Why, to borrow the language of my Jewish brothers and sisters, is today different from all other days? Why is this day festive yet funereal, as it starts with a celebration of life and ends with the inscription of the names of who shall live and who shall die?
You will forgive me, I hope, for shortening the highest of holy weeks into the most serious day of any week; because as Jewish law says—and as natural law dictates—whoever saves a single life saves the whole world.
Today is our chance to do just that: to do God’s will by honoring the godliness of World Suicide Prevention Day.
It is a day as important to the faithful as it is determinative of the fates of thousands, whose names need not rest among the departed while their bodies rest in peace; whose departure will never be a source of peace to their friends and loved ones; whose deaths are quiet but far from peaceful.
The quiet comes after the rage of a final battle and the ravages of an invisible war.
It is a preventable war, provided we comfort the afflicted and come to know the afflictions that discomfort so many.
Whatever we do, let us not cast judgment against a person whose pain we cannot imagine and whose despair we cannot even begin to describe.
Let us act to save a life, rather than say a prayer for a life we could have saved.
Let us be true to God by making his work our own.