Home from work, he
took off his boots and turned on the radio. Mozart came on first, but
he changed it to Bach. Mozart, while beautiful, riled the soul. Bach
soothed. He poured himself a small glass of vermouth. He sat in his
chair and picked up the newspaper with his left hand and his bible
with his right.
“Watch and
beware. You can be assured that when darkness falls there will be
difficult men making preparations for the desolations. You know how
it is – dangerous things begin with subtlety and end with cruelty.
The first hurt forgotten, a second abuse is assured.”
A dry awareness
settled over him. The days these days were all heavy. ‘Perhaps I am
overdoing it,’ he thought to himself.
“No distance. No
empathy. No call. People will follow a selfish lack of civility and a
verbal, mental, emotional immaturity. They will devote themselves to
crude language leadership. Boastful, arrogant, preening, rude. Empty
challenges and vulgar displays, boasting proud.”
He saw in the news
that Pope Leo had been diagnosed with lung cancer. ‘It would be
terrible if the Pope died now,’ he thought.
“It will be a
noble display of honor inside a body of lies. All extravagance. All
exploitation. All lies. Irreligious except for their devotion to
mammon, they will be cavalier lovers of stolen money.”
He smirked a little
and sipped a little. ‘The subtle materialist atheism of the
capitalist is more a threat to Christianity than the atheism of the
socialist,’ he thought again. He’d been saying something like
that again and again for years.
“No subtlety now.
No secret small thing. “No one but me. I am the greatest. Beyond
the boundaries of humanity. Blind, unfettered power.” Disobedient
children grown up to be unthankful impatient adults – dressed for
church.”
He yawned and
stretched. Looked at the photos of his wife and children on the wall.
He smiled and returned to his reading.
“This trajectory
takes us past heartless to intractable. Slanderers will abound.
Profligate with the same savageries they condemn in the rest of the
world. They are enemies of everything good. Untoward men and perverse
women.”
He put his reading
down and tried to remember something. Who was it? Who said, ‘I
always pray for the sick, the poor, the journalists, authorities of
the state and church – in that order. Journalists form public
opinion.’
“There is no
safety here, only thunderstrike explosions of treachery of a
corrupted society demented by pride. They keep the outward
presentation – Sunday fine – but have rejected the inner power.
No inner light.”
‘Have we
forgotten the message?’ he wondered.
“Keep away from
them. All of them.”
‘Amen,’ he
thought. Then, after a pause, ‘And God have mercy.’ He closed the
book and the paper.
2 Timothy 3:1-5
