His Eminence Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic
Archbishop Emeritus of Toronto
Biography :: Letters, Homilies, Statements :: Articles

Red Mass Homily
+ Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic - September 19, 2002

Recently we commemorated the 9/11 event, in U.S., Canada, Europe. The event has been decked out in an apocalyptic garb: the world is thought to have changed, nothing will ever be quite the same again. Yet Europe has had its share of destruction and massacres. We do not commemorate Dresden with its 100,000 deaths in one February day in 1945, or Hiroshima, or heaps of corpses in outlying woods and caves all over Eastern and Central Europe, murdered by the Communists, or Srebrenica, more recently, with its 7000 dead men. Why are they not thought to have changed the world?

One reason: it happened on a continent which imagined itself to be immune. Another: TV - the two towers collapsed in our living rooms. But there may be a deeper reason: 9/11 has pricked the bubble of our optimistic capitalism, superficial but very much ours.

We want to feel good about ourselves, to be upbeat, progressive, free. We need fear communism no longer, Christian hell has been eviscerated for many. God is more or less dead along with His commands, men can marry men and women women; soon we shall overcome cancer. Since the implosion of the Soviet Union capitalism rules supreme. We have come to the end of history according to Francis Fukuyama: the ultimate social system, that of democratic capitalism, is there for all to see, admire, and imitate.

9/11, however, has reminded us of our vulnerability, of our limits, of our suffering.

The questions raised by the young people during the catecheses of WYD were not those raised by the media, viz., sex-abuse, ordination of women, priestly celibacy. Rather, they asked about how to harmonize human suffering with God=s goodness and love, and about genetic engineering. They reminded me of Ivan Karamazov, saying to his believing brother Alyosha, Explain to me the suffering of animals and children, and I will believe in God.

I told them that Jesus is our only answer. He suffered and died, he feared and wept. He was a real human being, fully human; he was no mythic hero, insensitive and contemptuous of suffering and death. He overcomes suffering, not by avoiding or not feeling it, but by hollowing out suffering and death from inside as it were.

Thus he was compassionate.

We are asked to carry one another=s burden. All we seem to be able to do sometimes is to carry our own; further we must not become emotionally involved so as to lose our objectivity. But we must not close our eyes to the suffering surrounding us, the suffering of the homeless, of neglected, lonely children, AIDS orphans in Africa, suffering of divorcing spouses, suffering of the babies being aborted - no globs of impersonal flesh; how, in fact, can we imagine living flesh not to suffer most intensely when its life is being gouged out?

9/11 has reminded us of our true measure and proportion, of our vulnerability and the reality of suffering.