Our hearts and minds have been focused throughout this week on the tragedy in New York, a tragedy that affects, in so many ways, the life of everyone on this planet.

We grieve with the families, friends and colleagues of those who died in those still ongoing events. (I would like to add that among those on one of the planes that struck the towers of the World Trade Centre was a Holy Cross Father, Frank Grogan. Also Frank Ferris, a classmate from my graduating class at University, was killed as the towers collapsed. We are all affected.) In whatever way we can we try to express our solidarity the people of the United States as well as those among our own colleagues and family members who have suffered loss We read the stories and watch the images trying to make some sense of the incomprehensible evil at work here.

The opening words of the Book of Lamentations come to mind: "Oh, how lonely she sits, the city once thronged with people, as if suddenly widowed. Though once great among the nations, she, the princess among provinces, is now reduced...."

We turn to God for support, for strength, for light, for consolation. This is a deep testing of our faith. We put the souls of those who have died in God’s loving hands and yet, we also stand in awe and wonder at what evil can do. We are reduced to a pregnant silence..

We weep and mourn those who have been loss; we also have to deal with the fear generated by these events. Violence has suddenly come very close to home. As never before we need to hear the voice of God in Jesus who says, "Do not be afraid; I am with you always." Beyond the first stage of horror and grief, we now have to begin to deal with the anger, even rage that fear can generate. This, in particular, now deserves our most careful attention.

There have been many reports in the media urging us not to give reign to feelings of retribution, revenge, hatred. We know how possible this is; we can feel it in our own bones. We struggle with it. As the days have passed and the stories about how the attack happened have surfaced, we need to remind ourselves and one another, over and over again, that this is not, absolutely is not, an expression of Muslim religion or of Arabic or Middle East people. We need in fact to extend our solidarity – and our compassion as well – to those people in our own city and neighborhoods who are right now living in fear that the general population will turn against them. My office is in a building where many Muslims work. They have been noticeably absent this week. This can only be from fear – a somewhat justified fear. We need to rally round them; let them know that we appreciate what they are going through and that we stand with them in this terrible moment.

We also can be experiencing fear of the larger political consequences of what happened on September 11. There has been talk of war, of military retribution against countries with some of the poorest population on this earth. Following the Day of Mourning on Friday there are clear indications that military attacks are being prepared against certain countries. Here, as Christians, we have a large responsibility. We pray that cooler heads prevail and that the responses to terrorism be effective in ways that do not exacerbate the situation or fall heavily on the poorest of the poor. May our political and military leaders find ways to deal effectively with those responsible for the tragedy of last Tuesday within the context of international law. No State abandons the rule of law, without engendering chaos. There is no moral or legal justification for attacks against entire populations. War is not the answer; it is the problem !

Today’s Gospel speaks in vivid images of God’s longing to find those who are lost. God’s willingness to go more than half way to find the lost. Jesus, who speaks by means of these parables of the compassion of God, is himself, in his own life, the full revelation of God’s compassion.

Perhaps never has the challenge of the call to find a way to restoring right relation been so dramatic and so urgent. As Christians we have a particularly significant role to play at this point in living the compassion that underlies all world religions.

There is a language already creeping into our public discourse that attempts to identify "the enemy" and to let loose on them the full extent of our collective rage. However, beyond those directly responsible for the terrorist attack, whom we need to identify and submit to the rule of law, we cannot now ignore those many people across the world who feel deeply (for whatever reason – or none) that they have been "trespassed against" by the western world. To commit ourselves to a process of reconciliation in this context requires enormous courage. It requires an openness to conversion of heart and life on all sides beginning with our own.

May God come to our world today, lost as we are, and may we, collectively and individually, help each other be open to the ways in which the Spirit works among us, to help each other along this dark path together.

Days before the tragedy in New York I had been preparing what I might say today. Basically, I had to throw away all that. Yet the underlying question I wanted to ask remains and I offer it to you today: How might I live out God’s compassion in our times and in a meaningful way? What might I do with my life that will create a change in the "normal way of doing business, that might be about a compassionate way of living on this earth?