My good papist colleague would be offended and pleased. Because, today, between dealing with the crowds in Venice, I ducked into a church for prayer and there was the daily mass on, so I stayed.

Relax. I did not partake. I’m Reformed: besides my Italian is appalling (I could follow it better if it was in Latin). But I stayed. Because of solidarity. While everyone else was looking at the Titians and sculptures, I noted that these were made for the glory of God (more than Venice).

We forget whom the art was made for at our peril.

Oh come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!

For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.

Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.”

Therefore I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.”

(Psalm 95 ESV)

I managed to read the lectionary earlier today and was not intending to use this passage: however wandering around the streets of Venice. People are hurrying everywhere, trying to see all the famous art; to imbibe the culture. They are not sitting in the cafes where the working men are, nor are they praying with them. They miss the point of it all. Italy was built on the Catholic faith, and without the gospel proclaimed (for they have to: they are liturgical, and the bible is read, and that will suffice) and the faith, Italy loses its way and the art, the culture, which is built around the worship of the Almighty fails.

And this failure, this implosion of the family, this loss of joy, this turning of the culture into a museum comes from the pit.

It is utter senseless wordliness to think that the devil does not try to find a way in a man’s consciousness – and conscience – and move him to commit horrible acts: child abuse, murder, rape, sodomy, and the like. He must find a way first, and then he will do with his victim what he can.

At times, Satan will manage to instill in such men – or women – a great desire to do harm, preying on their hate, or envy, or vanity. Charles Manson’s, Waco’s, Breivik’s and other tragedies of the sort can be only explained in this way.

It is very reasonable to suppose that we are here in front of another of such satanic “bingo” experience, as for what I know pilots are regularly tested as to their psychological fitness. And please notice the cold-blooded system of slowly losing altitude, and the obvious result that only in the very last seconds the passengers realised – or rather, started to realise – what was happening.

Two days ago I posed the question of whether the flight gave the people the time to die prepared. It would appear the window was very, very limited, and who knows how many were taken in Satan’s net. Looks like a chilling, satanic bingo to me.

We can reason away the presence of Satan in the world at our heart’s content, but we do so at our own risk. We can attribute atrocious acts invariably to momentary loss of reason, but we show with this attitude that we are the ones who refute to reason. Satan is there, working in the shadow, and throwing his nets.

The word of Christ must be proclaimed. For we have an enemy. There is opposition. There Lion of Venice is but a sculpture, but Satan prowls, slinking slowly into oor culture and churches, knowing that he has to act now, for his time is limited.

We forget that at our peril.