By Barb Arland-Fye
Editorial
Chad Steimle sent a heartfelt message to parents of students at John F. Kennedy Catholic School in Davenport after a gunman fired into Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis where schoolchildren and adults were celebrating Mass Aug. 27. An 8-year-old and a 10-year-old died and 18 children and adults were injured in the tragedy.
“Please remind your children that they are deeply loved, and that we can all move forward together,” Principal Steimle wrote. “They don’t need us to have all the answers. What they need is our presence — someone to walk beside them, listen, and give them hope. Our faith, even through the darkest of times, gives us hope. After the cross came the resurrection.”
“We can all move forward together.” Steimle’s phrase should become our mantra, our purpose, our mission in helping heal our broken world and in bringing Christ’s hope to all — saints and sinners, the faithful and the alienated. Let us become companions on the journey … committed to addressing and overcoming our differences.
Bishop Dennis Walsh, in his letter responding to this latest tragedy, said: “In times of darkness, we are called as Christians to be bearers of light, to remember the words of Christ: ‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you’ (John 14:27). It is in this spirit of peace, solidarity, and unwavering faith that we reaffirm our commitment to the values that define us …” (See his letter on Page 3).
We can all move forward together by continuing to pray for the Annunciation community grieving such heartbreaking loss. We can all move forward together by paying “attention to the presence of God in our own hearts” and “finding the ways that we may be able to do something with our lives to serve others,” Pope Leo XIV said (June 14, video message to Chicago gathering).
The Holy Father reminds us that God’s love is healing and brings us hope. His June 14 message, tailored to young people, is applicable to all of us: Share the “message of hope with one another — in outreach, in service, in looking for ways to make our world a better place.”
Social media is abuzz with purported reasons for the alleged shooter’s actions but none of us knows what was going on in the mind of this person, who is dead from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. That person also was a child of God. The question we ought to be asking is what caused this individual to lose sight of God?
We can all move forward together by praying “for peace and for the courage to confront evil with goodness,” as Bishop Walsh said in his letter. Do we have the courage to confront the evil for which we are responsible in our own lives, by commission or omission? An examination of conscience and the sacrament of reconciliation bring healing hope that we in turn give back as a gift by bringing hope to others.
We can all move forward together, as people of hope, “when we are fed at the Tables of Word and Sacrament, when we are rooted in the communal life and prayers,” Bishop Walsh said in his Easter message this year.
We can all move forward together by bringing hope to people who are ill at home or in the hospital, to people affected by illnesses or disabilities that severely restrict their personal independence and freedom. We can bring hope to the young, to migrants, to the elderly and to people struggling with poverty.
We can all move forward together, for the sake of our children and one another, when we walk beside them, listen to them, and give them hope.
Barb Arland-Fye, Editor
arland-fye@davenportdiocese.org
