Why?

This question must play over & over again in the minds of those in Connecticut who lost children or family in the shooting tragedy & all in the community who were affected.  Why now?  Why here?  Why these children & teachers?  Why would God allow this?  I only want to say three brief things about this situation.

Everything that happens happens according to God's will - he either permits some things or he directly wills things.  Evil is not the equal & opposite of God & his love.  Evil did not somehow "beat" God.  He permitted it.  We cannot know why, other than to know that God always brings the greatest good from the most terrible evil.  Even believing this to core of our being will not take away the grief & sense of loss, and we may not like it or understand it, but we must trust this is so.  This is the supernatural virtue of hope - that God will do what he has said.

As Fr. Christian said in a couple of lovely posts [HERE & HERE], the response to evil is to keep doing good.  Keep going with acts of charity, which Catholics call the corporal & spiritual works of mercy.  But perhaps the greatest thing we can do is become a people of prayer, by which we cull the evil from our own hearts & intercede for others.  Pray the Rosary.  Read the Gospels.  Pray at Holy Mass.  Pray the Liturgy of the Hours.  Fast in some way, especially from the things that draw us more toward the world than toward God.  Rejoice in the Lord always & give thanks to God in all things.  Make prayer & immersion in the Scriptures the foundation of all you do.  Here we encounter the saving power of the God of Jesus Christ who said, "without me you can do nothing."

Many people have called this a senseless act of put evil by a deranged person.  It is possible that people have mental disorders that make them incapable of discerning fantasy from reality or right from wrong.  However, the young person that did this did something deliberate that required planning & forethought.  He knew exactly what he was doing.  And he's not the first one.  This sort of thing was utterly unknown when I was young.  This person & his actions are the product of our society & its values.  We glorify in the media every perversion & impiety that man can dream up, & even enshrine these very things in our laws.  Violence, gossip, consumerism, gluttony, vulgarity & profanity, homosexuality & mockeries of marriage, lust & pornography, abortion & contraception, witchcraft & the occult, pride & vanity, death.  In our self-satisfaction, we have drifted so far from God & left a tremendous black & poisonous void in our society, our hearts, & in the lives of our young people.  If we insist upon a society totally devoid of God, or morality, or truth, or love, we will never see the end of this sort of thing & it will grow ever worse.  We must as a society & as individuals return to God with our whole hearts, & teach God's law to our children.  "Repent, & believe in the Gospel."