The Death of a Priest

If it should ever be my fate to fall into the hands of jihadist murderers, I hope one of them will have a better tool for my execution than a three-inch knife. As we've seen since the murder of Nicholas Berg, these guys think they're bearing the Sword for Allah, but all they can really muster is tiny little pocket knives.

I frame this story, which is the story of the death of a martyr and a priest, in such rough terms because I want to bring its practicality to your attention. The practical story is of a murder carried out by badly-educated men with primitive tools, men who lack the skill to humanely butcher a goat but carry Western cell phones to record their crime.

That is the practical story. There is another story: that we yet live in the morning of the world, in a time of holy men and martyrs.

Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo, titular of the Syrian Catholic archeparchy in Hassaké-Nisibis reports to Fides: "The whole story of Christians in the Middle East is marked and made fruitful by the blood of the martyrs of many persecutions. Lately, father Murad sent me some messages that clearly showed how conscious he was of living in a dangerous situation, and offered his life for peace in Syria and around the world."

It is the core error of our times to fail to see the connection between the practical facts, and the sacred things that move underneath them. Some refuse to believe in the sacred at all. Others try to wall out the world, so they can live in a place of imagined order.

The two things go together. They must be seen together. The world that seems so small and petty, full of little men and little knives, only barely hides the deeper currents. You can learn to see them.