my brother’s keeper
Picture taken by Kelly Tolman in the National Infantry Museum.
"But why would someone do that, mom?"
I looked at the Humvee before me with life-size soldiers frozen in place; the scene shares a moment in time with passers-by charged with danger, fear, and bravery in the National Infantry Museum's GWOT gallery. The plaque in front of the vehicle shared a quote from Ross McGinnis's parents, "The lives of four men who were his Army brothers outweighed the value of his own life." Their words were a fitting answer to my daughter's difficult question. After I read them to her, the silence that hung in the air between us seemed to communicate so much more than any additional words could have.
I remember seeing McGinnis's parents. I worked in the National Infantry Museum in June of 2009 when they were invited to see their son's plaque as a Medal of Honor recipient. His photo lit up the center of the Medal of Honor Recipient’s gallery surrounded by walls lined with faces of other soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of gallantry, service, and sacrificial love. Even though I stood far away, I could hear the sharp and emotional inhale of his mother, who saw her son's beautiful face smiling back at her for the first time in that space. It was an overwhelming moment to watch.
Ross McGinnis, from Pennsylvania, went to basic training in the same Battalion as my husband, son, and brother-in-law. He was deployed in August of 2006, and four months later, he found himself in northeast Baghdad as a machine gunner as a part of 1st Platoon, C Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment. After a grenade was thrown into his humvee, PFC McGinnis made a split-second decision to jump on top of the explosive, allowing his body to absorb the blast. His decision saved the lives of the four other men in the vehicle that day, December 4, 2006. He was posthumously promoted to Specialist and awarded the Medal of Honor.
In response to his actions, his parents said: "It didn't matter to Ross that he could have escaped the situation without a scratch. Nobody would have questioned such a reflex reaction. What mattered to him were the four men placed in his care on a moment's notice. One moment, he was responsible for defending the rear of the convoy from enemy fire; the next moment, he held the lives of four of his friends in his hands. The choice for Ross was simple, but simple does not mean easy. His answer to a simple but difficult choice should stand as a shining example for the rest of us."
This Fourth of July week, in light of this recent trip to the museum, I have found myself meditating over what it means to be "our brother's keeper"—to truly live you before me. I think about my 11-year-old’s heart seeking to understand what it means to live and die for another, to hold the value of human life so dearly that you preserve it even at the cost of your own. Imagine what a different world we would live in if we all lived with such a radical love for our neighbor.
As McGinnis's parents said, it sounds simple, but simple does not mean easy. To truly teach our children the life-affirming, "you, before me" servant-leader ethos we must teach them about the sacrifice of the Cross—it is here that we can begin to understand the gift of laying down one's life for another for it is when we lose our life for Christ that we find it.
This week, start the "Evangelium Vitae" Pray, Grow, Serve series with your child, classroom, or parish. In it, we can't possibly exhaust Pope St. John Paul's encyclical, but we can highlight key points that will continue to develop the lens through which your child views the world with an eye for the dignity of the human person, the sanctity of every human life, and the daily opportunity to live as our brother's keeper.
For more information about joyfully reawakening a culture of life within your domestic church, visit www.pelicanprojectministry.org.
