One of the CD’s currently in the player in my car is Danielle Rose’s Mysteries of the Rosary, a two-CD set sent to my some time ago by my dear friend Maria.
As I listened to the CD the other day, I focused on the opening lines of the song titled Crucify Him. The lines, although phrased as a question, are really an accusation the can be leveled against most if not all of us:
We wash our hands of the thoughts that slip through our minds.
Like Pontius Pilate, we blame others for the atrocities of our times.
Do we stay silent while the world screams out its lies?
Sell your body, buy your beauty, live at the cost of others’ lives.
The line that most affected me was the last one. What passed though my mind in an instant was all of the ways we live at the cost of others’ lives.
When we purchase cheaply an item produced by child labor, we live at the cost of the lives of those children.
When we support an industrial agriculture system that distorts food production in lesser developed countries in ways that actually increase hunger, we live at the cost of the lives of starving people.
I could list other examples, but the point is simple: Every decision we make has consequences. Every choice we make affects the lives of others – positively or negatively.
And when we live at the cost of others’ lives because doing so is easier…less costly…more convenient, we are no better than, no different from, Pontius Pilate.
Creo en Dios! 