Bishop Gomez's homily on National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for terrorism victims

September 14 , 2001

Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Auxiliary Bishop of Denver

First Reading: Numbers 21: 4b-9
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 78
Second Reading: Philippians 2: 6-11
Gospel: John 3: 13-17

On the day of the World Trade Center attack, a friend asked me, "How can a God of love allow this kind of evil and suffering?" I answered him that God made us free, and because we're free, we can freely choose to do terrible things. God can't interfere with our freedom without also taking away our dignity as His children. The struggle between good and evil isn't "outside" us in the big world somewhere. It runs right through the center of each human heart. What separates us from every other creature is our ability to know and do what is right. Our love means something because it's not just an instinct. It's a gift that we can freely choose to give or withhold.

Another friend asked me, "How can we keep our faith when a tragedy like this occurs, and God seems to be silent?" I answered him: What do we expect God to do -- be available when we need Him, and then go away when we don't? Because that's the way many of us act. We ignore Him, or we pay Him lip service -- and then we expect Him to show up like a paramedic when we dial 911. That's not "loving" God. That's just using Him. And if you and I don't like to be used, what makes us think that God does?

Of course, Scripture tells us that God's ways are not our ways. He loves us better than we love ourselves. And so He does answer us every time we call on Him. In fact, God never leaves us. He's never silent. He's never absent. But if we fill our lives with noise, we can't hear Him speak. If we crowd our hearts with confusion and distractions, we forget how to listen.

How do we keep our faith in the face of tragedy? I think that's the wrong question. Faith untested is faith that's not real. Tragedy and suffering are where we find our faith. Suffering is what God uses to wake us up to our purpose in the world.

The great Jewish Christian writer, Leon Bloy, once said that, "man has places in his heart which do not yet exist -- and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have existence." It's suffering, not comfort, that draws us into the heart of God. It's suffering, not comfort, that teaches us how to live as children of God. This is the lesson of all of Scripture. It's why Pope John Paul once described the Bible as God's "great book about suffering." From Genesis to Job to the Book of Revelation, the human heart only finds God when it's humble and broken.

We Americans like to think that this present moment in which we live is entirely new and different from anything in the past. This illusion is part of our vanity. We like to think that no one has ever had our power. No one has ever had our technology or wealth. But as I prayed over our First Reading from Numbers today, I realized how little has changed about the human condition in 4,000 years.

Then and now, we're made from exactly the same clay. God delivers the Israelites from slavery, and they immediately begin forgetting and complaining. God gives Americans incredible opportunities and privilege, and so many of us repay Him by removing Him from our public life and our private behavior. The Scripture today says that God sent the serpents to punish the Israelites, but God never chastises us except to teach us where our real security lies. He sent the serpents, and He also sent a deliverance from the serpents, so that His people would turn their eyes to Him.

In our Psalm this afternoon, God tells us, "hearken my people to my teaching, incline your ears to words of my mouth." These aren't the words of an angry judge. They're the words of a Father who loves His children, but who knows that they have trouble listening. It was only when God pressed His people that, "they sought Him and inquired after God again, remembering that God was their rock and the Most High God, their redeemer." So it is with us today.

What our readings remind us -- what the pain of this entire week teaches us -- is that only God is our security and strength. The tremendous suffering inflicted on so many innocent people Tuesday, the wound our whole country now bears, is a call to conversion. Today's Gospel says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only son . . . God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him."

Yesterday a friend said that she hoped we could find a way to put Tuesday's attack behind us and get back to normalcy as soon as possible. I understand her feelings. All of us yearn, in a way, for the routine concerns we had on Monday. But if "normalcy" is the self-absorption, division and discontent we've created for ourselves as a nation over the last decade, God grant that we never go back to it. We owe the victims, their survivors, and our own children, more than that.

In the midst of all the suffering of the past week, God is still with us. He still speaks to us. Today is one of the great feasts of the Church year -- the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. It's no accident that for 2,000 years, an instrument of execution has been the greatest symbol of human hope. The cross is a hard gift, but a great gift. God created us to be His children, to be his cooperators in redeeming and sanctifying the world.

And so the real question facing us today isn't, "How can God allow the kind of evil that happened on Tuesday?"

The real question is: What are we going to do about it? In the days and weeks ahead, are we going to choose to hate as the murderers hated on Tuesday? Or will we try to live and love as Jesus did -- no matter what the cost?

God's peace, in the days ahead.