"What will separate us from the love of Christ?"

In his book, "They Shall Be Comforted", Fr. Joseph Nolan of Boston College writes about a man named Jerry Sittser, who lost his wife, mother and daughter in a horrible car accident.

I thought of Jerry as I prepared for this homily, because I think he's one of those rare people who has come to understand deeply the words of St. Paul in today's second reading from Romans 8: "What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril or the sword? No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us."

After he lost these three people who were so dear to him, Jerry received many letters of condolence and support from concerned friends and loved ones. Often these letters contained the idea that what happened to him was grossly unfair and horribly unjust. Jerry struggled with this idea for sometime, but he finally came to this conclusion:

"Over time I began to be bothered by the assumption that I had a right to complete fairness. Granted, I did not deserve to lose three members of my family. But then again, I am not sure I deserved to have them in the first place. . . . Perhaps I did not deserve their deaths; but I did not deserve their presence in my life, either. On the face of it, living in a perfectly fair world appeals to me. But deeper reflection makes me wonder. In such a world I might never experience tragedy; but neither would I experience grace, especially the grace God gave me in the form of three wonderful people whom I lost. . . . So, God spare us a lifetime of fairness! To live in a world with grace is better by far than to live in a world with absolute fairness. A fair world might make things nice for us, but only as nice as we are. We might get what we deserve, but I wonder how much that is and whether or not we would really be satisfied. A world with grace will give us more than we deserve. It will give us life, even in our suffering."