I don’t like writing about man-made mass atrocity. Every time I do, I access memories and emotions of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Pope Francis stood at the monument for the Twin Towers. He spoke with and touched the families of those who died there. We, the grieving American people, have built a beautiful memorial on those hallowed grounds. I watched a service there in which clergy of many faiths prayed at this place where so many Americans died.
Pope Francis joined them in their prayers, then followed with a beautiful speech in which he pointed out that the light does indeed shine through the darkness, even the darkness of such things as what happened at the Twin Towers, or a few years before that, at Oklahoma City. He asked us to join him in prayer for the cause of peace, peace in our homes, our communities, our families, peace in all those places in which war never seems to end; peace for those who have known nothing but pain; peace throughout this world which God has given us as home for all.
9/11 began a decade of war, which has been followed by another half-decade of more war. While Pope Francis spoke, people in the Middle East and Africa are dying at the hands of those who follow the same philosophy as the men who flew the planes into the Twin Towers.
Here in America, we have the luxury of grief, of building monuments and holding beautiful interfaith services with choirs of young people singing of peace. We can dignify our grief, our loss and our suffering with memory and memorials.
But even as I type these words, people in other parts of the world must flee before the beast in human form. They do not have time to bury, much less grieve, their dead. They are losing and have lost, not just a beloved person, but their homes, their countries and any sense of justice, peace and safety.
9/11 wasn’t the beginning of this war against civilization. It was the day that the war was forced on America.
I love Pope Francis. I. Simply. Love. Him. Because he speaks for the Lord Jesus Christ, Who offers the only Hope there is in the face of such unrelenting and remorseless evil. Pope Francis is the closest thing we have to the voice of the Living Christ, speaking directly to us today.
I have seen satan, looking at me through the eyes of another person. I have known the depths of the alone in which pity and human kindness do not exist.
In that, I am like the uncomprehending unborn child, torn to pieces. I am one with the girls sold into sex slavery, the young men who are beheaded as if their murderer was slaughtering a farm animal.
The evil we fight is not human. Human beings are merely the apostles of this evil, the unwitting puppets of the dark one. The evil we see in the empty eyes of those who commit such crimes is a ravening hunger that will not be fed, a gnawing emptiness that is hate and nothing more, an evil that craves annihilation.
It touched me to the soul to see Pope Francis standing at the 9/11 monument. So many people died that day and are dying still because of the hatred that drove those men to murder innocents in the name of a god who is not god but satan under another name.
Islam is not of this false god who murders innocents. It is a faith that has its own bit of the divine. That which drives those who murder innocents is never of god. It is always evil and of the pit.
Only Jesus Christ gives us the complete and easy way to life everlasting. He, and He alone is the Way of eternal life. All that come to the Father comes — whether they know it or not — by way of Him.
We who know Him have a grave and incredible responsibility to be the light of the world. Included in that is a call to each of us to share Jesus and His easy way, His light yoke, with all we meet and know.
*Photo credit (ABCNY): http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/content/creativecontent/images/cms/1001822_1280x720.jpg