Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Nick GenoveseSeptember 19, 2016
Firefighters arrive at the scene of an apparent explosion in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, in New York, Saturday, Sept. 17, 2016. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

At 7:55 a.m. this morning, my phone wakes me to a nightmare. The blaring emergency alert jolts me from my sleep and tells me a 28-year-old suspect connected to Saturday night’s explosion in New York City that left 29 people injured is on the loose.

I flash back to a different nightmare, three years prior. It is a Friday in April of 2013, and I am sheltered in my dorm room. Boston is on lockdown. An entire city is looking for two men who attacked the Boston Marathon.

Five days prior, I ran the Boston Marathon. A few hundred feet separated me from the finish line when I heard the deafening explosions. Black smoke shrouded the street. Pandamonium surrounded me. Miraculously, a stranger helped get me back to Boston College safely.

The feeling returns with each tragedy—Paris, Orlando, Istanbul. At times like these, it can feel like the world is falling apart around us. It feels as though my inner chaos, brimming with turmoil and fear, will overcome me.

But when I think about the Boston Marathon and its aftermath, more than the terror, I remember a man who paid a driver $50 to shepherd me from harm and perhaps even save my life. I recall a number of Bostonians who welcomed their neighbors and strangers into the safety of their homes. I contemplate “Boston Strong,” the story of a city that came together to embrace the most marginalized among us on that day.  

Events like this past Saturday's can be catalysts for doomsday thinking and feeling, but what is really at stake in these seemingly random and recurring nightmares is our peace. Peace of mind and, more important, peace in this world, in the midst of complex and unresolved conflicts.

As people of faith, is it possible to stand tall in the face of these calamities? Can we recognize where our deepest despair touches our innate goodness? Can we resist the temptation to lose confidence in one another but instead fully rely on our shared humanity?

Our peace must lie somewhere beyond fears and doubts—in faith, in the choice of what we pay attention to. My faith, at its best, allows me to shift my vision from despair and to see instead the innate goodness of humanity. Ultimately, faith is what keeps peace alive in a world that can seem constantly on the brink of self-destruction.

Jesus says: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33).

As a person of faith, and as a New Yorker, I dream of peace amid these nightmares.

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
Lisa Weber
7 years 6 months ago
Striving for peace amid nightmares is always part of the work of faith - and it is never easy.

The latest from america

The 12 women whose feet were washed by Pope Francis included women from Italy, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Ukraine, Russia, Peru, Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"We, the members of the Society of Jesus, continue to be lifted up in prayer, in lament, in protest at the death and destruction that continue to reign in Gaza and other territories in Israel/Palestine, spilling over into the surrounding countries of the Middle East."
The Society of JesusMarch 28, 2024
A child wounded in an I.D.F. bombardment is brought to Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, on March 25. (AP Photo/Ismael abu dayyah)
While some children have been evacuated from conflict, more than 1.1 million children in Gaza and 3.7 million in Haiti have been left behind to face the rampaging adult world around them.
Kevin ClarkeMarch 28, 2024
Easter will not be postponed this year. It will not wait until the war is over. It is precisely now, in our darkest hour, that resurrection finds us.
Stephanie SaldañaMarch 28, 2024