposed.
Inserting divine love isn't merely an option among others...it is the only sane path out.