I got up in time to say morning prayers and meditation, with time left over to peruse the news in my Twitter feed before the start of the first of two Latin mass livestreams that I watch on Youtube.
There were many posts this morning about the attacks on churches in the last several days, including the burning of the historic San Gabriel mission in Los Angeles. The L.A. Times, in their article about it, called the 1771 church a "symbol of oppression." That same day, another Catholic church in Florida had been attacked by a firebomb as people inside celebrated mass.
Multiple people shared the news about the young mother in Indianapolis who was shot to death in front of her daughter, apparently for having uttered the forbidden phrase: All lives matter.
The mainstream news will shrug at these stories of course, as if to emphasize that the woman's death, if not her life, doesn't matter.
We are entering the days of maximum demonic rage. In the coming months leading up to elections, the rioting leftists, having destroyed their fill of stone statues for the moment, will discover that doing so accomplished nothing except to prove that statues don't matter. It is like expecting to satisfy hunger of the body by doing a line of crystal meth.
What they really want of course is submission---the bending of everyone's knee to their cause and their slogans of power. Their souls scream out in pain for this. Having failed to get this, and realizing they are as far from it as ever, they will turn their wrath from static monuments to human beings and to churches. No one will be fully safe in the coming months from such danger. No church will be outside the reach of possible attack. The ones in greatest danger will be those that believed it was possible to propitiate the demoniac mob by mouthing the slogans of hate. Taking a knee just makes you the next target, as they know you are weak and have already made up your mind to cede power to them.
After Latin mass was over, I switched to the Greek Orthodox liturgy stream that I like to watch. The Gospel reading today in the Orthodox church calendar is the passage in Matthew Chapter 8 where Christ is asked by two demoniacs to cast out the demons inside of them, and put them into a herd of swine nearby.
During his sermon, Father Alex from Boca Raton spoke about his pain, shared by all Orthodox Christians, at the news that Hagia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom, which for many centuries was the central cathedral of Eastern Christianity, and which for the last ninety years has been a secular museum, is being re-converted by the Turkish government into a mosque No one is surprised at this, he said. We all saw it coming. He spoke about having visited the great church almost exactly a year ago and mentioned the moving experience being inside.
It was a sentiment I could share in a deep way. Among my personal possessions is a tiny travel journal that I kept in the summer of 1992, which is the last time I visited the ancient Byzantine capital and went inside the awe-inspiring holy edifice erected by Justinian in the 6th century. The divine liturgy I was watching on Youtube had been celebrated there for a thousand years without interruption. I have not looked in that journal for years, but I know that many pages of it are filled with pen sketches I made of the interior of Hagia Sophia while sitting on its cool stone, in the doorway or against one of the interior walls.
Back then it was so much easier and more relaxed to visit any tourist site. I spent two days there, for hours on end, making sketches using the same type of Uniball microfine pens that I still prefer, tracing the contours of the dome, and reproducing the sacred mosaics on the ceiling, which will now be covered up at least temporarily, as they are an offense to Moslem believers (one of these mosaics forms part of my Twitter account banner).
I remember at the time thinking I would make a simple sketch because I wanted to see the church in a way that would become part of me permanently. I had learned that making a drawing is the best way to notice the details and to bring the visual of the outside world inside oneself, and to keep it there as a vivid permanent image.
That was twenty-eight years ago this month---almost exactly half my lifetime ago as I write this. Even at the time I felt that summer marked the transition from youth into adulthood, in a way that sobering and even saddening.
At the time I would not have called myself a Christian, except as a vague label. Visiting that part of the world, I was more interesting in pagan classical sites than Christian ones. Looking back I realize how enormously significant was this visit to Hagia Sophia, and the experience I took away of the flow of the ages of civilization emitted from its sturdy stone, as if echoing every divine liturgy performed there---the same liturgy I was just listening to on Youtube.
I've had similar experiences in other cathedrals and churches over the years since then, but the one in Hagia Sofia remains special to me as the first one that truly moved me beyond my ability of words to express. Never before or since was I so absorbed and gathering in as much experience as possible from a single place. Only years later have I understood how much it meant.
No wonder the Turkish government sees the ancient church as a threat, even in the form of a museum. I saw a short video on Twitter made by a Greek orthodox man, ostensibly after the announcement by the Turkish government. The man is inside the ancient church, in civilian dress, and is making a video of the interior on his cell phone as any tourist would. But he is also whispering prayers from the divine liturgy, clandestinely so, as doing so would be illegal according to Turkish law. One suspects the Turks will crack down on this type of thing. But they cannot stop the prayers recited in one's head, or the prayers I say from my porch. Even if they destroyed the church entirely, it would not take away from what it has done for me and for many others.
Likewise in the United States, even as the police forces of large cities are stripped of their ability to arrest those committing violent crimes, their remaining manpower will be directed increasingly towards disrupting church services which do not comply with the mandates of state and city authorities against chanting and singing, or in which the number of parishioners in the pews is deemed too high by some metric decided by a bureaucrat.
At least these violations are peaceful. These are but is the opening scenes. Anything is possible as the demoniac rage sweeps through our society, seeking vengeance for its impotence against God by attacking as many of its perceived opponents as possible. They will fail of course, but it will be a great test to resist them.
In reference to the passage in Matthew about the demoniacs, Father Alex reminded us that every single person we come across, no matter how possessed with hate and rage they appear, is made in the image of God. At the moment it is especially hard to see this, he said, with the facial coverings we must wear (perhaps this dehumanizing effect is one of the reasons the Left is obsessed with forcing everyone to wear them as much as possible, even above the needs of public health they might serve).
It will be an enormous challenge in the days ahead to extend brotherly love and charity to those whose entire being seems bent on our destruction, even though open violence, which will be ignored or even celebrated by the media. The demons want us to become like them, and unlike their human captives, they care nothing for political slogans and election victories unto themselves. Their victory over us occurs when we return hate for hate. That is the submission they want.
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