As South Africans prepared to bury Nelson Mandela on December 6, tributes from around the world began pouring in, acclaiming a man who brought South Africa back from the brink of revolution and through a slow, sometimes painful process of reconciliation.

Nelson Mandela not only forgave; he wanted the injured to forgive and the offenders to accept responsibility and with it the forgiveness he offered to them.

Sandy Hook should not have happened. Those 20 children and six teachers and administrators should not have died.

The day President John F. Kennedy was murdered, a Divine Word seminarian walked up the hill to our family’s apartment in Rome to tell my wife Sally and me the terrible news. Seeking wisdom, I wrote Dorothy Day.

The dogmatic thinking that convinced us that a phone could (should!) be a sheer piece of glass, that a swipe of a finger on a screen should feel like moving a real object, and that the Internet should be in our pockets has opened up tremendous possibilities.

How did this man so profoundly capture the aspiration and passion of an entire nation as he did mine that day in May 1994?