Christopher Hitchens has passed from this brief life on earth this week.  And though I never knew him nor ever even read a single book of his, I have grieved over his passing as though he were a close friend or relative.

In the Catholic Tradition, I have prayed for God's mercy and eternal life for Hitch's soul.  Why on earth should I care about Christopher Hitchens?  In fact, that I have cared quite deeply has shocked me to some degree.  Christopher Hitchens' passing really ought mean nothing to me.  Nothing whatsoever. 

The worth of a single human life today has shrunken to such an infinitesimal sum that heaps of babies' fetal forms are shoved in plastic trash bags and thrown into dumpsters.  Cremated humans are carelessly dropped in landfills.  Beasts of the field get more outcries on their behalf than human babies.  Christians and Jews are being slaughtered for their faith around the world this very minute without a peep from the human rights groups.  Why on earth would any person grieve the passing of another human being in this "enlightened" era?  Grieving the loss of a single human soul?  That's so yesterday.  So superstitious.  So pitifully backward and downright silly.

Grieve over one life snuffed out?  Seriously? 

Especially Christopher Hitchens.  One of his generation's most prominent God-haters.

Hitchens spent his very substantial intellect, oratory gifts and writing talents defaming God, slandering Him as nothing but a tyrant, blaming God and belief in God for every sin of man throughout the ages. 

If I were thinking in human terms, I could not help but rejoice at Christopher Hitchens' passing.  I would be thanking God that another of His vociferous enemies had gone silent now, surely condemned to hideous suffering for all eternity among his own kind in hell.  But I can't get there.  No matter how hard I've tried.  I don't even want to care about this disgusting, avant-guard atheist or what may be his fate.  Let God be alone in meting out His own unfailing, perfect justice.  I want no part of it.  I tempt God to deny me my own salvation if I even go there.  It's not my business.   It's between God and Hitch.  It always has been. 

Yet, I cannot shake this passionate concern for Christopher Hitchens' eternal soul.   When I lay down upon my pillow at night, prayers done for the day, Christopher Hitchens comes unbidden into my last thoughts before sleep.  And the polite inner voice of the Holy Spirit, known so well to me now, beckons me to say once last prayer before saying goodnight. 

Pray for him, the lost child, the one who never saw, the one I loved so heartily.  Pray for your brother, Hitch, beckons the Holy Spirit.  Sometimes, I hate that Voice.  No, it isn't the voice of a tyrant, as Hitch imagined it.  It's the voice of an eternally, perfectly loving Father, gently prodding me to care a tiny shred for the passing of one of His prodigals.  Christopher Hitchens took his gifts from God and wastefully, extravagantly, foolishly, hatefully used them to dissuade other human beings from even giving God a chance to redeem them.  I do not want to care what happens now to Christopher Hitchens' soul.  Yet, I must.   

It's a mystery to me.   Often, it's an infuriating mystery.  I really do not want to care.  Much less do I want to spend even a fragment of the scant time I have left on earth praying for a man who did all in his power to spread hate for God. 

Yes, I am surely the jealous, resentful, younger child from Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son.  It makes me angry that Christopher Hitchens might have one more chance to see the Light, be warmed in the Glow, be wrapped in the arms that stretched wide upon the cross in anguished glory so that his soul could find eternal joy and privilege as a treasured son.  Why on earth should I beseech God to give Hitch just one more chance?  It makes no sense.  None whatever.  Let Hitch rot in the real tyranny of hell, forever condemned to thirst for the Living Water he so carelessly spurned his entire life on earth.  It would serve the SOB right, if you ask me.

Nevertheless, my soul has grieved the passing of Christopher Hitchens' soul.  I've worried over him and have taken my pleas to God for Hitch to have just one more chance to recognize the Christ.  I've begged our Heavenly Father to please, one more time, give Hitch the chance to clearly see Jesus,  whose arms still stretch wide to enfold his child, Hitch.

And for the life of me I can't explain it.  But this morning when I awoke, I had a very clear minds-eye picture of Christopher Hitchens Tebowing in heavenly splendor amidst a heralding choir of angels singing.  A prodigal son returned home.

Could Hitch really be Tebowing today?  Well, I just don't know.  But neither does anyone else.  And I'll take it.  Because I know just as surely as I'm sitting here, still on earth, that as the Holy Spirit has beckoned me to pray for Hitch, so has He beckoned millions and millions of other faithful souls around the world.  And it is quite possible that those gazillion prayers were answered with a mercy so infinite that not a one of us can ever understand its mystery.   It's quite possible that Christopher Hitchens was a victim in his early life of some trauma that prevented his soul from ever really seeing, much less willfully rejecting, his Savior.  Only God knows the answer.  Only God can be the judge.

So, I'll just do a little Tebowing of my own and bow to the mystery of God, thankful that He will be equally merciful towards me -- a lousy, hateful sinner.

This is me, God.  Tebowing for Hitch, my brother.  Love him, please Jesus, as You have loved me.