Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: ENOUGH (01/07/21)
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TITLE: Gesture of Hope | Previous Challenge Entry
By Kenneth Bridge
01/10/21 -
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A pall of acrid smoke lay heavily on the city. Suffocating smoke, everywhere and always, the one constant amidst the turbulence of those years, when the best of men were swallowed up by the beasts of men. Fire and smoke were fitting accompaniments to anarchy. Liberty should be adorned with sunshine and gentle breezes.
He could no longer walk the streets in his clerical robes. Once they offered immunity. The priesthood was part of the Third Estate, protectors of God's people, guardians of justice and liberty. Now, he was an enemy, a remnant of the Ancient Regime, an oppressor of liberty. The world was to be made new, unencumbered by old, failed ideas. Little did the Jacobins who attacked the very root of civilization understand that nothing begat nothing. It provided no foundation on which to build liberty. Man was not born free, as Rousseau proclaimed. The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. How many confessions had he heard, and even wondered at the grace of God that used him as an instrument of God's mercy. If those who confessed their sins to him knew how much forgiveness he needed, would they ever bare their souls to him? But God's grace was more than enough for him. Without God it was not enough; with God forever enough.
The crowd thickened as he neared the central plaza. Many were lusting for blood. There seemed never to be enough to slake their appetite for murder. Others went out of fear that their absence would mark them as enemies.
Pere Jean had another purpose in mind. The crowd became impassable as he drew near enough to hear the clanking of metal against wood as the blade dropped and shouts of bitter elation as the resounding thud of metal and wood announced a beheading. He felt a sudden nausea rise up. He managed to quell it and steeled himself. The oppressive weight of evil began to crush him. "Lord strengthen me for this," he said within his heart.
Turning down a narrow alley, he felt for the key in his shirt, removed it, drawing comfort from the cool weight of it against the palm of his hand. He fit the key into an iron lock. The heavy door groaned as he pushed it open. The light shining through stained glass patterned the floor momentarily until the door closed behind him. In times past he always paused to contemplate the subtle beauty of that light. Now he did not have the time. He locked the door behind him and scurried down the dim hallway to the sanctuary. He hurried through the mass; to call it perfunctory exceeded any true description, but God considered the inner heart above the outward performance.
He pushed against the front doors and they opened enough for him to squeeze through. They had been barricaded, but never fortified. Glancing toward the prisoners waiting for their turn, his eyes caught sight of her honeyed hair, now loose rather than bound up, but of a color that was unmistakable and he knew he was in time. He had known her all his life, Madame Odette Comtois. He had called his sister Odie when they were small. Her heart was tender, her anger at injustice, formidable, her only crime, that she had married a Vicomte.
Rough hands dragged her toward her doom. He stepped into her view and she saw him. Keeping his hands close to his chest he furtively signed the cross for her eyes only. He saw in her grateful eyes that she had seen. Every bit of his strength was needed as stocks slammed down over her graceful neck and hands. An intense pain dropped from top to bottom through his own heart as the violent trembling of the wood ended with a shuddering clank. He could see the mouths of the crowd moving but no sound reached him above the roaring in his ears.
Never did Pere Jean remember feeling so desolated, Pushing through the crowd, he attained the main boulevard. "My Lord, my Lord, why hast Thou forsaken us?" Jesus knew the pain he was in. His sole purpose remaining was to reawaken hope in Jesus. Would hope be enough until the world had enough of this evil? It would. "How long, O Lord, how long?"
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