By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski's remarks at Interfaith event remembering those who lost their lives during the Holocaust . Sunday, April 23, 2017.
Today we remember a sad and shameful chapter in human history. We cannot not remember those who suffered in the Shoah – nor are we unmindful to the victims of the serial genocides of the 20th century. To remember is an obligation – not only towards those who suffered and died then but also an obligation towards those who suffer and die today in new ways from the power of hatred and the violence that hatred spawns.
Pope Benedict XVI – when as Pope he visited Auschwitz in 2006 – said: “The rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth. Thus the words of the Psalm: ‘We are being killed, accounted as sheep for the slaughter’ were fulfilled in a terrifying way.” The Pope continued by saying, “Deep down, those vicious criminals, by wiping out this people, wanted to kill the God who called Abraham, who spoke on Sinai and laid down principles to serve as a guide for mankind, principles that are eternally valid. If this people, by its very existence, was a witness to the God who spoke to humanity and took us to himself, then that God finally had to die and power had to belong to man alone - to those men, who thought that by force they had made themselves masters of the world.”
These emotive words from a German Pope invite us to introspection but also to action in the face of contemporary challenges. If God doesn’t matter, the commandments do not matter and the human person will no longer matter as well. Pope Benedict said at Auschwitz: “The past is never simply the past. It always has something to say to us. It tells us the paths to take and the paths not to take.”
May we listen to the lessons of the past – and take the right paths to true reconciliation and solidarity.
