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Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Hope in Times of Violence: Loved Ones are Closer Than We Think


Hope in Times of Violence: Loved Ones We've Lost are Closer Than We Think


Pick up the paper or turn on the TV, and we hear of another mass shooting. It seems as if some Americans are steeped in rage, and we look on in horror. What can we do? How can we help? Our initial reaction may be to pray for those in mourning and hope that  it never happens to our family and friends. As a nation, we fly our flags at half staff, and we grieve together. But we all experience grief differently.

I recently spoke at a meeting for people learning to deal with grief and loss and people shared stories of what they believed were signs they had received from loved ones who were trying to comfort them from beyond. There was the man who talked of his wife visiting him every night as he was ready to drop off to sleep. Sometimes it was dreamlike, but other times, he said, he could actually feel the bed dip down as she sat on it. He said they simply talked about his day or concerns he had.

A woman told the group about her son's love for red chiles and said that since his death she was seeing these red chiles in unexpected places. Another talked about her devastation after her son died by suicide. She says at the funeral service she looked up and for just a moment, saw him sitting in the rafters, swinging his legs and smiling down at her.

Finally, after a half a dozen similar stories, a man who had been sitting quietly started to talk. "We've heard five or six stories tonight from people who have received signs from beyond, and I suspect there are many more because I have one that I've never talked about." He went on to explain that after his wife died he was devastated, and unable to get past his grief. It was there day and night, and he couldn't function. He even sought counseling in an attempt to move forward. And then, one day, he woke up and found that he felt happy for the first time since her death, for no reason that he could fathom. His sense of grief was gone. It occurred to him that the reason he suddenly felt better was that he sensed that his wife was there with him.

"I can't explain how I knew, because I couldn't see her or hear her. Not with my ears. But I felt  her there and it was enough."

Not long afterward, he received the news that their daughter was seriously ill, and he was very afraid for her. He didn't know if he could handle another loss. Worst of all, his wife suddenly gone again. He could no longer feel her presence.

"I thought, 'Why now? Why when I need you the most do you leave me alone again?'"

Before he had a chance to slip back into depression, though, his daughter came to him with a look of wonder on her face. "Dad!" she said. "You'll never believe it. Mom is visiting me!" His daughter's experience was a little different because she had moments when she could actually see her mother, and talk to her. The man was at peace again because he knew that his wife hadn't deserted him. She was going where she was needed most.

Why Not Me? Why Do Some Receive Messages and Others Do Not?



It's impossible to say why some people have these experiences and the comfort they bring, while others do not. But that doesn't make them any less real. There are some things we simply can't understand, and some things we just have to wait for. I fall back on scripture:


No eye has ever seen or no ear has ever heard or no mind has ever thought of the wonderful things God has made ready for those who love him. - 1 Corinthians 2:9 NIV

The one lesson I've learned from the hundreds of stories I've heard is that our deceased loved ones...and heaven...are closer than we think and give us hope, even in the midst of violence. If you have a story of hope in a time of grief, I encourage you to share it. It may just bring comfort to those in mourning.



Monica Hannan is a journalist and author. Her latest book,
Gift of Death-A Message of Comfort and Hope is available on Amazon.com. 

Thursday, May 17, 2018

Heartbreak, Suicide and God's Endless Mercy


God's Mercy is For Everyone

Frequently, when I speak to groups about death and dying, people will share their own stories of loss. At a recent event, a woman came up to me with tears running down her face, to talk about her daughter who had died by suicide. She had been raised as a Catholic, with the idea that those who kill themselves are committing a mortal sin, and therefore are forever separated from the love of God. Because of this, she'd stopped going to church. She said she couldn't believe that a good God would condemn her beautiful daughter for a pain she couldn't stop. In the course of the conversation, it became clear to me that her daughter had been suffering from unremitting depression and had sought treatment, but had never found peace.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church  is clear in what the Church teaches about this. It says in paragraphs 2282-2283, "Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide. We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to Him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives." 

Somehow, this teaching has not always been made clear or been accepted, even by various clergy, and unfortunately, condemnation has sometimes taken the place of compassion and hope. This would compound a family's pain by suggesting that a loved one who commits suicide is in hell, but this has never been a church teaching. The Church has never said that anybody is in hell, even those whom history has held up as demonstrably evil. The Church's aim in its teaching is to protect the sanctity of every life, from natural conception to natural death. But surely God would not punish someone for a chemical imbalance that they couldn't help or control. To commit a mortal sin is to do so very deliberately, knowing that the sin is grave, that their actions will cut them off from God, and not caring, (CCC 1859). Padre Pio has said that this is rarely the case:



St. Padre Pio

"I believe that not a great number of souls go to hell. God loves us so much. 
He formed us at his image. God loves us beyond understanding.
And it is my belief that when we have passed from consciousness of the world, when we appear to be dead, God, before He judges us, will give us a chance to see and understand what sin really is.
And if we understand it properly, how can we fail to repent?"
-St. Padre Pio





"We have to understand that we are made to live," says Fr. Russ Kovash, Pastor of St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Williston, N.D. "If you are in an accident, when it's over your heart is pounding, and that's because we cling to life. If someone clearly doesn't want life, there's something in them that is not wired right." So for that person, God's mercy would show all the more. "The mercy of God is something we can't even fathom," Fr. Kovash adds. "It's a travesty to think  that someone is unforgivable or that someone's sin is bigger than the mercy of God."

