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My sixth-grade granddaughter asked parental permission to skip a special school Mass because she and her friends are afraid of an attack. The year of the 100th anniversary of the canonization of St. Therese of Lisieux is being celebrated in several US cities, beginning today in the Detroit suburb where three of my grandchildren live.
It is difficult to imagine what kind of mindset would make one choose to attack children at prayer in celebration of perhaps the sweetest, most innocuous saint in Christendom’s entire roster. That kids have been forced to imagine that possible outcome is a monstrous violation of their right to innocence.
My son and other volunteers have donned yellow vests and joined two dozen policemen for planned security measures. He gets to search bags, among other duties. He said some of the other fathers joked that anyone with long hair and an Adam’s apple is going to get tackled and taken down. But the present pool of potential assassins is broader than people with disturbed sexual identity or Middle Eastern appearance, and the incentivizing emotional climate is apparently at dangerously high levels. That this level of precaution is deemed necessary at this kind of event is horrifying.
St. Therese counseled a simple and practical spiritual life that begins with reliance on faith (not waiting for inspirational feelings) to form an acceptance of adversity. The opposite of that approach is to dwell upon one’s grievances to the point of declaring war on reality itself, which is ultimately also a war on God. And since one cannot injure or kill God, the only alternative is to kill or injure that which God is seemingly attached to and most disposed to love. Hence the attraction to the destruction of the innocent, the eternal MO and most diagnostic trait of evil.
Discussion (10)
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A beautiful and tragic OP, OB. I feel so sorry for these poor kids who have to go through these situations. May the celebration be peaceful and uplifting.
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First of all, I commend your son for stepping up to become involved in helping to provide security for the Mass in his parish.
Children are more aware of what they cannot control than we might think. Your post reminds me of what we called kiddie calls when I was on the streets.
A stanza from the WB Yeats poem The Stolen Child
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
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The National Shrine of the Little Flower Basilica is about four miles away from me.
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Some Christians get very relaxed in an environment of evil and even think as the evil grows and becomes more powerful that this signals the second coming is near. I'm not sure. What if we will never see the second coming of Christ if the effort for good is not 100%.
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