A mass was held this week in a Catholic church in the southern French city of Trèbe to honor a national hero. A terrorist hijacked a car, and shot at a group of police officers that were fitness training, jogging along the side of the road., Then the lone terrorist came to a small supermarket where, among others, he took a young female hostage. The kidnapper demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the 2015 Paris jihadist attacks that killed 130 people. Lieutenant Colonel Arnaud Beltrame, former officer in the French army, was the first on the scene. He disarmed himself, discretely set his live cell phone on the counter while beginning negotiations with the terrorist. The officer then offered to exchange places with the young woman. The terrorist accepted and the grateful woman fled. Through the police officer’s phone, the special police forces outside could hear everything that was happening in the store. They heard the negotiations and the terrorist stabbing the policeman several times. When the terrorist started shooting police reinforcements stormed the scene and killed the aggressor. Arnaud died later of his wounds in a local hospital. I find this story truly heroic. I keep imagining the officer’s wife meeting the woman he changed place with. What would she say of this great sacrifice? Would they develop a relationship? Would there be bitterness, friendship, a sort of bound between them? We are approaching the season of Passover. In the days of the Jewish Temple, people believed that they owed their salvation, their escape from spiritual death, to the killing of a lamb. Thousands of lambs were killed in one day. On that day, the Temple looked more like a slaughterhouse than a place of worship. How were these lambs killed? By the slicing of the carotid and tracche, the same way that incidentally, doctors concluded that this heroic officer who took the place of another was killed. Another kind of first-responder!
1 Comment
Merry Lu
3/30/2018 08:35:54 am
Excellent, Patrick------
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