Vile actions wound us all

   This issue of the West River Catholic is being mailed on Tuesday, April 21. For the majority of people the date has little significance. But for others it has a great significance. On this day the Jewish Community around the world observes Yom HaShoah. That is the Day of Remembrance for the Holocaust. This is special time to recall again the atrocities of the Nazis regime in seeking to eliminate a whole people. To understand the horrors we humans are able to inflict on one another when we submit to Satan’s lies and not Our Lord’s truths. This was startlingly brought home to me as, the week before Holy Week, I watched the DVD “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.” A powerful telling of the truth about evil.

    Unfortunately for us, we recently saw the insidiousness of this evil in our own society. None of us are naive enough to believe there is no prejudice among us. And yet the stark reminder of this was uncovered in the incidents in Rapid City when Native American youths and adults were subject to harassment with urine being tossed on them and pellets being fired at them from passing cars containing white youth. Such actions show us that the same seeds of evil that sought the elimination of the Jewish people can be found in racial harassment here or anywhere.

    What is the solution? Part of my Lenten reading was the excellent book “Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust” by Immaculée Ilibagiza who for three months, with six other women, hid in a bathroom because they were of the Tutsi tribe and the Hutus on a blind rampage sought the elimination of all these Tutsi “cockroaches” from Rwanda.

    After telling the story of the Rwandan genocide the author ends with these words, “for what happened in Rwanda happened to us all – humanity was wounded by the genocide. (But) the love of a single heart can make a world of difference.”
Perhaps this Easter season we can resolve that we will allow the power of the love of our individual hearts to stand against racial harassment and any of similar actions that would hurt anyone of a different race or color.

    The vile action of the youth in Rapid City wounds us all. The memory of the genocide in Rwanda affects us all. The empty ovens of Auschwitz challenge us all to offer “the love of a single heart” upholding always the dignity of each and every human being. May God give us the grace and courage to carry this out!