COLORADO SHOOTING/ What pushes us to do evil?

We are in the middle of the Presidential campaign here. The two candidates have had to stop. The country is too shocked to hear their dueling.

Romney will give a speech tonight, but in the meantime he is praying for those who suffer. Obama had an idea, and in the midst of a campaign devoid of passion, he gave voice to a fleeting thought, but true. “Life is fragile,” he said, “Our time here is limited and precious.”

Yeah, that’s right, but what's missing? What moves us to evil?

We, all of us, are a "cry for love", a cry, a question, a plea for Good. We live only for this and we are not able either to give it or to receive it, at least not enough. Even James Holmes cannot but be like this, but after a journey of 24 years, it seems that he did not find a better way to express his cry.

Something Don Giussani, the founder of Communion and Liberation, said to us in 1999 comes to mind: “May you live the experience of father; father and mother; this is my wish for…each one of you, too, because each one has to be father to the friends he has around him, has to be mother of the people around about; not giving himself airs, but with effective charity. For no-one can feel as fortunate and glad as a man and a woman who feel themselves made fathers and mothers by the Lord. Fathers and mothers of all those they meet. Do you remember-as the second book of the School of Community describes it-, when Jesus was walking through the fields with his Apostles, near the town of Naim, and saw a woman weeping as she followed her dead son to his burial? He went up to her; he didn't say, "I'm going to raise your son". He said, 'Woman, don't weep', with a tenderness, affirming unmistakable tenderness and love for the human person! And then he gave her back her son alive. But this isn't the point, because even other people can work miracles, but this charity, this love for man that is proper to Christ is quite beyond compare!”.

There is no other way.


(translation by Maria Bond)