On average, Every day in America 120 persons are killed by guns. Permit that to sink into your psyche for a moment. That, dear friend, means that every year 43,800 precious souls are lost to senseless gun violence, alone, in America.

And according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) gun violence is the number One killer of persons between 18 - 25 years of age (https://bit.ly/3JeWrCB). Yes, greater than illicit drug use, alcohol abuse, vehicular accidents, and other causes of mortality among young adults.

Here, in the city of Baltimore, we now rank as the second deadliest city in the entire nation, experiencing nearly a three-and-a-half times higher rate of gun-related deaths than the 2020 national average.

Last year, the city surpassed 300 recorded homicides for the 8th consecutive year (https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-ci-cr-300-homicides-20211119-purj5ombg5fbjft347zdr7sxuq-story.html).

According to the Abell Foundation, a local grant-funding organization, "Nine out of 10 homicides in Baltimore are committed with firearms. The root causes of violence are complex and include generational trauma; structural racism; denials of opportunity; and systemic underinvestment in our state’s youth, families, and communities." 

1. How do we turn this *Dantean-length elegy into elation? Will the other Wes Moore abandon us as previous state administrations have? Will, like Pilate, the panoply of federal officials of our state simply shake their heads, wash their hands, and walk away as Mother after Mother and Family after Family marches to their grief-induced Golgotha? No gall, and certainly no mirth, to ameliorate their soul-piercing anguish. For them no Great Day of Resurrection awaits.
2. And, yet, somehow, SOMEHOW, the church, yes, that too-ofttimes sleeping giant, that bete noire (black beast) remains that one indispensable Good able to see and expect the miracle that few, precious few, now believe is even possible.

Yes, this gut-wrenching and mind-numbing situation is indicative of so much that has gone awry in America today, but I believe that the miraculous can be, will be, the indicative that transforms our crisis in order that we may see our Christ.

    Where shall we go, dear LORD, if you forsake us? How shall the fish and the loaves be multiplied without your blessed touch? Lord, help us to Make Disciples who will Deny Themselves, Take up their Cross, and Follow You.

Come now, Baltimore, let us put down the guns and let us return unto our God.

(*Dante Alighieri's matchless 14th century Italian classic, The Divine Comedy, has 14, 233 lines of poetry).