Eulogy for a Bombing Victim, Eulogy for Christ

Take a look at these news stories, but I do warn you, there are graphic images.

I want to say something that all Catholics should know, but that needs to be repeated. That dead baby in the striped sleeper is not worth any less to Christ, than your own children. That child is of the same value to God, as you are. That child is every bit as precious in the eyes of Heaven, as the children killed in the abortion clinic you picket or the policemen shot in the recent acts of violence in this country.

That child is the reason the world was created.

That infant, right there, lying in the rubble, covered with ashes and blood, is the Heart of Christ. For the sake of that child, God the Father created the universe. So that that child might someday be born, God the Father created the human race. So that that child might become a Child of Glory, Christ laid aside His crown and ran His race on earth. So that that child might never be alone, whatever he or she suffered in life, Christ humbly accepted crucifixion, death and the descent into hell. That child’s soul is the chosen Bride of Christ, that child’s body His chosen tabernacle. That Child bears the flesh icon of the Sole-begotten Word of God. There is nothing, in Heaven and on Earth, that God loves more than that child. God emptied Himself of everything, so that that child might be filled.

God willed that that child be fully alive. God willed that that child come to know Him while living a full life on this earth.

And we killed him.

America killed him, or maybe it was our ally, France;  America and France killed him because they were trying to kill Daesh. They are trying to kill Daesh because Daesh is trying to kill America and France and everything else it can get its bloody hands on, and Daesh exists because America spent a total of almost thirty years using military force in Iraq, and so on it goes forever. Violence begets violence, blood will have blood, Moloch is insatiable and the killing goes on to the last syllable of recorded time.

That’s what violence is. That’s what any war, however justified, does. That’s the price of meeting violence with violence. I’m not saying that there’s never a cause for war or violent acts of defense, but that it what violence is. Violence is a baby in a striped sleeper, lying in a trench, covered in blood and ash, dead.

Violence crucifies Christ, as many times as we wish, until we repent.

I repent. Good Jesus, I repent. I repent of any time I saw You in my fellow man and did not honor You. In doing this, I added to the hardness of the hearts of the human race. I truly crucified You, and I repent.  I intercede for my country and for us sinful men and women the world over. Through our own grievous fault, we murdered You again.

Christ was among us, we knew Him not, and now He’s lying dead in a striped sleeper in a bombed-out trench. By the hardness of our hearts has this been done. By the hardness of our hearts will it be done again and again, until we repent.

May the soul of that child pray for our guilty souls, until we meet him in paradise.

(image via Wikimedia Commons)