The Feast of the Guardian Angels

Today is the feast of the Guardian Angels.
It is also the anniversary of the beginning of the sniper spree in the Washington, DC suburbs. There had been a single earlier shooting, but it was on that Tuesday morning that the snipers drove up and down Connecticut and Georgia Avenues, shooting one person after another, announcing to all that they were on the loose. Many of the shootings took place near my house and in the neighborhoods where I run my errands. This morning I filled up at the gas station where the taxi driver was murdered.
My husband called me from work to let me know what was going on. I stayed home with Hambet for the rest of the day. For weeks, every walk across a parking lot was an act of fervent trust in our Guardian Angels. No more strolling down the sidewalk at Hambet’s short-legged pace; no more pausing to let him look at the dogs in the pet store window. My husband takes the bus to work, and I was afraid for him every morning and evening. (He wouldn’t let me drive him to the train station.)
Now it’s a year later, but I still think of those terrible weeks in October — it was then that my husband got in the habit of listening to the news on the radio when he went downstairs for breakfast. He’d never done that before. Eventually the shootings stopped, but he stayed in the habit. The last shooting took place only a few miles from our house. That morning we didn’t need the radio to tell us there’s been another murder — we were awakened by the sound of helicopters, and the thud-thud-thud went on for hours.
May God have mercy on the souls of the victims, and grant conversion to the murderers.