I was at the funeral for a co-worker who had also died by suicide. The young person's father stood up and told the congregation that his child had always loved rabbits, had raised them and collected them. As this father was standing outside of the church gathering his strength to say goodbye, he said a rabbit hopped out from behind a bush and stood for the longest time just staring at him. And then it hopped away. He went back into the church to find his wife, to tell her what he'd seen. After he shared the story, she told him, with tears on her face, that she had just been praying and had asked their child to send a sign, and more specifically, to send a rabbit, to let them know that they no longer needed to worry. It didn't stop their grief or feelings of loss, but it did bring them comfort.

In a recent public audience, Pope Francis recently took a moment to comfort a young boy whose father had died as an atheist. The Holy Father shared words of comfort and mercy that point to the very heart of Jesus.

"Maybe we could cry like Emanuele when we have pain in our heart. He cries for his father who died and has had the courage to do it in front of us because there is love in his heart - he underlines - his father was an atheist but he had his four children baptized, he was a good man. It' nice that a son says his dad was "good." If that man was able to make children like that, he was a good man. God is proud of your father. God has a father's heart, your dad was a good man, he's in heaven with him, I'm sure. God has a father's heart and before an unbelieving father who was able to baptize his children, would God be able to abandon him? God surely was proud of your father, because it is easier to be a believer and to have children baptized than to be a non-believer and to have their children baptized. Pray for your dad. Talk to your dad. This is the answer." Pope Francis
If we know someone who's struggling with a loved one who has been lost by suicide, let us reach out to them, just as our Holy Father did with little Emanuele and share with them God's mercy and the Church's true teaching on this topic.
 

 


Monica Hannan is a three-time Emmy-award-winning television journalist and Catholic Press Association-honored author. She is currently pursuing an MA in Theology from the Augustine Institute.

Her latest book, Gift of Death: A Message of Comfort and Hope is available on Amazon.com. 

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

His Mother Brought Him to Lourdes, His Heavenly Mother Healed Him, Now He's a Priest


Grotto at Lourdes, France


Mothers make great sacrifices for their children, that is widely known. That they are often the gateway to sainthood perhaps less so, and yet, behind every great saint (to steal a phrase), is likely to be an attentive mother.
Fr. Christy David Pathiala

Fr. Christy David Pathiala would probably agree. He speaks of his own mother with great reverence, and along with that comes his devotion to the Virgin Mary, who touched him profoundly as a child when he was struck with a sudden seizure-like illness that baffled his parents and his doctors.

"I was in the I.C.U. for 12 hours and the doctors didn't have hope," he says. "I wasn't responding to medicines and they told my parents to prepare for my death. But they didn't give up. My parents' prayers saw me through."

He recovered from the acute illness, but it left him with unremitting fevers during which his body temperature would rise dangerously. He remembers being put into ice baths. His body temperature wasn't easy to regulate even when he wasn't sick. For instance, he says he couldn't eat or drink anything cold, or face a cold wind, as that would trigger the fever. He remembers well the worried faces of his parents, gazing down at him during his childhood illnesses.

In 1989, when he was four years old, his parents took him to the famous Marian shrine in Lourdes, France, the place where the Virgin Mary appeared to St. Bernadette. His mother had always prayed fervently for a cure for her son, and she had faith that this trip would be the difference. On their way to the shrine they passed an ice cream parlor and the young Christy looked at it with longing.

"Because ice cream was cold I couldn't eat it. When my brother ate ice cream, my father, out of pity, would always buy just the cone for me. I saw that parlor and begged my mother to let me have ice cream. "She had such faith," he said. She said, "'First we'll go to the baths, and even if he dies, he'll have that ice cream.'"

He remembers standing in line for the bath into which those searching for healing are dipped in the water that flows from the spring in the grotto where Mary appeared to St. Bernadette. While they were there, he and his father were approached by a woman pushing a child in a wheelchair. Amazingly, she placed five francs in Fr. Christy's hand and said, "Go have that ice cream." As she was leaving, she said to his father, "Pray for my son."

When his mother rejoined them, they told her about the woman and they looked everywhere for her but could not find her. Christy was dipped into the pool, and then the family returned to the ice cream parlor. "I had chocolate ice cream," Fr. Christy says. He admits he didn't particularly like it, but he was free to try other flavors afterward because the fevers were gone. He believes the woman was the Virgin Mary, and that the child in the wheelchair was Jesus. "After that day, I had the feeling she was telling me, 'I'm calling you for something.' I always talk to her in my prayers," he adds.

He didn't know at the time that the calling would be to the priesthood, but there were other clues. He was visiting Rome with his family and during a papal audience he came to the attention of Pope St. John Paul II, who bent over and hugged him. On that same trip, he was walking with his father when another priest walked up to them, pointed to his own priestly collar and said, "One day this child will become like me."

"I had forgotten it, but my father reminded me of it during my ordination," he says. "Looking back, I try to link how God has been guiding me throughout my life. I try to live in the present and let God decide how things will turn out."

It is with that philosophy that he took a sabbatical from his position as the Vice President of St. Albert's College (Autonomous) in Kerala, Southern India. He is in Bismarck, North Dakota, serving at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit while studying at the University of Mary, working toward an eventual doctorate in Computer Science.

Fr. Christy shares his faith and his stories often because he says he wants people to know about his remarkable road to the priesthood. He says he will always have a special devotion to Mary and to his own mother, the women whom he credits with changing his life.


Monica Hannan is a three-time Emmy-award-winning television journalist and Catholic Press Association-honored author. She is currently pursuing an MA in Theology from the Augustine Institute.

Her latest book, Gift of Death: A Message of Comfort and Hope is available on Amazon.com.