Stuck at the crucifixion

It’s hard to write anything lately.   What happened Friday in Connecticut is beyond devastating.  It has been there in my mind ever since it happened and the grief and loss are too much to comprehend.  Some tragedies are literally primal — they shake you at your very core.   This is one of them.

I don’t get political on this blog as a general rule (there’s enough of that out there on other blogs).  But I will say that there is something deeply wrong with this society when guns do this kind of damage, over and over, news cycle after news cycle, and no policy ever changes.   Doing nothing is not an option.  Not this time. ( I’ll refer you to Father James Martin’s excellent article on how gun control is a pro-life issue.)

At Mass Sunday, in the Communion line, I looked up at Christ on the cross and thought, not for the first time, that I am glad I have a faith that acknowledges excruciating pain.  The grief that those parents and families are going through must feel like crucifixion.  There is probably no other way to describe it.  I feel marginally less helpless and lost, in some small way, in knowing that my faith offers a language for that kind of pain.

I am praying for comfort for the victims’ families, and it feels so off-key and futile; how can there be any comfort for them, especially right now?  I guess I can just hope that others will sit with them during this crucifixion and be present in the grief, silent witnesses to love and to the desire to help and to the fundamental goodness of human beings.   That is a powerful and necessary witness at a time like this.

My faith says that there is a resurrection, and a heaven.  I believe in both.  But like many of us,  I just can’t get there yet.  I’m stuck at the crucifixion.  And it is okay to feel that way.

El Greco, Christ on the Cross