November 5, 1994
"Man, remember, until an hour before the devil fell, God thought him beautiful in heaven."
Arthur Miller - The Crucible
There are predators everywhere, slyly and secretly awaiting their prey, ready to pounce when you least expect it. They are malicious and merciless as they plunder and pillage the souls of the weak and defenseless - and those who think they are safe in their presence. Susan Smith is such a poisonous predator.
Yesterday's headline on the front page of the Boston Herald screamed in large, bold print, "How Could She!" - on Susan Smith's killing of her two small boys, drowning her babies. How could she! How could she do what she did? A few days ago she brought me to tears as I watched her on the Today Show, Good Morning America and CNN as she cried and begged for the safe return of her children - who were in the back seat of her car when it was supposedly carjacked by a black man in rural South Carolina. For a couple of days she held the people of America in the palm of her hand - but, now, that trust and sympathy have turned to disbelief and anger. There was no carjacking, no black man, only a blazing bandit and betraying beast of a predator disguised as a mournful mother.
In the Lord's Prayer we ask God to, "deliver us from evil." And in the prayer of Saint Michael we ask him to,"protect us from the wickedness and snares of the devil." But there are just somethings God and Saint Michael cannot help us with or save us from - the devious darkness and deeds of extreme and excessive evil. Free will allows us to choose between doing good and avoiding evil. But when we choose evil we often try to deceive ourselves in the conceit of our self-centeredness and self-righteous - such are our weaknesses, such are Susan Smith's.
I'm sure an hour before she killed her children in Union, South Carolina, Susan Smith was a good mother - loving, kind and attentive. Her two sons placed their love, lives and trust in her maternal care - she was their world and they cherished her. As she drove along the rural roads on the way to the lake, did she laugh and joke with her boys? Did she give them candy to keep them quiet and make them less rambunctious? Did they innocently ask her, "Are we there yet?" Did she kiss them goodbye and say, "Mommy loves you?" Only God knows what thoughts went through her mind as she pushed her car into the lake with her two boys strapped in the back seat - and simply walked away.
Only God knows the terror the two boys felt as the car started to sink and fill with water. And did Susan Smith hear their loving cries of, "Mommy! Mommy!" as the water surrounded their small bodies. Did she hear their frightening cries for help as she ran off into the night's darkness, a fallen woman clutching Satan's hand.
W. B. Yeats wrote, "Evil comes to all of us wearing as its mask all the virtues." We have all worn such masks. Susan Smith wore such a mask, that of a loving and caring mother who was full of tears and concern - not for her boys but for herself.
2:30pm - Corpus Christi Church - Sandwich, MA
contact: fortheheartcries@gmail.com
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