“Thus says the LORD:
In a time of favor I answer you, on the day of salvation I help you; and I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, To restore the land and allot the desolate heritages, Saying to the prisoners: Come out! To those in darkness: Show yourselves! Along the ways they shall find pasture, on every bare height shall their pastures be. They shall not hunger or thirst, nor shall the scorching wind or the sun strike them; For he who pities them leads them and guides them beside springs of water.”
I think about how this Lent has been different for me. The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School happened on Ash Wednesday. As a pediatrician who works in the Injury Prevention Center at Yale and a mother of teenagers, I cannot comprehend the unfathomable anguish and suffering of the students who heard the rapid succession of gunshots and screaming, who cowered in dark closets as their classmates were shot to death while running for their lives in hallways; while holding doors open so other classmates could escape; or were ambushed in the stairwells when they came face to face with the shooter, one of their own.
I cannot imagine an Ash Wednesday more mournful, dark and devastating. In the aftermath of mass shootings in Parkland, San Bernardino, Charleston, Sandy Hook, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, not to mention the daily toll of firearm violence in communities all across the US, I have to continually remind myself that I have to listen to the words of Pope Francis, to exercise the greater courage of peacemaking. I have been for far too long, too reticent to engage with those who believe differently than me about the role of firearms in our country. Only by doing so will our nation be able to start the process of reconciliation and find some common ground to reduce the devastating impact of firearm violence. It has to start somewhere, somehow, and soon.
During my Lenten prayers and reflection, I pray that God will grant me the strength and serenity to be an effective peacemaker in some small way, to foster a rebirth in the local and national discourse about firearms.
