Given at the Mass for victims of the Bastille Day attack in Nice and for peace at Notre Dame de France on the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, 17 July 2016.
I wept when I heard the news on Friday morning of the terrorist atrocity in Nice. When I heard how many children and young people had been crushed, I thought, ‘the Massacre of the Innocents’! I wept. And I am sure Jesus wept too. His visit, of which we hear today, to the house of Martha and Mary, reminds us of how, when they told him their brother Lazarus had died, he wept. God weeps with us.
He came into the world for this, that he might suffer with us. The beautiful story which we hear today of three men appearing to Abraham as he sits at the door of his tent is the story, of course, not of three men but of God himself appearing to Abraham, our father in faith. It is memorably captured in that striking icon by Rublev with which we are all so familiar, of three angelic figures gathered round an altar, three figures whom we know to be the Trinity itself.
In this icon, two figures look to a third: the Father and the Spirit look towards the one who will be sent, Jesus, the Son. They circle round an altar on which stands a cup: the cup of sacrifice; because Jesus’s mission is to be the one who suffers with us.
It was for this he came into the world: not just to live among us, to enjoy life with us, but to be with us in everything, to be with us even in death: to walk with us in the valley of the shadow of death. He suffers with all who were visited by death last Thursday night: all who died; all who were bereaved; all who are injured, maimed, traumatised. He suffers with us.
Isn’t it mysterious that it is to Abraham that we hear today of God appearing: Abraham to whom God promised to give descendants as many as the stars of heaven; Abraham from whom Jews, Moslems and Christians all rightly claim descent? This in itself should serve to make us all the more determined for peace among religions.
As Cardinal Nichols and Moslem leaders stated yesterday, ‘we pray that peace and not violence, compassion and not hate will triumph as the people of Nice try to rebuild their community’. Cardinal Vincent went on to say, ‘May God comfort and strengthen … the people of Nice and of all France, of all faiths and none … and strengthen their resolve to strive ever more for peace in this world.’
Perhaps in these days we can find solace and strength in Our Blessed Mother, Mary, the mother of Jesus. For, as we sing in the Stabat Mater, ‘At the cross her Vigil keeping stands the Queen of Sorrows weeping.’ Mary weeps with us, weeps with France, the Church’s eldest daughter. Here in this Church of Notre Dame de France, let us turn to her more fervently than ever, saying: Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, hail, our Life, our Sweetness, and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. …
Pray for us O Holy Mother of God; pray for those who died; pray for those mourn; pray for the injured; pray for the people of Nice and all French people.
Pray for our world, that the Holy Spirit might lead us into the ways peace and truth and reconciliation between all peoples. Amen.’