Monsignor Basil O’Sullivan’s homily on the 30th Anniversary of the Dunblane School Massacre. Monsignor O’Sullivan was the parish priest in Dunblane for over 30 years and is currently the parish priest in Auchterarder. He will be celebrating his 70th anniversary of ordination later this year.
Here we are, 30 years later, and able to celebrate the Eucharist. The word Eucharist means thanksgiving, and tonight we are together as a community after all these years to give thanks.
The God who has revealed himself to us is the God of love – we read that in St John’s letter – it is a bold statement and what it means we find in the life, teaching, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. He came among us to be our saviour, to rescue us from the dark world of sin and death, and bring us light and hope. Even in the darkest hour we can rejoice in the love of the Lord, in his power, buoyed up by his eagle wings, as a psalmist puts it.
In the power of the Lord we are an Easter people, children of the resurrection, and ‘alleluia’ is our song!
The media at the time of the tragedy would ask the question, “Where was God?” Nobody I had to deal with asked me, but the media did – it did not seem to occur to the people with whom I was dealing to ask that question. The short answer is that they were asking the question of a false god, a god who never existed.
The God who has revealed himself, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, reveals himself to us as a god of love. He has given us commandments to be obeyed. One of them is you shall not kill. If we obeyed that commandment, we would not have any wars, nor gunmen shooting children. Where was God that morning? God dwells in the hearts of his people, of his sons and daughters – that morning he was in the hearts of the children themselves, in the hearts of their mums and dads, their loved ones, the teachers who came running in to help, medics, police, reporters, politicians; later on in the snowdrop campaign, and so many others. Indeed, just about the whole world.
We were reminded at the time that our school tragedy was very similar in kind to the massacre of the holy innocents by Herod; their feast day is on December 28th; our innocents is on March 13th, the Ides of March . Beware the ides of March, Shakespeare wrote. No doubt, long after we are gone, that date will be remembered.
God is love, says St John, and love cascaded into Dunblane primary that morning and indeed into the town of Dunblane. That love was almost tangible. It was in every prayer offered, in every tear shed, in every hug given, in every card sent, every message delivered, in every TV programme, every newspaper. Even in the teddy bears. Remember how we got 2000 of them from Oklahoma City, who had a tragedy of their own shortly before ours.
The Almighty has revealed himself to us as a god of love – and the school itself survived in the power of God’s love, as did the wider community of Dunblane. Broken hearts remain and the good Lord understands us in our needs and weaknesses.
The Eucharist celebrates God’s love for us, and in our suffering and pain, we ask for his healing and mercy. We give thanks to him for all the love given and received over the past 30 years. We ask forgiveness for weaknesses and shortcomings; we pray the little children are enjoying the happiness of the beatific vision.
The tragedy took place in the middle of Lent, on the Ides of March – an unspeakable evil. But evil does not have the last word. A few weeks later, we celebrated the resurrection and were reminded that evil does not have the last word. Our Saviour Jesus Christ does. Thanks to him, and in the light of his love for us, we can say today, as we said on that Easter Sunday following the tragedy, we are an Easter people, children of the resurrection, and ‘alleluia’ is our song!