The wife of Charlie Kirk, Erika Kirk. Yesterday she spoke beautifully and even brilliantly. But there’s one word that everyone’s talking about – forgiveness. The word itself, uttered in that context, holds a weight, a power. Not the power of a well-rehearsed sermon, no. Something more primal. Something…unhinged.

You seek the beauty of Christianity? Don’t look to the rote pronouncements of the ecclesiastical social media machinery. The USCCB’s HR sounding press releases, the homilies meant to avoid anger, the banal social media of most of our clergy, almost all of it is the same. Insipid. Manufactured. Trite. Cliched. Written by functionaries, not by men and women wrestling with the abyss.

Erika Kirk’s words, last night. They were not the expected balm. They were…disruptive. They were not designed to soothe. They are…a challenge. A direct confrontation with the raw, brutal fact of loss. A refusal to accept the easy, the predictable. Her husband, gunned down. Her children, fatherless. The pain, the grief – that is the crucible. And in that crucible, something else was forged. Something…revolutionary.

The words of forgiveness, in that moment, were not a platitude. They were a choice. A radical choice. We will not, in our limited comprehension, grasp the full import of this for a long time. It is not a matter of theological pronouncements, but of human action. Of courage. Of faith. Of something that transcends the rational. Last night, in that moment, Christianity was not a doctrine. It was a choice. A terrible, terrible choice, made in the face of something terrible, something…unspeakable.

And that amazing pronouncement exists as a challenge to all Christians and non-Christians. What does she have that I don’t? I seek to carry my cross. Every day. But if I’m in that situation? No. Forgiveness would not be so quickly forthcoming. Inexplicably, that is what we’re called to do.

But that is what Christ is doing in our lives. He challenges us to do better. Be better.

This is the greatest reminder. Christianity is…otherworldly. It is not of this world. It should make us tilt our head and wonder. It’s when Christ is nailed to the cross. It’s when Stephen forgives his murderers. It’s when Peter says he’s not worthy to be crucified in the same way of our Lord. It’s when men in sandals take off in sandals for all parts of the world with nothing on their backs to evangelize the world.

The Catholic, the Christian, is in this world but is not of this world. Erika Kirk reminded us of that last night.