This day we commemorate the beheading of St. John the Baptist. The slaughter of such a righteous man by the wicked is hard for us to accept. It causes us great grief, and so, on this day we observe a strict fast. On this same day ten years ago, thousands were killed by the wicked. This, too, is hard for us to accept. It causes us much grief, and so the depth of our fast becomes even more profound.
It has been ten years since the attacks. Many lost their lives that day. Many more have done so since then in the wars that followed. All of our lives have changed. I know mine did. I would like to take the next few minutes to offer a reflection on “lessons learned” from that day. As you know, I teach about the Taliban down in Newport. But this is not about that. It is about something bigger; more important. Something that can actually bring healing and hope to ourselves and our nation.
We are all connected. It should be obvious, but on 9/11 it really hit home. The wickedness of people all the way across the world reached across us. The malice of strangers – people we had never met – changed our lives. This is the way evil works. It infects our world like a mutant virus; unseen, invasive, and devastating; like the evil eye or some kind of malicious spell. Wickedness, meanness, spite, selfishness, deceit, – they are curses inflicted on the world by careless and malicious men. They spread throughout the world, infecting and perverting everything, so that creation itself becomes cursed by their power. This is why the world groans in sin, and why we worry so much about our salvation, our society, and our world.
We are all connected (in sin). Some of the wicked things we do seem to have more of an effect than others. The malice of a handful of men who hijacked planes brought the greatest superpower in the history of mankind to its knees. We are still suffering from the effects of their sin. Other sins are more subtle, but all have the same basic effect, spreading perversion, blight, and darkness across communities and creation itself. There is no such thing as a private sin. We are all connected. For example, the secret sin of a spouse can destroy a family, even if it is never discovered. This is how things work – the negative energy we create does not just poison our own hearts, it spreads through these connections and mixes with the poison that others have brewed within their own lives, until creation becomes a giant cauldron boiling with a witch’s brew that is guaranteed to suck the joy and life out of the world and create a real apocalypse of the animated dead.
We are all connected (segue). And because there is malice, because there are lies, because there is deceit, because there is sin, we suffer from this connection. What did 9/11 teach us? The same thing that every tragedy teaches us: we are vulnerable. For some, the obvious response is isolation. Like the broken-hearted lover, we think we can protect ourselves by severing the connections. And while it is proper to separate ourselves from sin, there is an even better response. One that doesn’t stunt our growth our undermine our humanity the way such isolation does.
We have seen the power of hate. We have seen the suffering it caused to those in the planes and those in the buildings and in the families of the martyred victims. We have felt it ourselves. Yes, we know the power of hate. But there is something even more powerful. Something better. Something deeper and wiser. We are connected. Yes, those connections have been used to transmit terrible damage. Yes, they have become the source of constant pain and anguish; but they were made for something else. They were made to share something stronger than spite and something much, much older than sin. Something that can purify the arteries that run between us, that can destroy the poison that courses through our collective veins, and nullify the curses that mark our doom. Something that can perfect us and clean our connections. Something that can bring us into a perfect union, united into one healthy corporate body that can properly tend creation, heal it of all its wounds, and bring it to a state of glory. Our connections were not meant to carry sin, they were meant to carry something greater. They were meant to carry healing and perfection. Through Christ, this is possible.
This is the Gospel message. We are all connected, but we need not be joined in sin. If we repent, then the blood of Calvary will wash away the accumulated filth that has polluted our hearts and our collective heart. The blood of the New Covenant will transfuse us, bringing us new life. The Communion of Christ will destroy all curses and turn our connections into carriers of joy.
