"My heart is broken.” With these words Pope Francis reacted to the slaughter of 19 little children and two teachers at a school in Uvalde, Texas.
The images on television and social media were heart wrenching. We witnessed parents, grandparents and other loved ones overcome with grief as they gathered at the school, their children suddenly and senselessly snatched out of their lives by a violence as incomprehensible as it was barbarous. The cruelty of what these families have to endure is beyond description.
The embassy of the Vatican in the US, the Apostolic Nunciature, stated: “We are witnessing a sickness, and the face of evil. We continue to pray for these blessed children and other wonderful people who were killed and their families. We are crushed by this loss.” The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in responding to the rampage of death in Uvalde, stated that we live in an “epidemic of evil and violence.”
The evidence of this is inescapable and undeniable. The recent mass shootings in a store in Buffalo, N.Y., and a church in Laguna Woods, Calif., occurred only days before the massacre at the school in Uvalde. Daily we are made aware of the carnage on the streets of communities across the nation where last year more than 20,000 people were murdered in our country, and quietly more than 1,500 babies are aborted each day.
The violence is certainly not limited to our country. Violence, wars and terrorism occur throughout the world and Europe is currently convulsed with a brutal and unprovoked war between Russia and Ukraine, resulting in the deaths of combatants and non-combatants alike.
In our society there is a lack of respect for life.
We pride ourselves on our accomplishments. Our technology continues to advance in every area of daily life. Advances in medicine, science, communication, transportation, engineering, etc. are astounding. Things which in the recent past would have seemed the fantasies of science fiction are now realized and continue to rapidly develop. We have a lifestyle unsurpassed in human history. But if we are such an advanced society, why are we so capable of being so barbaric?
After each new mass killing, we seek answers. Perhaps a new law, perhaps a new governmental program, will bring about change in our society. These proposals need to be discussed but the answer is far deeper. We look to our technology to show us the way forward. We trust our scientific progress and what our minds can achieve to shape our lives. We build our society on the incredible progress present in modern society. But we do not trust God. Technology changes but the human heart does not change. If the human heart is empty of God’s presence, no discovery in a science lab can fill that void. As St. Augustine said centuries ago: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
The human heart, at its depths, has longings and questions. Inevitably each human asks these questions, no matter the person’s background or what the person may believe or not believe: Why do I exist? What is the purpose of my life? What will give my life meaning? What happens to me when I die? Etc. These questions cannot be answered without God. Any society which detaches itself from God detaches itself from its very nature and everything which makes it capable of being truly human. A sense of common and shared humanity is loss.