It was 780 years ago tonight that our holy father Francis was born to eternal life, so that's what I should be writing about today, what we call the transitus of Francis.
But three school shootings in a week-and now even the daughters of our radical anabaptist Amish friends are in danger.
Who needs any other sign that there is something horribly wrong with our culture? Violence is the answer for everything. People who kill people? We kill them. Inconvenient babies? We kill them. Children at school? We use them to take out our anger at the God and the world.
And now with the so-called 1% doctrine, we here in the United States respond with violence and pre-emptive war to threats that have yet even to appear.
We are already guilty; by doing nothing we simply maintain our condemnation as murderers. We need to uproot from inside ourselves the obvious and the hidden wellsprings of violence and anger and hate.
There is no time.
Dear brother, happy feast day today, 4th October. May the patron of your order, St Francis, bless you richly.
ReplyDeletePeace
Lots of violence to be sure and more of need for Gospel non-violence. Following TNH and looking deeply at the culture I must wonder if all our warlike training is boomeranging. We have become a country and society that openly condones violence. We say one thing and do the opposite. Maybe the country needs St. Francis more than ever. Happy Feast Day!
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