The dark clouds gather now with greater intensity.  Our tiny island is besieged by great gusts of wind and relentless rain that washes everything away!  A portent of the world today?  Yes, and I say more, much more to come! 

And what are the things of this present world that attacks man?  People? certainly.  What else?  Who whispers in a man’s ear to commit a horrific act of bloodshed to an innocent victim?  Sure, there’s your holy book that got you to this stage of revenge, completely justifiable in your eyes, just what the “movement” expects! Death!  Blood!  Make this spontaneous act the most gruesome, horrible, revolting you and your buddies can do.  It is all justified to your religion; it is an “eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!”  And since your relatives were killed in the war against your country for terrorist acts against this country, then its all right to find some innocent soldier walking on the street; it could just as easily have been that  this random selection could have included a woman or a child.  Makes no difference.  Forgot your masks, did you?  In a hurry? 

But somewhere along the line someone must come to realize that there is definitely a demonic influence at work here!  If one worships a demon, then that demon, an invisible, wicked, evil, unclean, fallen angel will come whisper in your ear, rile you up to a feverish pitch, tell lies that will become truth to you…deceive you to push you to muster all the insane courage one can bring up.  And then you do it!  And just what does the blood culture of death demand?  Mutilation!  Cut off the head-right there on a busy street…right there in front of shocked and horrified people who just stare….no action will be forthcoming from these bystanders….no, better to beat up people at a football game!  And then the signature of the act: meat cleavers and knives!  But keep consistent with your movement and what it expects-no, demands! Cut off the head of a live victim with a knife for all this world to see!

There and then you go! right in step with your history.

Brother Monk!  What are you so agitated about?  I have never seen you like this.

Forgive me, Father, but I have just witness a most terrible act of random killing, the slaughter  of a young soldier in east London.  Cut down…there…before our very eyes.  Butchered like a slab of meat! 

I even heard talk of retaliation after the police took the killers away.  Shot them, they did.

Seems like people starting to have enough of these foreigners in our country who hide behind their walls, and make plans to kill innocent people in the name of their belief.

But we are called to love our enemies, despite the horror they perpetrate…

Yes, Father, forgive me, but I cannot!  I have prayed to the Lord for help and forgiveness for my attitude…I am so upset I can’t seem to let go of this feeling.

Then we shall pray as never before, Brother Monk.

We know the way the world is drifting.  The cold and the dark are cutting deep into good people, even into people of God who desire to live in peace

Pray for those who would hurt you; pray that by the grace of God Almighty, the Holy Spirit will touch them and change them, and bring them to God through confessed belief in out Lord, Jesus Christ, the Only Son of God, the Savior of the world.

These times we now live in will only get worse!  We are beyond the “tip of the iceberg.” And all this will play out at its utterly intensified evil stage…yet for a little while…and then our Lord Jesus shall come to earth, and make all things right and new.  

We cry peace, peace.  But there can never be a lasting peace.  Mankind can never, ever achieve it, try as hard as he may, spout the words over and over again to the wind that blows them away to nothing! 

Brother Monk?

Father?

It’s time for Holy Communion.

Praise God forever, Amen.

 Postscript:

A couple of days later, in a driving rain, at a military cemetery, amid the rank and file of uniformed soldiers stood a figure in a white robe.  No one saw him.  And no one saw the cross that was laid on the casket just before the the soldier’s remains were buried.

No one saw the lonely, solitary figure weeping for his brother.