CALVARY CHARGE

I awoke in a dream, astride a warhorse, and rode into that scene on Calvary. I bristled when I saw them flail the Lord to the ground. "To battle!" I sounded the call to arms and drew down my mask of armor. "I will crush them who make my Beloved Mary weep!"


I trotted my mount up and down the front formation of horsemen in battle array and banged my broadsword against my iron shield pressed onto my armored heart. I carved from the pit of my soul the anger that so welled up because of the pain and suffering of the Lord at the pitiless desecrating hands of the enemy. I addressed the troops with a clamor for vengeance against them who rain blows and spite against my Lord.
"Stout hearted Christians!" I shrilled, frothed, and thundered. "We have long endured through the centuries with nothing but mumbling prayers in our hearts their cursed spite and torture of our Good Lord Jesus Christ. And now in this dream, this twist of fate, this time tunnel, we stand armed with the wherewithal to correct this monstrosity, this abysmal blasphemy against the very sinew of our beliefs, against every moral fiber of our humanity". I choked back the tears and the anger.
Today we shall charge Pilate's vaunted Roman phalanx. Not frontally because history has armed us with warfare lessons. Each third of us will engage both sides left and right and then slice open the weak middle. We shall send back Pilate's manicured hands to Caesar in Rome with a note, "not worthy of the Roman empire". Then we will drag and litter the wretched hearts and insides of the Pharisees and the jailers on the sands of Golgotha." With that I turned and leveled my lance, aimed it straight at the Centurion's throat, spurred my steed, and charged on thundering hoofs. I drew past and found only air. When I reined my warhorse, reeled and looked back, I saw that the Lord had pulled the Centurion to safety and embraced him. That's when the meaning of Calvary dawned on me. "Forgive the foolish violence in my heart O Lord", I cried. You could have smote them with Your Legions of Angels. But You chose not. You did not need my puny cavalry charge to be saved. You showed by the Cross that to turn the other cheek, to suffer and die is the Way to True Salvation and To Rise Again."