Skip to content
The Catholic Leader
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
The Catholic Leader
No Result
View All Result
Home Life Faith Spirituality

Overcome evil with good

byStaff writers
17 July 2005 - Updated on 26 March 2021
Reading Time: 3 mins read
AA
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

THE attacks on London yesterday have brought home to us, as never before, the horror of September 11, Madrid and Bali.

It is easier to feel the agony of those we work with and live next door to. But it is easier, too, to feel anger and disgust at those who perpetrate evil.

These are days when we must be attentive to our reactions.

We rightly feel pain, horror, confusion and anxiety. Evil has erupted at the heart of our city, at a moment when we are most vulnerable – when we are innocently going about our daily tasks.

The knowledge that vulnerability and innocence can be exploited by evil can lead us to wish to be invulnerable.

It can lead us to anger and vengeance. It can lead us to scapegoat entire sectors of the population.

And that is exactly what yesterday’s acts were designed to bring about.

But it is precisely when we are confronted with evil that we must cling with greater determination to what is good. We must be compassionate and above all patient, because it is not we, but God, who is in charge of history.

St Paul said “Do not be overcome by evil: but overcome evil with good” (Romans XII, 21).

The law of history is not on the side of the terrorists. The past is littered with the burned-out husks of attempts at bringing about political change through violence.

Related Stories

Bishops call out racism, gun violence after U.S. shooting

Parishes unite for Logan deanery family festival this Sunday

Lives of the saints – St Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks

Violence, as we know, breeds violence, and violence ultimately destroys itself. If we stand firm, if we believe in peace, then terror will not succeed; it will exhaust itself in time.

Yesterday brought havoc and tragedy and pain to the streets of London. But evil also summons forth good.

Almost as soon as the wounds appeared in the heart of our capital there was healing — in the efficiency and care shown by the emergency services, in the calm response of London’s commuters, in the way that Londoners put their arms around each other, and nursed each other.

In these countless small acts, undramatic acts, the terror was sucked out of terrorism.

God was there, in the healing, in the compassion, in the patience.

God may be mocked by acts of hate, but he is never defeated or reduced.

God was there, among us, long before the terrorists struck; God was there, yesterday, tending to the wounded, and mourning the dead; God is here today, long after the terrorists have fled.

And because God was there, holding us, as always, in his hands, cradling us, we showed we could not be corroded.

We showed that we are made according to God’s design, and that no amount of terror, however suddenly and brutally it strikes, can wipe that away.

The people who carried out these monstrous acts with chilling efficiency and forethought are believed to have acted in the name of religion. If so, it is not a religion recognisable to the religious people of this world.

Who is their god? It is not the God who revealed himself to Moses and Jacob; nor the God who, in Jesus Christ, walked this earth and died and rose to save humanity; nor the God worshipped by the Muslim people, who is a God Almighty and Merciful.

Who is the god of the men of hate? It is a false god; one projected from the darkest recesses of the human heart.

When Pope John Paul II brought together the world’s religious leaders to pray for peace in Assisi in 1986, and then again in 2002, he wanted to send a message to the world that the name of religion is peace, that God is blasphemed by war and violence.

That message was made by bishops and cardinals and patriarchs, and by rabbis and imams and sadhus. The name of God is peace.

Today I was happy to meet the leaders of other faiths here in Britain to proclaim our abhorrence of the events of yesterday. But even more to assert our solidarity together for the common good. And to work together for reconciliation and peace.

Jesus exhorts us that our virtue must go deeper than the men of violence.

In many ways it is a difficult message for us to hear on such a day, when we recall the great loss of life and the terrible injuries of those who suffer.

Yet we know that it is also true that God can bring forth good from suffering. Jesus’s triumphing over the cross shows us so.

We look forward to that time when all violence is done away with through the restoration of the peace and reconciliation which only God can give.

So tonight we pray for the repose of the souls of those who died so tragically and those who have been injured, some dreadfully, and their families and their friends.


This is an edited text of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor’s homily at a Mass in Westminster Cathedral, the day after the London bombings.

ShareTweet
Previous Post

WAR OF THE WORLDS – Be afraid of the aliens

Next Post

Fine tuning cancer fight

Staff writers

Related Posts

Bishops call out racism, gun violence after U.S. shooting
World

Bishops call out racism, gun violence after U.S. shooting

17 May 2022
Parishes unite for Logan deanery family festival this Sunday
QLD

Parishes unite for Logan deanery family festival this Sunday

17 May 2022
Lives of the saints – St Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks
Faith

Lives of the saints – St Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks

17 May 2022
Next Post

Fine tuning cancer fight

Flaws in detention exposed

Faiths unite against terror

Popular News

  • Here are the stories of 10 new saints being canonised this Sunday

    Here are the stories of 10 new saints being canonised this Sunday

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Angel’s Kitchen serves hot meals to the hungry in Southport

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI turned 95 on a ‘very happy’ day

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Parishes unite for Logan deanery family festival this Sunday

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Lives of the saints – St Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
Search our job finder
No Result
View All Result

Latest News

Bishops call out racism, gun violence after U.S. shooting
World

Bishops call out racism, gun violence after U.S. shooting

by CNS
17 May 2022
0

SEVERAL U.S. Catholic bishops spoken out against racism and gun violence after a mass shooting in Buffalo,...

Parishes unite for Logan deanery family festival this Sunday

Parishes unite for Logan deanery family festival this Sunday

17 May 2022
Lives of the saints – St Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks

Lives of the saints – St Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks

17 May 2022
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI turned 95 on a ‘very happy’ day

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI turned 95 on a ‘very happy’ day

17 May 2022
Cleanup begins after floodwaters swamp South East Queensland again

Cleanup begins after floodwaters swamp South East Queensland again

16 May 2022

Never miss a story. Sign up to the Weekly Round-Up
eNewsletter now to receive headlines directly in your email.

Sign up to eNews
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Jobs
  • Subscribe

The Catholic Leader is an Australian award-winning Catholic newspaper that has been published by the Archdiocese of Brisbane since 1929. Our journalism seeks to provide a full, accurate and balanced Catholic perspective of local, national and international news while upholding the dignity of the human person.

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader
Accessibility Information | Privacy Policy | Archdiocese of Brisbane

The Catholic Leader acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the First Peoples of this country and especially acknowledge the traditional owners on whose lands we live and work throughout the Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader

0
    0
    Your Cart
    Your cart is emptyChoose another Subscription
    Continue Shopping