"Osama Bin Laden, as is known, claimed responsibility for grave acts that spread division and hate among the peoples, manipulating religion to that end. A Christian never takes pleasure from the fact of a man's death, but sees it as an opportunity to reflect on each person's responsibility, before God and humanity, and to hope and commit oneself to seeing that no event become another occasion to disseminate hate but rather to foster peace".
This occurred as we in this part of the world were concluding the feast of Divine Mercy.
Indeed !!! The good is benefiting the evil. Blessed JPII certainly is interceeding for Bin Laden!
ReplyDeleteThe occurrence puts me in mind of 1953. My older sister came home from school saying that Stalin had just died and the nuns said we should pray for the repose of his soul. My mother expressed surprise, if not shock, at this. I expect she thought, like many people do, that given the death and destruction that Mr. Stalin was responsible for, prayers might not be of benefit to him. Similar sentiments are often expressed about other nefarious people of the 20th century – Hitler, Pol Pot, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut we know that the mercy of God is infinite and no one is beyond redemption in this life – much as we humans might judge things differently. God’s ways are not ours. And while it is hard for us to balance God’s mercy with His justice, it is just as well that judgment is not left to us. He alone sees the depth of the human heart.
Prior to our times the archetypical villain – for Christians at least – would have been Judas. While Our Lord’s words to him were dire, I always held out the hope that even he might have avoided eternal punishment in his last moment of life. While there was the despair of taking his own life, he also showed some remorse.
We’re told that at the Last Judgment all will be revealed and we will finally understand the balance between the justice and mercy of God. I suspect we may have some surprises. Or as someone put it: “There is some good in the worst of us and some bad in the best of us”.
The VNS is lame. Let's just be done with it, all go to church and beat our breasts when a Mass is offered for the repose of the soul of Osama bin Laden then, shall we? I pass. I hear Hitler liked his dog too.
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