Dear Parishioners:
We continue to be greatly saddened by the tragic school shooting that took place during a School Mass at Annunciation Catholic Parish in Minneapolis. Our hearts and our prayers go out to their entire school community. We pray for the children who lost their lives, we pray for the wounded still recovering, and we pray for the consolation of every child, every teacher, every parent, and every person who now suffers in the wake of this violence.
We remain vigilant in ensuring the safety of our parish and school community. We are in contact with the East Greenwich Police Department, which continues to be responsive to and supportive of our community's needs. We also maintain communication with the Catholic Schools Office and the Office of Compliance of the Diocese of Providence, who have been able to confirm through their law enforcement contacts that there are currently no credible threats to any Catholic school, parish, or any other entity in the Diocese of Providence.
We want our schools and parishes to be safe and secure, yet also open, inviting, welcoming, and friendly spaces to learn, play, and worship. We cannot build fortress walls to assuage our fears. Aside from safety concerns, this evil raises many questions about guns, violence, and mental health in our nation. Why is it that so many of our young men turn to evil and violence?
In testimony before the Minnesota legislature about school safety legislation, the Minnesota Catholic Conference testified: "While it's true that virtuous people need fewer laws, our reality is a permissive society that has become an incubator for alienation, mental illness, spiritual poverty, and other pathologies. It breeds nihilistic killers."
The Fall of Man (1628–1629) by Rubens
As we continue to grapple with these issues of sin and evil, safety and security, violence and guns, isolation and mental illness, we realize there are no simple solutions or easy answers to such complex problems. No amount of money or new laws can ever fix such evil. For evil is rooted in sin. And sin has been with us since shortly after humanity's dawn and will challenge us until Christ appears again triumphant.
However, we have our faith in our loving Savior. We must recommit to a holiness of life and virtuous living. Only with greater faith, hope, and charity can we ever truly combat the sin and evil so present in our world. The best way to engage in spiritual warfare is not to pray against evil directly but to pray for what is positive. The best way to counter all that is ugly, evil, and false is to support all that is beautiful, good, and true.
In Rome this Sunday, Pope Leo will canonize two saints made to be intercessors for our times. The two young men from northern Italy to be canonized together are Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati, known as the Man of the Beatitudes, and Saint Carlo Acutis, the First Millennial Saint.
They lived a century apart. One climbed Alpine peaks while the other coded websites. One served the poor of post-war Turin while the other evangelized from a laptop in Milan. Their lives were separated by time but united in love for the Lord. In canonizing them side by side, Pope Leo highlights the Church's universal call to holiness, that all are called to use their unique gifts to reach the heights of holiness.
Frassati was born in 1901 in Turin, during northern Italy's industrial boom. At 13, as World War I broke out, Frassati witnessed returning soldiers who were wounded, unemployed, and broken. He later became a member of Catholic Action and worked to apply the Church's social doctrine to the modern world.
Nearly a century later, Acutis was born in 1991, the same year as the advent of the World Wide Web. While his computer-coding peers launched start-ups, Carlo used his tech savvy to catalog Eucharistic miracles from his family's Milan apartment. These two new Saints are role models for the youth of our anxious age. We must commit ourselves, our children, and our parish and school to Christ with a greater devotion and urgency. May St. Pier Giorgio Frassati and St. Carlo Acutis inspire us and intercede for us.
I am away at an out-of-state wedding this weekend. Be well. Do good. God Bless. Go Sox!