Think about the beautiful things in your life. The unshakable love of your parents for you. What it felt like to fall in love with the love of your life. Your first baby’s first smile. All the shared experiences that forged unbreakable bonds between you and your siblings. Memories of crazy-fun times spent with friends. When winter turns to spring and summer to fall. A mountain sunset or a beach-side sunrise. Think about all of it, and then ask yourself if, under any circumstances, you’d ever sacrifice it all for a perfect stranger?
Now imagine you’re Arnaud Beltrame, a police officer dispatched to the scene of the hostage situation that occurred in Trebes, France last week. A terrorist has stormed into a supermarket and taken fifty hostages. On the way to the store, he carjacked a vehicle, killing one person in the car and wounding the other. He then fired six shots at a group of police officers, wounding one in the shoulder. He entered the supermarket guns blazing, murdering two and wounding more than a dozen others. The terrorist, now claiming to be a soldier of the Islamic State, is demanding, in exchange for his hostages’ lives, the release of a fellow Islamic State soldier who participated in the November 2015 Paris attacks which left 130 people dead and about 350 wounded. During the ensuing hostage negotiations, all but one of the hostages, a young mother, are freed.
It’s a glorious early spring day in southern France. Officer Beltrame has a loving mother and brother. He’s in the midst of a brilliant career as a police officer. He and his fiance, Marielle, are busy finishing the marriage preparation course required by the Catholic Church and planning their June wedding.
But, Officer Beltrame, with every beautiful thing in life to live for, lays down his gun and walks into the store to take the place of the last hostage. Inevitably, two hours after entering the store, he is shot and stabbed and later dies of his wounds, but not before marrying Marielle in a deathbed ceremony conducted by the local parish priest
His mother said, “I am not surprised that it was him. He has always been like this.” She described her son as someone whose reason for being was to defend others’ lives. His brother said,” He was very aware of what he was doing; he didn’t hesitate for a second.” French President, Emmanuel Macron, said, “In giving his life to end the deadly plan of a jihadist terrorist, he fell as a hero.”
Watching the news every day, it’s easy to believe that the West has lost its soul. It seems perfectly clear that materialism and hedonism have killed off our cultural conscience in favor of the guilt-free pursuit of our own selfish goals. But, Arnaud Beltrame’s story recalls the sacrifice of another innocent person who, two millennia ago, willingly surrendered himself to the brutality of insensate evil for the sake of others .
If the West can still produce selfless heroes like Officer Beltrame, there’s reason for hope.
Have a Happy Easter.
Family Means Funny 