Got back from Holy Spirit Abbey on Saturday afternoon, walked into the library and found an issue of Time magazine with Osama Bin Laden's face on the cover,"X'd out" with blood. "We got him." It's Easter in the monastery. The Easter candle rises triumphantly above fragrant lilies—on Sunday's, the whole ensemble wrapped in gossamer strands of smoke sent up by incense from a golden thurible. Bin Laden is dead. Has the cause of life triumphed? What is the triumph heralded by the Easter candle in our sanctuary? No doubt, killing this man will prevent future killings. Can this killing engender life? For some reason my imagination fixes on one image: the helicopter hovering over the house. Why can't I tear myself away from that image? In Time magazine, one sees the house, the bed with bloody sheets, the compound exploding. There are no photos of helicopters . . . but it's all I can see. The image won't let me go. I know what it is. This was the only way we could reach him. The compound was surrounded by twelve foot high walls. The third floor where he lived was surrounded by another eight foot high concrete wall. (His approach had meant death to so many; he dare not let any stranger approach.) There was only one way to get to this hated and hunted man. It had to be the roof. We had to come at him from above, from high up in the sky—like an angel coming down through one of Raphael's cornflower blue firmaments, strewn with cotton ball clouds. I watch the helicopter descend. Why can't I stop looking at it? Because in my vision, the helicopter isn't making a sound. It's descent is exquisitely silent. In my imagination, a visitor from heaven is hovering in the starlight, over Bin Laden's house, its appearance magnificent beyond description. It is the most beautiful aircraft I've ever seen, becoming more beautiful as it descends, like the angel of the Annunciation, or like the star on the night Christ was born. That's it: In my vision, God is visiting Osama Bin Laden—O Silent night, O Holy night. I play out in my imagination an unlikely scenario: the great silent bird hovering over the roof of Bin Laden's house. A child appears. Lowered down by a rope, a small boy steps silently down on to the roof, tip toes over to a hatch door, and slips inside, down into the bedroom, and without a sound, climbs nimbly into the bed, lying down in the space between the monster and the woman beside him. Suddenly, the terrorist is awake. Straining his eyes in the darkness; his heart racing, an agony of speculation as he wonders who has climbed into bed beside him—and then he recognizes him. The child whose eyes fix on him out of the darkness is an orphan. He has the face of a thousand orphans, and, in the face of this one child, Bin Laden sees clearly the face of each and every orphan left in the wake of his violent career, the particular face of every child gazing directly at him in the ineffably beautiful face of this one child, the eyes, loving, trusting—inquiring. It is the Face of God. God's eyes are Love, but they feel like fire. In an instant, Bin Laden is cast into the fire. These loving eyes are the perfect Hell he has made for himself, so perfect that he must either destroy himself—or repent, accept God's forgiveness and become a new man . . . . But I am dreaming. No angel descended. The helicopter that visited Bin Laden was not noiseless. He awoke to the terrible sound of it's approach from a mile away until he thought the roar of the blades, a dozen yards above his bed, would make his head burst. There was the thunder of gunfire in the next room, a woman's screams, the sound of boots in the hallway, the last paralyzing moment—"Found!" A bullet to the head and it was over. Silence was only restored when he came to rest at the bottom of the sea . . . but nobody heard it. The scenes of annunciation, of judgment, of conversion of heart—none of these happened anywhere but in my imagination. No angel from heaven appeared. Nobody changed. There was never even the solace of a silent interlude. Oh well. Today, I must pray. Tomorrow, there will be shooting.

Father Raphael