When the December bombing of a church in Cairo killed women and children, I wrote:
These are attacks, then, upon the life-giving womb of the Church, which nurtures and forms its future, and upon the very young whose “souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”
People who love death hate life, and so yes, it makes sense that they would go after women and children, like cowards. Last night, other cowards did it again — they went after children.
I can’t often find myself applauding what comes out of any politician’s mouth, these days, but I think Trump nailed it in his remarks. These terrorist thugs are losers. Call them what they are. They don’t wear a uniform; they don’t give an opportunity for a fair fight; they just go into “soft” targets, where people are playing, are shopping, or walking, or praying, and they kill themselves and do it with ugly contraptions that are designed to take out as many others as possible. Because miserable losers want others to feel loss.
They don’t kill themselves because they’re brave. They do it because they’re afraid to live. They’re afraid of the future. They’re afraid of life. They think life should not be, that death is better, and safer.
But that’s not the way of the God of All Life. That’s the way of ‘All Nothing’. Which is where God is not.
All things came to be through him,
and without him nothing came to be.
What came to be
through him was life,
and this life was the light of the human race;c
the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.
— John 1:3-5
I’ve been feeling lousy lately and so when the story broke last night, when I read it, and saw all of the parents pleading for any news about their missing children — the youngest victim last night was only 8 years-old — and all I could think about how we are on the eve of summer, a time when families plan their downtime, together and apart, and how this summer already has been made to feel different.
But I woke up angry this morning. Prayers and Masses will and should be said, and I’ve written and shared this one. But this morning I remembered that our children are being targeted, and the death count is rising. And I felt mad.
