Making Space for Annunciation

when a mass shooting happens during a school mass

This past week, during the first week of school, 2 were murdered and 17 were injured before the shooter took their own life too. This was at Annunciation Catholic School in South Minneapolis, a preschool – 8^th grade school. The community had gathered early on a Wednesday morning for the school’s Welcome Back Mass when dozens of gunshots ripped through worship.

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This is not the essay I was planning to write this week. I wanted to reflect with you what a heavy lift it has been to get this school year off the ground. The emails from elementary school, middle school, and even the district have been relentless. They started on July 24—well before I wanted to open any and read them. So I didn’t. It felt like an invasion of our summer.

By the middle of August, with our vacation to Duluth and up the North Shore in the books, it was time to pay attention. The school supply lists were found, what we already owned was inventoried, and what we still needed was ordered, for a whopping cost of $250 for two children to go back to school with everything the school asked for—including one new backpack but no new shoes or clothing. The supplies arrived just before open house dates—I felt like I slid into home plate just in time.

Next were the many websites and apps to log on to, download, or update. Schoology, Infinite Campus, PayPAMS, EduTrak, and Seesaw were all demanding something of me. As the end of August closed in, we attended two open houses for our son’s transition into middle school (A big deal! With no small amount of stress! Nine teachers each with their own expectations, six periods, a big school to navigate, bells ringing with four minutes to scoot to the next period, a locker that is impossible to open within those four minutes, and a lunchroom where there is freedom to sit anywhere—flashbacks of movies I’ve seen where kids are nasty or left out with nowhere to sit rising top of mind for this momma!). Then I read many more emails not just from each building but now several of his teachers too, asked my husband to attend the band meeting, wrote to the school counselors, chased down signed forms from our physician to keep meds at school, called the bus company to find out why our son no longer qualifies for busing, talked through how transportation could work with my husband and a neighbor, and went to our daughter’s elementary school twice. She had a 1:1 appointment with her teacher in the morning to be assessed in reading, and we returned that evening to attend her official open house and bring her school supplies in.

All of this felt like it was close to a full-time job. It was hard to Make Space for it all. In short, it left me dang tired and wondering if other parents were sailing through any smoother. One look at my friend’s Instagram account, telling us that school will be starting for two of her children the next day and she had yet to get any school supplies, reassured me and gave me a giggle. It also told me that this is an overwhelming time for most of us as parents—there is the enormity of what schools need us to do before showing up on the first day along with tending to the various emotions of our children about going back to school.

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It was in the wake of all of this that the news of the shooting at Annunciation Catholic School happened—on my son’s first day of middle school, actually. I heard the shocking news as I was pulling into the elementary school parking lot to meet my daughter’s teacher for the first time. It felt like a gut punch. I had to wipe tears away as I took her hand and grabbed her bag of school supplies and put on a happy face.

Christians who practice are familiar with the Annunciation and know that this is an experience. An action story. The Annunciation was the moment it was announced that Mary and Joseph’s lives would change forever, that God’s love for us was so great that God would take on human form and become one of us, and humanity would never be the same. It is the story of Gabriel the angel announcing the Good News to Mary—telling her not to be afraid, that she would carry God’s own Son into the world and she should name him Jesus. The century old building in Minneapolis has large, bold letters on the outside proclaiming, “This is the House of God and the Gate of Heaven.” It is incongruous to me that an act so evil and so wicked happened in a community that bears the name reminding us to use our lives to announce the Good News.

I am finding it hard to live and breathe in the gun culture we have normalized. Gun violence is a cultural problem that is unique to the United States. There are steps we could take as a nation if we really wanted to. Banning assault weapons is a priority for me since no hunter or law-abiding citizen needs one. Every time I take my family to a crowded place—the Mall of America or a parade—the thought “what if” crosses my mind. I look for exit strategies in movie theaters and restaurants. This is a real stressor that impacts my wellness.

I know that violence is not new to our day; it was certainly widespread in Jesus’ time. Just think of how he was executed. But in America, we have 400 million guns, more guns than people, and I live in the most armed country in the world. In America, children are ten times more likely to be shot in a school or playground than any other developed nation. Pope Leo XIV made his first remarks about gun control after the Minneapolis school shooting, “Let us plead [to] God to stop the pandemic of arms large and small which infects our world.”

The night before this shooting happened, I sat on my son’s bed at 12:40 am and prayed yet another blessing over him, asking God to keep him safe both physically and emotionally. I prayed he would have a good first day, find his way, make a friend or two, have someone to eat lunch with, be accepted for who he is, and that he would come home to me safely. Tears streamed down my face as I prayed this for him as he sprawled there dreaming and unaware of my whispered prayers and hands over him. It is hard to imagine the stress and emotional toll it takes just to send our children to school each day with a kiss, a blessing, a deep look into their eyes and a long hug and then smile and tell them casually to have a good day. There is always much more lying beneath that ritual for me.

I’m struggling hard with this one because it is very young children. I’m struggling because it happened just 18 miles from my home, in my Archdiocese. I’m struggling as I imagine it from all the viewpoints:

• My years spent teaching at a Catholic School—imagining the terror and trauma of that morning, the lives I would have been responsible for, and wondering how one goes back to start the academic year again with a classroom of traumatized children while feeling traumatized myself

• My decades of experience on four parish staffs in three different dioceses—imagining being a pastoral leader when our faith home has been desecrated and will need to be reconsecrated as well as repaired, the entire block has become a living memorial, trauma is everywhere, and yet there are weekend Masses and Sacraments to celebrate, decisions to be made about a fall festival, a faith formation year ready to kick off, a parish council to convene, and a faith community that needs both pastoral care and signs of hope amidst the brokenness

• My years as a parent—trying to imagine the sheer terror of the news and rushing over to the reunification site, wondering if my child was alive, injured, or among the dead. Hugging, holding them close if they were okay physically but having absolutely no idea how to help them heal emotionally for what they had seen, heard, and been through. How do I send them back to school? How do we go back to church again? How do I feel safe leaving them again? The trauma of this day will have ripple effects their whole life.

