BIG  NUMBERS

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 16^th Monday in Ordinary Time  is, “Big Numbers.”

TODAY’S FIRST READING

When I hear the story about the Egyptian Army in today’s first reading about to be drowned, I think of other major mass deaths. Obviously, one major source for picturing this is Charlton Heston in the movie, Ten Commandments as well as in Bible and Bible school pictures.

WHAT HAPPENS?

What happens in heaven when there is a big rush on deaths?

Sometimes I think of that when it comes to major catastrophes.

Sorry, maybe you came to church today - to think thoughts of peace.

Or when it comes to God.  should the question be different,?

If God sent his Son in the fullness of time, way back when, because of our behavior, then does God go “Oh no!” with major murders and killings?

I think of questions like this at times.

So when there are massive deaths, there is an impact on us - and I assume on God.

But ….

BIG NUMBERS

Between 1970-2013  in the United States there is an estimate of 51,888,303 abortions.

Last year I read Immaculee Ilibagiza’s book, Left to Tell: One Woman’s Story of Surviving the Rwandan Genocide. It was a page turner as well as a stomach turner. Families, children, villages, people were machetted to death. The numbers - as in any reporting of genocide - were estimates. In the Rwandan, there were from 500,000 to a million Tutsis  killed in a 100 day period from April 7, 1994 till July 1994.

We have often heard of the Aremenian genocide starting in April of 1915. The Turks killed perhaps 1.5 million Armenians.

We might remember Pol Pot and the Cambodian Genocide. Between 1975 and 1979 the Khmer Rouge are estimated to have killed from 1.5 to 3 million Cambodians.

Then from time to time we read or hear about the Nazi holocaust against the Jews - 6 million and so many others killed.

In the last century, we hear that Stalin and the Soviets, Mao and the Chinese communists,  killed up to 100 million people.

Then there are lists of Salvadorans, Guatamalians, and lots of other people killed in wars and genocide and on and on and on.

Big numbers ….

OUR REACTION

What is our reaction to such horror stories?

We hear in the psalms the refrain, “The Lord hears the cries of the poor.”

I respond to God, “It’s not enough to just hear the cries of the poor, what are you doing about helping them?” 

I know we’re supposed to do our part and more - but God, what about you?

Didn’t the police in Florida last week want to arrest some teenagers for filming a drowning man and doing nothing - except to laugh?

I don’t know about you - but I wonder about God - and all this.

OUR THOUGHTS

I know my thoughts and feelings - at least some thoughts and feelings - when I walked through the Holocaust museum in both Jerusalem and Washington D.D. I see that book by Immaculee Ilibagiza’s, Left to Tell: One Woman’s Story of Surviving the Rwandan Genocide. I still feel the horror.

I remember the nausea I felt Thanksgiving 1978 when the TV news reports showed the hundreds of bodies that Jim Jones asked to take the Non-Kool-Aid poison and die.

I know we’re all going to die, somehow, but with horror, that’s horrible.

I realize that death is part of life. I realize life would not be life, if there wasn’t death. Death forces us to ponder meaning, our existence, our time line. Death gets us to care for the dying. We can’t imagine a world with everyone who ever lived, never dying. Talk about geography, space, health care centers, etc. etc. etc. No….

We learn life from death. It gives us plenty of thoughts.

We know people have free will and can do crazy things like kill other people.

As to the question of God intervening, I have my questions. I have my major answer, “I don’t know.”

I have heard a dozen sermons where a priest tells the story of the man in the flood. He prays and prays to be saved. A row boat comes, but he won’t get on it. A helicopter hovers over his house with a ladder, but he won’t get on the ladder. He keeps praying till he dies. Then when he sees God, he asks, “Why did you let me drown?” And God says, “I sent you a rowboat and  I sent you a helicopter, but you refused my help.”

It’s a fine story, but there were few helicopters over the crowds in Rwanda or Auscwitz. How does all this work.

I love the saying, “Pray for potatoes, but pick up a shovel.”

I’m sure millions of people escaped massacres - but billions didn’t.

How does all this work?

Single deaths and big numbers of dead - trigger these life thoughts and prayers.