A huge crowd gathered in Nottingham city centre on Thursday, June 15. What
was the event? Had Forest won the cup? On a closer look, everyone was
sombre, silent and thoughtful. They had come to share the grief of three families
who had each lost a member in a seemingly senseless murder spree on Tuesday
morning. Two were students and the third was a retired caretaker.
Civic representatives, spokespeople for the police, the students’ university and
the different faiths of the city were all given three minutes to express their
feelings and at the stroke of six there was a moment of silence. The camaras
roved over the people, each one lost in their own thoughts. The city was in
shock.
As each speaker delivered their brief message – the most powerful one came
from the Muslim Iman – it struck me how everyone had come together in shared
grief. The gathering went beyond party, faith, class; it was an event of humanity
at one for a moment. It was not a political event, a religious event or a sporting
celebration. All the barriers that divide us were down.
Watching from 6,000 miles away, I was much moved by the different faces;
young, middle aged, old. All were looking straight ahead, nominally at the
speaker, but actually probing deep inside, wondering how this was possible.
Were there any answers? The absolute stillness when the clock struck six was
like the bending of the knee at the moment on Good Friday when Jesus dies.
But let me not reduce it to a religious event as though I want to claim it as an
anonymous expression of my own beliefs. Rather it was like a post-religious
visceral experience of numbness. Our society has come to this: where a man can
wantonly stab three people, steal a car and run into three more. How is this
possible?
As the pictures died on the screen, I found myself encouraged by the unity
shown by the people of Nottingham; by their generous attendance to the grief of
the families, by their silent witness to the fact that when one is hurt, all are hurt
and by the kindness that welled up in their hearts setting off ripples in the
community and around the world in all those who shared their sorrow.
The deaths in Nottingham, for all their bitter grief, brought us all together a little
for a while. Do they also sow seeds for a new, more compassionate, world,
coming to birth?
18 June 2023 Sunday 11A Ex 19:2-6 Rom 5:6-11 Mt 9:36-10:8
By Fr David Harold-Barry SJ
English