I have this cousin, Tim, who is a pretty good guy today. But when Tim was little, and when we were all growing up, Tim was one of those kids who was always blaming things that went wrong on other people, other things, or other events. Have you ever met anybody like that? If there was a can of paint spilt all over the patio floor, it was never Tim’s fault, despite the fact that he had paint all over his shoes. Tim said, “It must have fallen from Skylab”. He actually coughed that one up one day. When someone had drunk the rest of the bottle of my uncle’s wine, Tim said, “It must have been the dog.” But funny thing was that the dog wasn’t sick, but my cousin Tim was. It was always somebody else’s fault with Tim. So when Tim was throwing a football around inside my grandmother’s house when we were younger, and the Infant of Prague statue got knocked off the shelf, it must have been a miracle that the statue jumped all by itself, smashing itself on the floor. I, of course, being the family defender of the Catholic Faith, immediately began defending the statue of the Child Jesus, by reminding all of my younger cousins that Jesus, not even a statue of Him, would ever commit suicide. Finally, after lots of Catholic guilt, and finding the football, we got Tim to confess. I told him that it wasn’t a suicide, but that he had MURDERED the Infant of Prague and would burn in Hell for billions of years unless he confessed. I not only made Tim confess, but I also made him cry. Come to think of it, I think that was the first time I heard a Confession.

Today we all know people like this. In fact, this finger-pointing and our own self-absolution have become hallmarks of our society. Nobody wants to take responsibility, but everybody wants somebody to be responsible. So when bad things happen, it has to be somebody’s fault. Somebody has to be to blame. These are perfect readings for all of us this week. In Spain, right now they are still trying to figure out who planted the bombs on those trains that killed over 200 people this past week. Who can we blame? Who can we punish? In our own country, two and half years later, we’re still trying to answer those same questions about September 11 th. We want answers. We want somebody to explain to us how 9/11 happened. In a very personal way for all of us here at St. Maria Goretti, we want some answers about Karl and all of the events of this past week right here in Indiana. These readings are right on the mark for us then. The Gospel is talking about two tragedies of Jesus’ time. First, Pilate has several Galileans killed, and their blood mixed with their sacrifices. They come to tell Jesus about this while He is on His way to Jerusalem to die. And it is Jesus Himself who reminds them of a second tragedy when the tower at Siloam fell and killed eighteen people. And the basic question everybody is asking is “Why?” “Why did these things happen?” Was it because of their sins? We’re they being punished?

We know why they were asking this. They were asking this because we are used to a cause and effect world. If you do A, then B will follow. If you trip and fall, you’ll bruise your knees. If you leave water outside in subzero weather, it is going to freeze. If you leave iron outside in the rain, it is going to rust. But in the case of bad things happening to people, Jesus says it’s not so. Great evil does not necessarily produce great misfortune. And conversely, we also know that great goodness does not necessarily produce great fortune. And if we’re honest, hasn’t each one of us sinned before in thought, word, or in deed, and no one found out about it? Nor were we punished? And so our experience answers part of the question for us. The rain falls on the guilty and the not guilty. And the sun shines on innocent and the not-so innocent.

While revealing to us His Father is not a vengeful God, Jesus is reminding us that nobody is free from guilt. Twice in the Gospel today He reminds us that all of us need to repent. I think that a lot of us hear that and we think to ourselves “Well, I’ve already done that.” Repenting is never over. We are never done repenting. To truly repent, we must be re-born daily! It is on-going. Our blood needs recycling constantly. Our lungs are in constant need of oxygen. Our skin is constantly regenerating itself. We know our bodies do it, why do we think that our souls don’t also need to be constantly cleaned up? You can win the gold medal in the marathon at the Summer Olympics, and if you’re not careful, ten years later you can be a fat slob. A TWA Boeing 747 can fly hundreds of thousand of miles safely, but that doesn’t mean that an engineer isn’t going to check it out before its next mile. You can breathe well for thirty-four years, but that’s no guarantee that you are going to wake up breathing on the first morning of your thirty-fifth year. We need to constantly be reforming our lives now. We need to keep repenting every day.

Good things are still going to happen to bad people. And we surely know that bad things are going to continue to happen to good people. Jesus is saying that to get caught up in this, is a mistake. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t last. God lasts. And because of that, let us worry about repenting and being ready, more than we worry about why or who’s to blame, or any of our fears.

May God bless us: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit… AMEN!!!