I Dreamed a Dream in Time Gone By---Connecticut and the 3rd Sunday of Advent

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
As they turn your dream to shame

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

 

Those words from the Les Miserables speak great wisdom at a time like now.

 

For many dreams came to an end with the tragedy that occurred in Connecticut on Friday.  Dreams of children playing on the playground.  Dreams of kids building a fort or climbing in a tree.  Dreams of innocents playing in the snow and making an angel.  And life has killed the dream they dreamed

 

And there were the dreams of parents.  Dreams to celebrate birthdays.  Dreams to see their kids play soccer.  Dreams to teach their son how to shave.  Their daughter how to curl her hair.  Dreams to witness that first prom.  Dreams to see their kids have kids.  And now life has killed the dream they dreamed.

 

Our dreams died too.  For those kids are our kids.  Those parents are our parents.  With our heavy hearts we realize that the loss experienced in Connecticut is our loss too.  Their innocence lost is our innocence lost.  Not only of life that is so precious, but also of our hope in humanity.  We think we are making progress and that senseless violence will be a thing of the past.  But this loss of innocence hits us in the gut like a thousand knives as we curl up in bed asking God to make it better.  So we hug our children tighter before they go to sleep.  We call up our brother to tell him we love him.  We stop by our mother’s home to see if she is doing ok.  For we had dreams too.  And with those kids’ lives, life has killed the dream we dream.

 

 

No words can be spoken to alleviate the pain and suffering that exist from these terrible events.  And pushing an agenda such as gun control or better health care might give us a temporary outlet for our grief, but they will hardly present a solution.  Unfortunately, violence such as this has become common place in our lives.  Who of us has not entered a public place recently and thought about what we would do if someone entered wielding a gun?  Or who of us hasn’t started locking our doors in recent years or decided we ourselves need to carry a gun to be safe.  And our violence pales in comparison to the extreme violence of civil war in Syria, the bomb blasts in Tel Aviv and Gaza, or the starvation of thousands throughout the world.  What is to become of their dreams?

 

This weekend we celebrate Guadate Sunday: the Sunday for us to rejoice.  That’s why I am wearing Rose colored vestments.  But with the violence of the past days, it seems more fitting to wear the color red for martyrs.  However, the church is consistent in her message even though it is sometimes so hard to see or experience: central to the Christian experience, central to the life of being a Catholic, is to be a person of joy.  As we move towards the celebration of Christmas, we are invited to be filled with joy in anticipation of our savior.

 

So how do we do that?  How in the world is it possible to be people of joy in the midst of so much sadness?  How can we possibly be expected to have joy in our hearts when all we want to do is vomit up the vile of evil we sense around us?

 

Now I am going to invite us to consider something that might come across as extreme for many.  You might reject it completely.  You may even think I am out of my mind.  And if that is the case then take my words and throw them as far away from you as possible.  But I only ask that at least give this a chance to enter your heart. 

 

 

 

How are we to experience joy? 

 

The path to joy that is to be the part of every Christian’s life can only be found in recognizing that in our own way, all of us are the gunman up in Connecticut. 

 

 

 

 

We think it easy to point fingers, make excuses and say that these events are horrible and there was some reason that made this person do what he did.  We try to write off this person’s actions claiming that he was insane.  We do whatever we can to avoid the invariable truth that our faith teaches us:  that deep down inside, all of us, in our own way, are the gunman.  All of us are fallen.  All of us are broken.  All of us are weak.  All of us are depraved and fall short of the glory of God.  All of us.

 

Not we may not enter a school and take the lives of so many innocent people.  But we all have violence that is part and parcel of our DNA.  It runs through our blood.  For how many of us ride the bumper of someone who pulls out in front of us on the road.  How many of us have flashed the middle finger at those have cut us off on the highway.  How many of us let the vile message of insidious lyrics so common on the radio touch our ears.  How many of us have threatened in our hearts to hurt another person.  How many of us have physically hurt another, in small or in severe ways.  How many of us have shouted angry words of hatred to those we love the most.  How many of us are infected by the cancer of racism and bigotry—even if in a small way.  How many of us have wished great ill upon another person or been so filled with jealousy or envy we wished another to be removed from our presence.  Or how many of us have been the victims or perpetrators of violence right in our own homes.   Can it possibly be true, that each of us in our own way, has a streak of this gunman running through us?

 

When a shooting occurs like what did in Connecticut, this is the dream that we ultimately lose.  We each look in the mirror before we go to bed at night and we realize, in some quiet recess of our heart, that we too are just as guilty as that shooter.  We too participate in fallen humanity and we too, but for the grace of God, or our upbringing, or certain happenings in life could easily find ourselves thinking of such violence or even perpetrating the same thing.

 

Now nobody wants to think about this.  Nobody wants to be told by their priest or any other person that at the core of our hearts we all have this kind of evil inside of us.  But accepting this reality, accepting that evil flows through our blood just as goodness and beauty and truth—but evil too, is the only way we can come to experience the joy of this Christmas season.

 

 

 

 

Our joy comes in realizing that the very fallenness, brokenness, fragile state of each of our souls is why God chose to come to be with us.  Our joy comes because we realize that no matter how many Connecticut shootings take place, no matter how many acts of violence are perpetrated, no matter how easily in just a few days we all forget about these horrible events and go on with life as normal, our God still has come to save us.    And we are filled with joy because we see how without our savior, without his love and grace, we in our wretchedness would be deserving of so much worse.  We fall on our knees and realize how much we need God in our lives.  We crawl like the woman caught in adultery to his feet and hold on for our dear lives because we know that we are desperately in need of a savior.  Desperately. 

 

That is how we experience joy.  And it hurts.  It is painful.  But it is the only way.  To go deep into ourselves and truly see that which exists—that the gunman is also there.  And then to realize that God loves us even with the gunman inside each of us, and has come to save us, and set us all free.

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living

 

 

The dream is still alive.  Life is still worth living.  Joy is possible.  For our God has come.  Jesus has come to save us all and set us free.