To the Romans St. Paul wrote (6:23) “The wage paid by sin is death.”

The media have been filled these last days with the threnodies of our people lamenting the deaths of the 26 people murdered in Newtown, Conn., but especially mourning the loss of 20 children of tender age. All of the talking heads remark the singular sadness of these deaths because all of those children were “innocent.”

Just before the citation above, St. Paul commented; “When you were slaves of sin, you felt no obligation to righteousness, and what did you get from this? Nothing but experiences that now make you blush since that sort of behavior ends in death.” (Rom 6:20-21)

People of good will, including practicing Catholics, will be immediately reminded that federal courts and judges,  not excluding the Supreme Court, have declared that innocent life may be taken at whim in certain cases and that this is the law of our land.

More innocent even than the murdered children of Sandy Hook Elementary School are those human beings thought once to be safe in the womb of their mother: they may be killed if they are burdensome, or even just if they are inconvenient. Our nation has assented to this. Is it any wonder then, since the wage of sin is death, the crimes of violence against innocent people are on the increase all across our nation, and worse, we have the prophecy of the Apostle that so long as we  embrace this grave sin we will have more violence, and rapine and slaughter.

In this time we have the promise of high commissions and councils and studies on what we can do to reverse this terrible trend. Perhaps the leaders of our Church might profit from the teaching, which one can read in the New Testament, of the Son of God who when asked, “What must we do to gain eternal life?” — responded both crisply and cogently, “Keep the Commandments.” One of those commandments is, “Thou shall not kill.”

It has to be remembered, particularly now, when societies the world over feel no need of a moral code, or even ethical standards.  The words of St. Paul cited at the beginning, amount to this: when we pursue evil, what awaits us at the end of that quest is grim death. A death that lasts forever.

We all can empathize with the parents and loved ones of the victims in Connecticut, and we should do so, but the answer to their grief is to be found in the person and the Gospel of Christ our Lord, whose birth we have just celebrated. The answer to this one problem lies not only in honoring the Son of God, but in doing what he asked, by imitating what he lived, by attending to what he taught.

If all that can be accomplished,  our society can begin to work its way back to loving God which means, of course, loving our neighbor and avoiding sin so that we can have the peace on earth and the goodwill we so desire.