I love happy endings, really, I do. I'm a sucker for a good chick flick or a Disney movie. To me, Easter is one of the best happy endings/new beginnings ever. Unfortunately, this year my Easter was marred by something awful. I came back to school on Bright Monday when I received a phone call from my Dad. I thought it was odd because he called right before church was supposed to start on Monday night and he was scheduled to sing. He was at church, he said, and wanted to let me know that one of our Holy Water fonts had been stolen.
Stolen? I thought to myself. Who steals from a church on the day after Easter. Actually, my father said, they don't know if it was stolen on Monday. It could have been stolen on Sunday! I was really filled with anger. Easter was the most joyous day! Our church was full of peace and happiness and then, this happens.
On the one hand, I am so angry that I could scream. My church is truly like a home to me. More importantly, it is the House of God. My mom joked when I went away to school that I wasn't homesick, I was church-sick. Hearing that something that held something as precious as Holy Water was taken from a place that I love just broke my heart. On the other hand, I was deeply saddened, too. I thought about the person who stole it. What caused them to steal it? I don't know their heart, but more than likely, they needed money. It makes me sad to think that they had to steal from a church. I am sure that if they would have knocked on the door of our church, Fr. Tom could have helped them, somehow.
Our church is pretty unique (in many ways) because we leave our church open all day. Anyone can come into pray at anytime. I spoke with Fr. Tom, and I am happy to say that this won't change. Closing our doors would be like letter the Devil win. He wants us to close our doors, he wants this to hurt us and so we cannot let him win. We're hurt but yet we have been praying for those who stole from us.
In the Resurrection Canon we sing "Let us call bretheren, even those who hate us, and in the Resurrection, FORGIVE everything and let us sing: Christ is risen from the dead. By death he conquered Death, and to those in the graves, He granted Life!"
As I alluded to in the beginning, this story has a happy ending. I received an email from my Uncle Bill. In the email was an article that I will post a link to below. Our Holy Water font was found! Basically, it was found in someone's front yard in Midlothian. How it got there, we aren't sure. There is one small mistake in the article. It states that a few weeks ago we had two icons stolen from our church. While this did happen to us, it happened about two years ago during Lent. I'm sure there was just some confusion about dates and such.
Here is the link to the article: http://www.southtownstar.com/neighborhoodstar/orlandpark/1537977,042209churchtheft.article
Christ is Risen! Christos Voskrese!
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Being open all the time is really a plus. I wish our parishes down here did that.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this with us, Katie. After reading this post, I cannot help but cry out in the words of the Psalmist:
ReplyDelete"Let God Arise and let his enemies be scattered and let those who hate him flee from before his face!
As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish as wax melts before a fire.
So let the wicked perish at the presence of God! And let the righteous ones rejoice!"