http://www.spiritdaily.com/washingtondc.htm

By Michael H. Brown

I paid a visit to Washington yesterday and the mood was somber but 
calm.
Snipers patrolled the roof of the White House and there were cops on 
the
street leading to the home of our president. Around the Capitol and 
other
landmarks are cement barricades -- some there for a while now, some 
since
September 11. At the Pentagon sightseers cross a knoll to glimpse the
blackened side that was hit by an airliner, the missing walls a gaping
reminder that the country is in the midst of a war.

Everywhere are reminders of how fragile our infrastructure is. Things 
we
take for granted can crumble around us. For years we have been hearing
people prophesy that a day would come when our constructs would begin 
to
disintegrate, and it's no longer hard to envision. To travel this week 
was
to stand in a line so long at airport security in Albany, New York, 
that
they had to herd us into the parking lot. Later in the day, at
Baltimore-Washington Airport, the line for security was more than
half-a-mile long. It took two hours to reach the x-ray machines. In the
meantime, news was coming of events: a supposedly deranged person who 
tried
to break into a cockpit while in route from Los Angeles and a report 
that in
Florida there was a second case of anthrax. Once at the gate at
Baltimore-Washington, I encountered the deplaning of another flight 
that was
emptied for security reasons. There were two rumors: that several 
Afghans
had been asked to leave as passengers, and that a suspicious package 
had
been found.

Yet in the midst of all this I felt a great tranquility. When we pray, 
there
is nothing to fear. Prayer means God is with us. I felt peace driving 
around
the nation's capital and peace as I said a prayer and watched what 
seemed
like a pulsing sun near the White House and when there is any tension 
in the
days ahead I will simply pray until the tension vanishes. I urge 
everyone to
recite at least 15 decades of the Rosary and I especially urge use of 
the
Scriptural Rosary. I can't tell you the graces I have experienced from 
that!

In the days ahead, there will be reports that unnerve us, and we need 
to
know the truth. Here, we will not shirk from reporting those threats to 
you.
There is a tremendous threat. It is greater than we thought. But none 
of
this is through the prism of fear. No: in the midst of it all, in the
upheaval of our times -- in this stage where warnings are beginning to
graduate into purification -- there is only the peace of prayer and the 
joy
of knowing that we're in the hands of God.

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