The spring air was delicious when I left the grocery store yesterday, and I couldn’t resist just sitting in the car with the windows down for a minute feeling the breeze on my face. It took me a minute to focus my eyes on the large flag flapping gently on the flagpole of the restaurant in front of me and it took a minute for me to figure out what was incongruous. The flag was at half-mast. I was surprised. “Who died?” I said to no one in particular. And then, of course, it came to me.

It seemed impossible on a light, bright spring day to believe that a college student had killed 32 people, wounded 27 (or maybe more? the news reports still vary on this) and then committed suicide. The facts are still hazy, but I prefer them that way right now. I’m sure in time I won’t be able to avoid knowing more about this. I’ll hear the attempts to understand something that will help, the hindsight about what the university or our society should have done different. And there will be totally hamfisted attempts coming along shortly to tie in one 20-year-old South Korean student’s massacre with some great national debate. They’ll come from the center, the right and the left. Some will have some points nearer the truth. Some will barely be relevant.

There will be lawsuits. There will be impassioned pleas for more legislation. There will be lots and lots of talk about how to watch for warning signs and the needs for tighter security. We’ll all gab about this until we no longer care, and when we’ve reached the point where we believe we’ve taken some steps, reached some conclusions, learned some lesson, the society will start to go back to business again and we’ll be able to file it away with all the other unconscionable acts we learn of during our lifetimes. “The thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to,” as Hamlet put it.

But there’s talk that we don’t have, mostly about how completely incapable we really are of preventing these things from happening. We don’t talk about the fact that we really aren’t safe, and that no litigation or fresh round of laws can change that.

Metropolitan Philip issued a statement yesterday. It was short and didn’t attempt complicated language about how we need to try to feel better or see a silver lining. Here it is in its entirety for those that didn’t see it:

Beloved in Christ:

Christ is risen!

It is with deep pain that I watched the tragic events unfold on one of our college campuses. This could have been any campus and any one of our many college students. As such, I have no doubt that our own college children and parents were affected by yesterday’s events even more than the rest of us. What should be places of tranquility and peace have too often become places of tragedy. Places where parents should be able to send their teens to become educated adults and where children go to expand their minds and gain knowledge that will enable them to be productive members of society must be safe and free of evil and destruction of all kinds. The hopelessness of the man who perpetrated these senseless killings can only reinforce the need of our clergy and lay leaders to instill in our faithful, and especially in our youth, the need for strong, traditional families as well as values that are rooted in Christ and the Church.

On behalf of my brother bishops and all the clergy and faithful of our Archdiocese, we express our deepest sympathy to the families of those who were murdered or injured yesterday. In addition, we pray that our risen Lord Jesus Christ, who destroyed death, will grant the families and the entire country the peace and hope that only the empty tomb can provide.

In the Risen Lord,

+Metropolitan PHILIP
Archbishop of New York and Metropolitan of all North America

Perhaps everyone wants to hear a lot of words right now, but few words are better if they are direct. The Christian response to these tragedies doesn’t please us or offer us false hope based on man-made solutions, but it does save us in the way that only the truth can. There is evil in the world. This isn’t a game we play or happy thoughts we indulge in — the earth is a place of warfare. We could all be tattooed with Nevada’s state motto: Battle born.

There are aspects to this massacre that are worse than others we’ve seen. There is a calculation and a wish not just to murder but to annilhilate, as if the killer didn’t just want to end lives but end the entire context they had been living in. But in most ways, it is just the latest instance of something we’d rather not see. The fact that it’s harder and harder to get our attention just makes it hurt all the more when something is so bad we can’t block it out.

Here is the Web-site memoriam for Virginia Tech. It is being updated as names are released.

I don’t know if any of them were Orthodox, but I hope it’s permissible to say all the same — memory eternal.