The United States has seen several mass shootings in the last few years in schools, universities, a movie theater and places full of innocent people.

The most recent shooting in Santa Barbara caused me to consider: what can we do better? What can our country do better?

The answer to me is: to see each other as the spiritual reflections of God.

We have all seen a reflection — it mirrors the original. So man (including all of us) is the mirror image of God, though not the original.

“All that God imparts moves in accord with Him, reflecting goodness and power…As the reflection of yourself appears in the mirror, so you, being spiritual, are the reflection of God…God fashions all things, after His own likeness. Life is reflected in existence, Truth in truthfulness, God in goodness, which impart their own peace and permanence.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 516)

To me, this means that man reflects the beauty, grace and goodness of God. When we see our neighbor, our parents, and our children, we can see them in this light. Seeing their spiritual identity, we know that hatred, fear, sin, etc. are a counterfeit impression of who they really are.

So what can we do better? Love more. Love the way God loves by seeing His creation as we really are — made in His/Her “image and likeness”.

No one is excluded. No division. No separation.

St. Paul writes,

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword^?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:35-39).

Nothing — no place, no person, no experience — can separate us from the Love of God or the love that we can express towards each other.