Triumphing Over Tragedy

The shoot­ings at Vir­ginia Tech are another reminder of the sad real­ity that, within our world, tragedy exists, and will likely always exist. Within such tragedies, we nat­u­rally search for answers to ques­tions such as: What moti­vated the killer? and, Could it have been avoided? These are wor­thy ques­tions to ask, and in pur­su­ing the answers we can learn things that may help pre­vent sim­i­lar tragedies in the future. How­ever, these answers will come slowly and only through a care­ful and detailed eval­u­a­tion.
We are still try­ing to under­stand the events of April 17, when the shooter, a loner named Seung-​​Hiu Cho, age 23, killed two stu­dents, then hours later laid siege to stu­dents and fac­ulty inside Vir­ginia Tech’s engi­neer­ing build­ing, killing 30 more peo­ple and finally turn­ing the gun on himself.

Room for Opti­mism?
Amer­i­cans, it has been pointed out, are deeply opti­mistic, to the point of usu­ally believ­ing that every prob­lem has a solu­tion. In this case, as Legionary Father Jonathan Mor­ris put it recently on his Fox News blog, we’ll be hear­ing “a national con­ver­sa­tion about school secu­rity, gun laws, psy­chi­atric med­i­cine and immi­gra­tion pol­icy” all around us. Politi­cians will promise leg­is­la­tion to keep stu­dents safer, uni­ver­si­ties will revise their fresh­man ori­en­ta­tion pro­grams, and police forces will improve new first-​​response strate­gies.
Will any of these get to the heart of the prob­lem? “I don’t think so,” Father Mor­ris states, “because in this case, the heart of the prob­lem is the human heart itself.”

The Ori­gin of Evil
We know that at the begin­ning of his­tory, the human heart was purely good. God had cre­ated men and women in his image, eager to love one another just as God loves, and to use their intel­li­gence and cre­ativ­ity to build up a good soci­ety.
Orig­i­nal sin dis­rupted that har­mony. It broke down the friend­ship between God and the human fam­ily, and it allowed evil, self­ish­ness, and vio­lence to come into the human heart. Ever since then, the human heart has been a bat­tle­ground between good and evil. In sit­u­a­tions like the Vir­ginia Tech mas­sacre, we see how deeply evil ten­den­cies can affect the human heart, and how much dam­age they can cause.

The Mys­tery of Good and Evil
But the human heart is not with­out hope, because God con­tin­ues to love man. Although mankind sinned, God did not aban­don him. God is faith­ful in the gift of his good­ness. He sent his son, Jesus Christ, to redeem man and help man live the full­ness of his call­ing. He con­tin­ues to guide us toward what is good, and to give us the strength to endure and even to over­come evil.
In fact, good is always pri­mary; evil is only sec­ondary. Good­ness is like a healthy body, and evil is like a virus that needs a healthy body to live on, but weak­ens that body.
Some­times we fall into the mis­take of think­ing that the bat­tle between good and evil is a bat­tle between equals. But that’s not the case. Our Catholic faith teaches us that good is much, much more pow­er­ful than evil. We don’t under­stand it com­pletely (which is why the Cat­e­chism calls it a mys­tery), but we do know that good will always win the end. God has promised this to us many times in Scrip­ture, and he has guar­an­teed it with Christ’s res­ur­rec­tion.
Bring­ing Good Out of Evil
We have the proof even in this ter­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion. Con­sider what hap­pened to Zack Petkewicz on the morn­ing of April 17. The senior engi­neer­ing major told CNN that at first he was frozen with fear upon hear­ing gun­shots and scream­ing in the hall­way of the build­ing. “And then I just real­ized you have got to do some­thing.”
Petkewicz jumped up and led two other stu­dents in hold­ing a table against the class­room door, as Cho shot holes through the door try­ing to force his way in. The three stu­dents held their posi­tion, even as bul­lets passed inches from their bod­ies. Even­tu­ally, Cho gave up try­ing to enter the class­room and these stu­dents sur­vived. In the face of this evil, Petkewicz and his com­pan­ions found the courage to resist in hopes of sav­ing others.

Even more dra­matic was the self-​​sacrificial actions of the Jew­ish math pro­fes­sor Liviu Librescu, a man who had already sur­vived the Nazi Holo­caust before com­ing to the United States. Before the gun­man could enter his class­room, Librescu stood block­ing the door­way, allow­ing his stu­dents just enough time to open the win­dows and escape to safety. All sur­vived. Trag­i­cally, Librescu was shot and killed.
With such exam­ples, we might also ask a ques­tion rarely posed amidst tragedy: that is, how we can under­stand the good actions peo­ple do in this world? Heroic actions (and even the nor­mal, small acts of kind­ness that we encounter each day) are in them­selves signs that good will ulti­mately tri­umph, as our faith teaches us. They are one of the rea­sons why the Vir­ginia Tech mas­sacre is not a mean­ing­less event.
This event should also remind us that we have been given a great gift in the Church: the saints. These are men and women from all times and places who over­came evil with good, some­times even at the cost of their lives. In their sac­ri­fices they resem­ble Jesus in his tri­umph over evil and death.

How Do We Move On?
Then how do we go on with our lives after such an occur­rence?
First, we might remind our­selves to be more aware of the indi­vid­u­als around us and the need­less suf­fer­ing that many peo­ple undergo silently. Sev­eral peo­ple tried to reach out to Cho but every­one gave up. Maybe one more try would have made a difference.

The Power of For­give­ness
Sec­ond, we should also think about the impor­tance of for­give­ness in these cases. Even though anger and bit­ter­ness is nat­ural in these cases, there can be no true heal­ing with­out for­give­ness. If for­give­ness is required, then receiv­ing that grace is the first step to mov­ing on and actu­ally enables us to move on. The beauty and power of for­give­ness is already show­ing itself on the Vir­ginia Tech cam­pus, where stu­dents have already put up impromptu memo­ri­als, includ­ing one for Cho.

Gain­ing Strength for the Future
Third, reflect­ing on these events can help bol­ster the virtue of for­ti­tude. Most of us will not per­son­ally expe­ri­ence tragedies of this scale, but all of us will encounter some suf­fer­ing and pain in life. Christ reminds us that we can be vic­to­ri­ous over dif­fi­cul­ties and evil when he says, “In the world you will have trou­ble, but be brave: I have con­quered the world” (John 16:33). Keep­ing this in mind will strengthen us in the midst of life’s tri­als, and enable us to help oth­ers in theirs.
If we expe­ri­ence a tragedy, then we should remem­ber to watch for the good that comes with it, rather than focus­ing only on our pain. Sim­i­larly, numer­ous Vir­ginia Tech stu­dents expressed the desire “not to let the dark­ness win.”

Doing Good and Being Grate­ful
Fourth, this event has reminded us that every one of us is capa­ble of both good and evil. There­fore, we should take advan­tage of this moment to renew our com­mit­ment to doing good. Christ has given us faith, grace, and hope. Every day, we have oppor­tu­ni­ties to use these gifts to build up those around us. Just as Cho’s evil actions affected many peo­ple in a tragic way, so can our good actions each day affect those around us in a pos­i­tive way.

Finally, we should renew our sense of grat­i­tude for the sim­ple things in our lives, espe­cially our fam­i­lies and our friends. As one Vir­ginia Tech stu­dent put it, “All the things you took for granted, they aren’t for granted.”
The Vir­ginia Tech tragedy has a mean­ing for us if we will accept it: that while evil strug­gles with good every­where in this life, through God’s grace, good will always triumph.