P.Z. Myers desecrates the Eucharist

Well, he's done it, or claims to have. From P.Z. Myers' blog:

Yes, the sad little cracker has met its undignified end, so stop pestering me. The cracker, the koran, and another surprise entry have been violated and are gone. You'll have to wait until tomorrow for the details, what little of them there are. I must quickly apologize to all you good Catholics who were hoping to attend Mass, since you can't anymore -- I have been told many hundreds of times now that cracker abuse violates your right to practice your religion. I guess you'll have to adapt. Secular humanism is a good alternative, if you aren't already flocking to join the Mormons.

Anyway, I've got important things to do today. It's my oldest son's birthday, and I told him that as a gift to me him, I'd take myself him to see The Dark Knight. I sure hope the world doesn't end before the movie does.

What more is there to say about this? While I certainly hope that Christian and other leaders will insist on the media and university officials treating this in the same way that they would if a professor had obtained a stolen Torah scroll and desecrated it (I suspect the news that he desecrated a Koran will guarantee Myers' gets more critical attention than the Eucharist desecration would), I was thinking last night what the proper Christian response is. If you think about it, P.Z. Myers has done far more to damage himself than anything any of us might do. With his Satanic pride and diabolical act, he has put himself in serious danger of hell -- and that's far worse than any worldly sanction we might (justly) see applied to him.

Thinking about this last night, I came across this passage from the biography of St. Silouan the Athonite:

I remember a conversation between [the monk Silouan] and a certain hermit, who declared with evident satisfaction,

"God will punish all atheists. They will burn in everlasting fire."

Obviously upset, the Staretz [the Elder -- Silouan] said,

"Tell me, supposing you went to paradise, and then looked down and saw somebody burning in hellfire -- would you feel happy?"

"It can't be helped. It would be their own fault," said the hermit.

The Startez answer him with a sorrowful countenance.

"Love could not bear that," he said. "We must pray for all."

And he did, indeed, pray for all.

In the matter of P.Z. Myers, go thou and do likewise. There can be no doubt that Myers is an enemy of God, and of Christians. He wants to be. But from a Christian point of view, there can also be no doubt that he is a creature of the Most High, Who loves him, and that God's heart would be grieved to lose this self-tortured man to eternity. St. Silouan teaches that we must take care not to do anything that interferes with a man's salvation.

It's plain that the raging of Christians only feeds Myers' hatred. But what would he do if the response to his hideous blasphemy is ... love? What would he do if Catholics and other Christians, and even sympathetic members of other faiths, turned up en masse on his campus simply to pray quietly for him? What kind of witness would that be to the wider culture? How might that make straight the path to salvation for P.Z. Myers, and many who now admire him? Wouldn't that be blessing those who persecute you, as Christ commands us to do?

P.Z. Myers has provided quite a witness for what militant atheism is capable of. Let's provide a counterwitness for what faithful Christianity is capable of. God may work a miracle in that man's life yet (consider the example of Saul). Let's not get in the way of the work of redemption in this lost man's life. As much as we can, let's answer hate with love.

I confess that this is hard for me to say, and even harder to do. But I believe it's the truth. See Luke 15.