I’m struggling mostly because the shooting happened while they were celebrating Mass. This part is really getting me—to imagine the part of our faith that we hold most sacred and joyful, celebrating Mass—being ripped open by bullets. The doors were locked, so the shooter barricaded some of the doors with 2x4’s to trap the people inside and then shot at them from outside, through a stained-glass window, while they were praying Psalm 139.

To know it was the Liturgy of the Word, during the Responsorial Psalm, makes it more real, more awful, more tender, and more heartbreaking. Because I wondered, of course, what part of the Mass this community would have been in.

R: You have searched me and you know me, Lord.

Where can I go from your spirit?

From your presence where can I flee?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

If I sink to the nether world, you are present there.

If I take the wings of the dawn,

If I settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

Even there your hand shall guide me,

And your right hand hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall hide me,

And night shall be my light”—

For you darkness itself is not dark,

And night shines as the day.

This tells me of God’s nearness and God’s faithfulness, even in the darkest of times. I heard a friend pray this entire Psalm aloud for us over her Instagram (not just these lines). The words were comforting and familiar as they washed over me. But then verse 16 gave me pause, saying our days were limited before one even existed. As my friend proclaimed the end of the psalm, the tone changed and the psalmist was imploring, “If only you would destroy the wicked, O God” (v. 19) and “Do I not hate, O Lord, those who hate you? Those who rise up against you, do I not loathe?” (v. 21)

And therein lies the crux. This week not only brought great sobs of pain and deep empathy for all involved, but anger and fury for the shooter. Hate rose within me for what they did, the evil and wickedness their sickness unleashed on the innocent that morning. I was driving a car on a northbound freeway while listening to the press conference on public radio, hearing our mayor and chief of police talk with tears streaming down my face as I learned the children’s ages—8 and 10—and raging a stream of cuss words against the person capable of this unthinkable violence. To know children set off in their uniforms, with new backpacks and school supplies, eager to meet their teachers, make new friends and play at recess were forced to the ground, needing to hide under pews, to run in fear, and to dive on top of one another to protect each other. These were my children. Our children.

So I hear this Scripture, which momentarily vindicated me and normalized my feelings of anger and rage. But I don’t want to live with hate and anger inside me. Everyone I talk to is trying to guess what could have been going on in the shooter’s psyche. The stream of hate against so many different groups—especially Jews and people of color—makes me flinch. There was a fascination, an idolization, with others who had committed mass shootings. And there was a desire to hurt children. But to try to rationally understand and make sense of the mind of a person who is mentally unwell seems beyond what most of us can do. I will not make leaps, speculate, draw conclusions, or make judgments based on this person’s upbringing or identity.

After I moved through the initial feelings of rage and hate, I was reminded by a good friend that first and foremost this person was a person. Not a monster. But a person we are all responsible for. The act was monstrous. Cruel. Evil. But the shooter was a person, a beloved child of God. My friend even reminded me, “There but for the grace of God go I” reflecting compassion, humility, and the need for God’s grace when we are faced with life’s unpredictability and circumstances.

I can offer empathy for this person’s parents and hope they have some support, somewhere, and some means to professional therapy. I need to lean hard on my faith in truly awful times—knowing we are experiencing communal grief—praying each day for those grieving the empty beds and lopsided dinner tables in their homes and for all those caring for frightened, traumatized children that are forever changed. And I need to move my feet, as the principal of Annunciation, Matthew DeBoer, asked us to do, citing an African proverb. Prayers must not stop there, but bring about action:

• Working tirelessly for legislation for stronger gun control, start by calling D.C. and asking to be routed to your Senator: 202-224-3121 or consider joining non-profit movements like Everytown for Gun Safety or Sandy Hook Promise

• Lobbying for funding to make mental health access affordable and accessible for everyone, such as expanding school-based mental health access (that 205 members of the GOP just voted against while at the same time insisting it’s not the guns, it’s mental health)

• Working to make sure each person you know is radically and unequivocally accepted as they are and can find community

• Giving blood this month

• Donating to Children’s Hospital Minneapolis Wish List or reach out to HCMC Pediatrics ICU With a Note of Thanks or use their Wish List, both hospitals who gave emergency care to victims

• Attending a prayer vigil for peace or a march to end gun violence

• Reading the book: The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic by Jillian Peterson, PhD and James Densely, PhD

• Visiting the memorial site at the Church of the Annunciation

• Donating to make sure that Annunciation school and parish have funding to begin again, coordinated by the Catholic Community Foundation: Hope and Healing Fund

• Making sure each family with a Go Fund Me account has their needs met: View the List of Families Here along with other ideas

• Remembering +Fletcher and +Harper in prayer and lifting their families up so their feet never have to touch the ground

This is hard work. There’s a long road ahead if change will ever happen for my children or grandchildren. But I need to Make Space to keep working for a brighter, more peaceful tomorrow.

If you received this by email, check out my page and read past essays on Making Space.