{"id":2427,"date":"2018-02-15T09:02:21","date_gmt":"2018-02-15T14:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/?p=2427"},"modified":"2018-02-15T09:02:21","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T14:02:21","slug":"another-school-shooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/another-school-shooting\/","title":{"rendered":"Another School Shooting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Today’s first reading<\/a> begins “Moses said to the people:\u00a0“Today I have set before you\u00a0life and prosperity, death and doom<\/em>.”\u00a0 We each have a choice.\u00a0 We can choose “life and prosperity<\/em>” or “death and gloom<\/em>“.\u00a0 We would think everyone would want to choose life, life with God, but we see people make bad choices.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, (February 14, 2016, which happened to be Ash Wednesday), 19 year old Nikolas Cruz went into Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 people with another 14 injured with 5 of them having life-threatening injuries.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We are bewildered by such acts.\u00a0 Why would someone do such a thing?\u00a0 We can’t make sense of it.\u00a0 That’s because it doesn’t make sense.<\/p>\n

Fellow students have since talked about how he was troubled and how they kept their distance from him.\u00a0 Did anyone do anything about his behavior?\u00a0 He had been expelled from the school for fighting.<\/p>\n

So, Nikolas, and I use his name deliberately here for he is a person, had a bad history but before we rush to condemn him and his acts, while nothing excuses what he did, we need to think about him as a person.\u00a0 In reading the news reports this morning, his mother just died in November and I read someplace that his father died a few years ago.\u00a0 His “bad history” started before his mother’s death (I don’t know when his father died in relation to his behavior) but could his own suffering in his mother’s death been what put him over the top?\u00a0 It would not excuse what he did yesterday but it does remind us that he too is a child of God.<\/p>\n

So, we need to pray for all involved.\u00a0 We pray for those killed and their families.\u00a0 We pray for those injured, most especially those with life-threatening injuries, and their families.\u00a0 We pray for all the school students, staff, families, and the community.\u00a0 We pray for all the emergency responders.\u00a0 Let us also pray that, in this season Lent leading us to the Cross, Nikolas repent of his sins and turn his heart to God.<\/p>\n

Peace,<\/p>\n

Fr. Jeff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s first reading begins “Moses said to the people:\u00a0“Today I have set before you\u00a0life and prosperity, death and doom.”\u00a0 We each have a choice.\u00a0 We can choose “life and prosperity” or “death and gloom“.\u00a0 We would think everyone would want to choose life, life with God, but we see people make bad choices. Yesterday, (February …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Another School Shooting’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[82,10],"tags":[406,405],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMTPk-D9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2429,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2427\/revisions\/2429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}