Father Ronan Reflects on Marathon Bombing

How many times over the years might you have walked along this street of our great city or others like it and almost always felt safe? Whether an ordinary work day, a holiday, parade or some special event—the Copley Square area of Boston has most often been considered a safe place—until last Monday afternoon when, in an unexpected and unwelcome moment, those bombs went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

The unreal nature of the intrusion into our calm, joyous and wonderful celebration on this Patriots Day is hard for everyone to accept and even fathom. It cannot happen here—not in my city, not in my neighborhood. But it did. The senseless violence that is part of the everyday life of countless peoples in all parts of our world most often seems so distant to us—but not this week. And no one’s pain is as severe as one’s own, and yet we suddenly feel a kinship with moms and dads, children and seniors who live with the horror of these kinds of attacks with tragic frequency.

Whether this assault proves to be from one camp or another, to most of us it matters not. It doesn’t change the reality of what happened and how we struggle to live with it. It is our tragic human nature to know violence all too much. And when we step back and look at our history as a people in this nation and throughout the world, the presence of bloodshed, often of innocents, is sadly prominent.

Violence is our primal response to the pain, suffering, injustice and ignorance around us. From the time of our first ancestors in the Garden as Cain slew Able, murder and torture are an evident part of our human repertoire. When I am ruthlessly honest with myself, I realize that violence is not that far from my own way of living. Oh, it is not the violence of a gun, but there are other kinds of weapons each of us might use daily: words spoken and or unspoken, affection and support offered and or withheld, things done or un-done. Whenever the dignity of another is diminished, violence has occurred. Each of us has received it—and we, in turn, have been the source of it.

And yet, just as a parent would never want his or her child subjected to this, God’s vision and desire for us is also contrary to this destructive way of being. Throughout all of salvation history we hear God’s call to a way of living characterized by justice and respectful love for one another … to live in peace … to resolve conflict in a moral way. God, all too aware of our broken nature, responds to our limitations by offering us the antidote: Jesus.

God sends to us a true Savior who by His teaching, His life, His example, His very person shows us how to rise above our primal nature. Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, who takes all of the suffering and injustice of humankind upon himself, conquering the power of death and evil in His Resurrection and opening the way of Hope for all humankind.

As I contemplate the events on Boylston Street these days I do not know where else to go but to Jesus. How else should I go on in the light of this terrible tragedy? With fear? With anger? With suspicion? With boldness that might belie the weakness inside of us all? For me there is only one way forward and that is in and through Jesus Christ. There simply is no other force that helps me respond (at least a bit) to the essence of this moment.

Evil always seeks a response in kind—and thus evil dominates and controls so much sadness in our world. Yet in Christ evil is vanquished. Death is not the final answer and revenge may be sweet but it is only a tragedy caused by another tragedy. The commandment from Christ to forgive ceaselessly and to love as we have been loved is the only antidote to stop violence in all forms and shapes. When we stand in Christ against the forces of evil and confront it with the sheer strength of responsible love, the effects of evil are transformed.

Boylston Street and the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon will serve as a reminder for generations to come that evil sought control of Boston on April 15, and its efforts failed miserably. And we know this because among other things, we all have watched and heard of the multitude who selflessly helped those fallen, and  from the love that continues to be poured out locally, nationally and internationally, to those in need—just as Christ loves you and me.