Key questions about the meaning of life are thrown up and existentially profiled in our own times by the barbaric and violent atrocities we have witnessed in recent months in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the United States.
The murder of the 84-year-old Fr Jacques Hamel in the church at Saint-Etienne du Rouvray, as he celebrated the Eucharist, was the most recent of these. All people of good will look on in horror at such butchery and lament for humanity. But lamenting does not suffice.
Nor will security measures or the force of arms resolve the root causes of such evil. In the face of this vortex of evil, this crisis in history and civilisation, prayerfulness, re-discovery of faith in the God of Jesus Christ and living the gospel values are vital to the essential Christian contribution to promoting justice, peace and co-operation between peoples and nations.
The Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal André Vingt-Trois delivered a homily during a Mass for the dead and injured of Saint-Etienne du Rouvray which was attended by the President of France, members of the French government and a vast congregation. Greatly acclaimed by the congregation, the cardinal's reflections are pertinent for our times and indeed for our spiritual and material well-being.
As we hold in our prayers and thoughts the martyred Fr Jacques Hamel and all who were murdered and injured in the recent atrocities on all the continents of the world, it is worth dwelling on some of the key thoughts expressed by Cardinal Vingt-Trois in a homily that is allusive in style and invites the listener to thought and evaluation of attitude:
:: The hope inscribed in the human heart bears a name: It is called life. This hope has a face - the face of Christ who sacrificed his life so that humanity might have life in abundance.
:: It is this hope that inspired the priestly ministry of Fr Jacques Hamel when he celebrated the Eucharist during which he was savagely executed. It is this hope which sustains the Christians of the Middle East when they are forced to flee in the face of persecution and when they opt to abandon all rather than renounce their faith. It is this hope which pulsates in the hearts of hundreds of thousands of young people gathered with Pope Francis at the WYD in Kracow; it this hope which enables us to avoid succumbing to hate when we are tormented.
:: Common to the hearts of all, whatever their faith or religion, is the conviction that human life and existence is not just a chance happening of evolution destined for unavoidable destruction and death. This conviction was savagely injured at Saint-Etienne du Rouvray and yet it is thanks to this conviction that we are able to resist the temptation to nihilism. Thanks to this conviction we refuse to surrender to the delirium of conspiracy or to allow the gangrene of the virus of suspicion to take root in our society
:: Scapegoating does not build a sense of unity among humanity.
:: Developing a virtual universe of polemics and verbal violence does not contribute to building cohesion in society nor to the vitality of the tissue of society. This virtual violence gradually and concretely ends up by becoming real hate and by promoting destruction as a means of progress. Verbal combat ends up too often in the banalisation of aggression as a way of relating to people.
:: Despite the advances of our times our collective fears are many. To list them gives an x-ray of our times - the nuclear threat, the ozone layer, climate change, food pollution, cancer, AIDS, uncertainty regarding pensions, care of our aged in the last years of their lives, impact of finance flows on the economy, fear of unemployment, instability in family life, the anxiety of the abnormal baby, the anxiety of the baby in the womb, the anxiety generated by the failure to integrate our youth, the growth of the drug culture, the rise of destructive social violence which burns, wrecks and destroys, blind and murderous driving.
:: The horror of the recent blind attacks add their threatening menace to this latent anxiety of our collective fears. Where will we find the strength to face these perils if we cannot rely on hope?
If a vortex largely of humanity's own making appears to engulf and imperil our societies, only the power of human word, dialogue and language, together with the impulse of faith-based thought and co-operative development work aimed at promoting justice between peoples will save our world and our times from material and spiritual disaster.
Such efforts will be all the more effective and lasting to the extent that they are inspired by the revelation in Christ of a self-sacrificing God and by Christians and those ready to emulate that self-sacrifice in the pursuit of justice.
To build a humanism and a civilisation rooted in these values and their concrete requirements, we have to shape and build our own attitudes and convictions on the foundations of the good news of the gospel - and we shall need to refuse the temptation to indifference to the issues of our time, the temptation to act and think as if the relativism of anything goes is the panacea for living and for the pluralist society. And likewise we shall need to resist the deadly temptation to the nihilism of "sure, why bother".
In short, in the face of the challenges, issues and perils of our times, we need to re-awaken our minds and hearts to the pertinence of the call we receive in baptism - the call to a life's project to keep building and shaping through prayer, worship and charity our lives, our thought patterns, our attitudes and action in the image of the new self, modelled on Christ, the Saviour of humanity.
:: Taken from a homily delivered at St Peter's Cathedral by Bishop of Down and Connor Noel Treanor.
