As part of a Salesian tradition, one of the directors gives a ‘goodnight’ talk every evening. It was started by St. John Bosco and the thought was to give his boys something good and beneficial to their soul to think about as they went to bed.
Tonight, Fr. D came out with a necklace that he showed us. On the end of the necklace was a syringe. He told us the story of how he has a friend who works in the prison system down in Texas, and that after an injection, the bury the needle with the body, but they don’t really care what happens to the syringe, so his friend sent it to him thinking he could use it in a homily. Fr. D said that instead of using it, he decided he would wear it.
At this point, with plenty of reactions, he was quick to say that he really just bought the syringe at CVS and doesn’t really have a friend in the prison system in Texas. His point though was clear. That syringe is an instrument of death for our lawbreakers today. The cross was the Romans instrument of death. Do we have the same reaction towards both necklaces, the syringe and the cross? People have forgotten what the cross represents. It represents a painful death, our biggest fears, and yet Christ conquered that death, that fear. That is a challenge today, to not see the cross as merely a fashionable piece of jewelry, but rather the reason we face our fears.
