There is a sadness that comes not as a wave, but as a stillness. It arrives when you realize that a young life has ended and that no argument, no explanation, no justification can make sense of it. I feel that sadness for the young man who lost his life in Minnesota. Not as a political symbol, not as a headline—but as a person, known by God, carried in love, now gone.
In the Ignatian tradition, we are taught to pause—to notice what stirs within us. What stirs here is grief, yes, but also a troubling recognition. This death did not happen in isolation. It happened in a climate shaped by fear, hardened by division, and sustained by a public life that too often rewards outrage over restraint.
I am sad that we have reached a point where our political differences no longer merely divide us, but define us. Where disagreement is interpreted as moral failure, and where the dignity of the person is eclipsed by the righteousness of the cause. St. Ignatius warned against disordered attachments—those things we cling to so tightly that they distort our vision and dull our compassion. It is difficult not to see that disorder at work now.
This sadness also carries with it a sober truth: leadership matters. Words matter. Tone matters. Political leaders—Democrats and Republicans alike—bear a particular responsibility for the climate they help create. When leaders speak as though the other side is not merely wrong, but dangerous or illegitimate, they teach contempt. When they traffic in fear rather than truth, or elevate victory over the common good, they form a culture where hostility feels justified and restraint feels optional.
Jesuit wisdom reminds us that authority is never neutral. Leadership shapes consciences. It either widens the space for dialogue or narrows it. It either models humility or licenses cruelty. When leaders fail to honor the dignity of those they oppose, they should not be surprised when that failure echoes beyond the podium and into the streets.
We have lost something essential: the discipline of seeing Christ in the other, especially the one with whom we disagree. Instead, we rush to judgment. We assign motives. We speak about one another rather than to one another. In doing so, we forget that every person is more than their opinions, more than their worst moment, more than the party they are said to represent.
Jesuit spirituality insists on reflection that leads to responsibility. Not blame, but accountability. Not outrage, but examination. We must ask ourselves—citizens and leaders alike—how our words, our applause, our silence, and our tribal loyalties contribute to a culture where empathy thins and anger thickens. Violence is rarely born in a single moment; it is cultivated over time in places where patience, humility, and moral restraint have been neglected.
The sadness I feel is not only for the life lost, but for the warning it carries. When leaders forget that their first obligation is to the human person, when politics becomes a zero-sum moral battlefield, the cost is no longer theoretical. It is borne by families, by communities, by futures cut short.
Ignatius invites us, at day’s end, to the Examen—to ask where we have been drawn toward love, and where we have been pulled away from it. This moment demands that same reckoning. Where have we chosen certainty over compassion? Where have our leaders modeled division instead of care? Where have we mistaken winning for righteousness?
Tonight, I sit with sorrow. Sorrow for a young man whose life should have stretched further. Sorrow for a country struggling to remember its better instincts. And sorrow that is not without hope—because Jesuit wisdom teaches that awareness is the beginning of conversion.
If we allow this sadness to instruct us—especially those entrusted with power—it may yet call us back to something better: to humility in leadership, restraint in speech, and the difficult grace of seeing one another, always, as lives entrusted to our care.
The Valley Viewpoint 