Deep anguish over the lives cut short. Deep sorrow for those suddenly and cruelly thrust into bereavement. Deep anger at the man who perpetrated this crime. Deep penitence that this was what our society had come to. The price of human freedom is ever the risk of wickedness and evil.
Any murder is abhorrent, that of a child doubly so.
A child is a symbol of hope, a fresh start, new possibilities, a life uncluttered by the failures and the wounds and the deep resentments we adults carry. It seems so cruelly unfair to extinguish such a source of light. And a child by definition is vulnerable, dependent, has to trust. Infanticide, the ultimate human abuse of that vulnerability, shock us to the core. The Massacre of the Innocents poses deep and searching questions, which defy any glib answer, which almost defy any response at all.