Stronger and Taller than Death

On Tuesday morning the whole nation woke up in shock following the news of the Manchester bombing. Disbelief and dismay seized our hearts in front of an attack towards children and young people.

Disbelief. How is it possible to conceive such an evil act? How to explain such an evil attack against innocent life, against innocent hopes and desires, which perhaps are even reduced and confused, and yet express a very human thirst for life?

Dismay. The attack stirred in all of us anger, fear and a speechless sorrow, in front of a horror that is getting closer and closer, even more intimate. This was not a random attack, to an unnamed crowd or a public building, but an attack against what we hold most dear, our children.

And yet, together with disbelief and dismay, we all saw a deep pity, in us and around us. Amidst the great commotion, we all witnessed the solidarity of a city, the sympathy of a whole nation, suddenly coming together. We all experienced in us, maybe for a few seconds, a deep, real pity.

Pity? The “rarest commodity” that one can find in these days! Human beings really are a great mystery, if they can be moved to tears for their fellow men and women, even when they are perfect strangers. Other animals don’t do that. Is this pity revealing the same “thirst for life”, the same thirst for meaning which we all recognise, at least in these moments, as the common trait of all of us? This thirst stands stronger and taller in front of death.

The Gospel says that once, in front of his dead friend, a man, Jesus Christ, wept. Let’s weep then, let us be humans, and let us look at this pity and at this thirst, at this infinite desire for good, beauty, life, justice that we all are.

The Gospel says that once, to a mourning mother, Christ said: “woman do not cry!”, before he resurrected her only son. Resurrection is not a dream, it is a fact at the origin of our hope in these dark times. At the origin of our certainty that the life of those children is not wasted. It is what we want to witness to our beloved fellow men and women.

Communion and Liberation UK