Return of Murderous Thoughts

How many times have you murdered people in your mind before falling asleep?

I must have done this more than a dozen times when I was very young.

My murderous thoughts were triggered by petty reasons – some personal slight, some unresolved quarrel. But I wouldn’t sleep unless I replayed the offense and the sense of being aggrieved, and imagined ways I could exact revenge, including “terminating with extreme prejudice” to borrow a CIA phrase I learned much later in life.

When I talk about this at seminars, I joke that there was a peculiar feature of my imagining that was an early sign of my calling to be a priest.

When I thought of killing someone I hated, I didn’t think of simply killing him (it was always another boy). I wanted to kill him only after I was sure that he had committed a “mortal sin.” That way, I was sure that he would not only depart from this life, but would suffer forever in hell.

Of course I have outgrown such childish quirks, or so I thought.

But last night, after following the proceedings in Congress that brazenly railroaded the resolution on con-ass, I couldn’t sleep until I yielded to my childhood ritual.

The images and sequences were straight from the movie “V.”  

An outraged group barge into the main hall of Congress. They escort the opposition and the gallery  out to safety, and bolt the doors. Then they turn hoses on the triumphant majority. But instead of water, the hoses spout gasoline. They throw their torches and watch the majority flail and burn. They post the slow-motion clips on You Tube.

Then I slept a dreamless sleep.

The morning after, my conscience reminded me of Christ’s words that we are already responsible for acts that we only think about, even if we don’t actually do them.

Mea culpa.

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