"It's good for an old priest to work in a cemetery," my friend said. And that's what I do. Some weeks ago I came across the grave of Baby Charles who lived only ten days from July 4 to 14, 1951. He and I were born only a few months apart.
His grave isn't found among the rows of graves but under the edge of some azalea and laurel bushes about eight feet from the side wall of the church. I don't know anything about his family or the circumstances of his death. I just imagine a kindly rector offered his parents a place near the church after his baptism. So I cleared off the leaves, pulled the weeds and cut back a couple of branches that were blocking the sun. I see his stone every day. I like to think someday he and I will meet in heaven. Our joy will be seeing the face of Jesus together.
But until then, his grave prompts me to prayerfully hold in my heart all the world's children who also die young. I am also aware that most of their deaths were and are preventable. We needn't blame God for it — That's on us.
Some countries now seem to pride themselves on having eradicated Down Syndrome by abortion. That's on us.
There is sufficient food to feed the world, yet thirteen million children in the United States alone are expected to be short of food this year. How many die of malnutrition? That's on us.
The children who die by firearms — who are shot dead while sitting in the car waiting for their mothers or while the sidewalk on an errand. That's on us.
The untold thousands of children who were bombed at Hiroshima/Nagasaki. That's on us.
The death of children to coronavirus while the grownups fight about masks and vaccines. That's on us.
The murder of the four little African American girls in 1963 at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. That's on us.
The recent discovery of thousands of unmarked graves of indigenous children in North America. That's on us.
The Mediterranean Sea being called by Pope Francis, "The world's biggest cemetery." The thousands of children lost there as they flee horrors in make shift "boats." That's on us.
The firebombed children of Vietnam and Cambodia. By the way: Catholic teaching forbids the bombing of civilian populations. That's on us.
Climate Change is real and some parts of the world are becoming uninhabitable by it (perhaps including our western states). The children are suffering the most. That's on us.
Maybe Baby Charles was just weak from the start. But many millions of children die because of the sins of adults. For me, the child's grave seems to suggest repentance. Maybe you can join me standing at the grave of this tiny boy and prayerfully ask for the expansion of hearts and the changing of human minds.
