If you are spiritually tuned in, you can never fully escape the sorrow.... and you shouldn't try to.

Fully admitting that I have an obsessive personality, having been told as much by friends, family and trained professionals, I have a hard time shaking evil events. I fixate on them and obsess over them far more than the average person and I am really not capable of fully enunciating the reasons why. In some way, I guess I am trying to make sense of the world and God's plan of action in the bigger picture, pondering how his permitting these horrific events meshes with His plan.

In this context, we have both the present and the past to draw from, the past being both the recent past and the distant past and the lesson remains that sorrow and tragedy intrude into every day and every experience and the dream of totally shutting it out is an act of sheer futility.

I am faced with this reality in this time and in this place, in the present and in the recent and distant past. On the eve of a trip to Florida, that should climax with the joy and exuberance of a football game, my mind is once again transfixed with grief.

There will be no joy for the families of Fletcher and Harper, two young martyrs who died for the crime of being Christians in the path of one whose heart was held captive by the devil. It is a common denominator, deliberately under reported, in virtually all of these school massacres. We Christians are called fanatics for even saying so. The perpetrator even made a drawing with cryptic language, looking upon himself in the mirror, as a demon looked back. Longing for, and begging for deliverance, he refused the only one who could save him- Jesus Christ.

Even if the facts do somehow get out to the public at large, they will be downplayed. They are the exception, not the rule is what will be said.

I know better.

My Florida trip tomorrow starts with paying respect to 17 victims of another horrific event of the same kind. The murderer was tormented by the same types of demons and even said so when he was arrested.

"Demons, man. Demons and voices"

Watch for yourself.

The reality of all of this is that we should arrive at a place where we reject the idea that the devil is never the cause of evil acts and understand that he is always the cause and that when we cooperate in the devil's work, bad things happen.

Today's gospel message, on this 21st Friday of ordinary time, hammers it home. Herod thought his marriage to his brother's wife was a private affair and was incensed that John the Baptist wouldn't just shut up about. Herod's sin germinated and grew with Herodias and also in the heart of her daughter Salome. Satan demanded a sacrifice then, he demands a sacrifice now.

It was John the Baptist at one point, Gina Montalto and the 16 other Parkland victims at another, and now, it is Fletcher and Harper just 8 and 10 years old.

It is madness to imagine that peace can exist in the hearts of those who reject Jesus. It is madness to imagine that sorrow can ebb, as long as they continue in that rebellion.