A year of pilgrimage yielding hard answers.
- sonlitknight
- a few seconds ago
- 7 min read
A 10-part series of articles on the pilgrimages I have made this year on land and in the soul.
PART 1- Parkland showed me that God gives "unreasonable crosses"
Saint Theresa of Avila once observed that the faith of many fails because they expect only reasonable crosses. The seemingly unreasonable crosses are at the core of Jesus message in Matthew 7 that the road to heaven will be narrow, rocky and difficult and that only a few will navigate it. One only has to take a cursory look at how the apostles were persecuted and died, and the multitudes that followed them, to be disabused of the notion of an easy path to heaven. How God's ordained will sets things in motion is easy for us to see and marvel at. The ordering of space and time and nature and the raising up of kingdoms and saints and heroes all testify loudly to a very powerful and loving God.
His permissive will is another thing altogether, as far as our ability to grasp it is concerned. Like so many others, I have really struggled desperately to find God in this storm.
The understanding of God's permissive will can be really hard to digest. Sometimes, really, really, really hard.
Explaining the concept, of following Christ to the promised land, seems easy enough for someone whose life is going pretty smooth. It's a bit tougher to sell to someone whose life is a slog but, with some work, it can be done. The difficulty really sets in when you have to say "God loves you" to a person whose life has been obliterated. Deep arguments about Grace and redemptive suffering are not often going to get a welcome ear by someone who can see only devastation, someone who fits what I call the George Bailey narrative. George Bailey, of course, is the lovable banker at the end of his rope who cries out to God and seems to get, as he put it, a bust in the mouth as an answer to a prayer.
Whatever the cause of the obliteration, the person's life is rubble.
How does God bring them back? How does the person find hope and life again?
That question has been a focus...even an obsession... in my life. This was a big, big part of the search of my personal pilgrimage. I want to know what keeps the fighters fighting under circumstances that bury the rest of us.
The difficult often extends past a singular tragedy that may have happened. This search on my part has mired me down in one particular unimaginable event that stretches faith to the limit. That event sparked my first pilgrimage destination.
Destination: Parkland/Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
I find it hard to imagine that many people have forgotten the horror we witnessed on our TV screens on that Valentines Day/Ash Wednesday nearly 8 years ago. I remember it vividly. I remember in particular when the news media announced word from the hospital that 14-year-old Gina Montalto had been added to the list of victims that didn't survive.
It was in the aftermath of this horrific event that my revulsion and my searching began to deepen. A big part of that was reading Andrew Pollack's book Why Meadow died.
The book reads like a play-by-play of the perfect storm in what Pollack describes as the most preventable disaster in American history.
This disaster would leave Andy's daughter Meadow Pollack dead along with Gina and 15 other students and staff. Another 17 would be injured, 2 more would die later by suicide and an entire community would be scared and traumatized.
The level of cowardice, politicization and outright depraved indifference by so many, in law enforcement, the school board and staff, that allowed this tragedy to go forward and destroy so many lives is a truly sickening thing. I won't go into details here. I will let you get the book and read it for yourselves.
From Top left, moving L to R and down, Gina is picture #4, Meadow is #10. I have personally communicated with members of both of their families as well as those of Jamie Guttenberg (#8) and Alaina Petty (#14).
Why am I still obsessed with this grotesque event, almost 8 years later?
I am trying to understand the mystery of God's passive will. The church teaches the nothing can occur if God does not permit it and He would never permit an event to occur unless He were intending to bring a greater good out of it.
Understanding this truth and comprehending this gets messy.
We decry the school resource officer because he didn't go in when the shots were being fired. We condemn the monitor who saw the killer walk across the campus with the gun bag without confronting him. We are angry at law enforcement for the countless tips they failed to act upon.
Where was God?
In John chapter 11, Martha says to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died". I understand how someone could feel the same way here.
It would not have taken much.
If the police had acted on one of the complaints and taken the would-be shooter into custody, the tragedy never happens. If the uber driver becomes suspicious about why a man with a rifle bag wants to be dropped off at the high school. If the monitor doesn't unlock the gate too soon.
A hundred ways God could have stepped in to thwart this plan of evil. He saw all of it from heaven. He could have intervened at any moment, and we are left to wonder why He didn't, and the families are left to pick up the pieces.
I visited the Parkland school in August. I went to Mass at Gina's church. I placed 14 long stem roses on her grave.
I'm trying to find answers.
The story of the Parkland families is one I see repeated over and over again. Lives rocked by senseless violence and unspeakable trauma. I see the tragedy experienced here, in my own life and family. It is very, very hard to pick up the pieces and keep going. It requires tremendous grace. It is very difficult to trust that God has a reason for allowing your whole world to be blown to smithereens.
These 2 girls were friends who are seen here doing volunteer work for disadvantaged children.
It is hard to understand why God would allow them to rot in the ground rather than be alive to continue that work.
It is difficult to understand why God doesn't intervene and stop a whole multitude of horrors that are this bad and even worse- abortion, child trafficking, slavery, drug running and, of course, gun violence. It is even more difficult to understand how we are supposed to try and tell the survivors that God loves them, cares for them and can protect them when all the evidence their eyes tell them is that God either doesn't exist or is either unable to help us or coldy unwilling.
We say those Catholic prayers and we try to make sense of this.
"Oh, God, come to my assistance" but He doesn't seem to. [ Our Father] "Deliver us from evil", "Saint Michael, defend us in battle". What happened? Evil has clearly won here.
This was a very important part of my pilgrimage because of the answers I needed.
What have I concluded?
It is a mercy of God to reveal the true face of the devil.
The Parkland murderer admitted that he hated Jesus and heard the voices of demons. It is important that we know and understand the malevolence of the enemy so we can always be on our guard. Ultimately, the ultimate struggle is heaven vs hell, good vs evil and understanding the devil's true agenda can be the difference between being saved and being lost.
It is a mercy of God to remind us that our ultimate happiness is not found in this world.
Every relationship will end, every possession will be taken away. Every family member separated by the Parkland tragedy endured the separation that each one of us have to endure, at some time, in some way. This is the cold fact of life. We will all have to say goodbye, sooner or later and it will always hurt.
God doesn't save us with reasonable crosses.
The old adage, God will never give you more than you can bear only applies to temptations. A more accurate adage is that God will never give you more than He can bear. Sometimes God will allow us to be crushed to force us to rely on Him. In the end, we cannot attain heaven without purgation and God blesses us when He offers us our purgatory on earth.
Suffering creates empathy and action.
The suffering of the Parkland families has motivated them to action to make the world a better place. Some of the greatest lifesaving technologies and policies were borne out of tragedy.
Martyrdom creates saints.
It is not known if all 17 victims are in heaven, but I sure like to believe they are. Chris Hixon, Aaron Feis, Scott Biegel, Meadow Pollack and Peter Wang are all credited with heroic action during the attack. Did they purchase heaven with their blood? If all 17 are not standing before God as intercessors, I'd be surprised. Maybe a couple had to go to purgatory for a while?
The point is that, if they are saved, they are the fortunate ones, and we can only hope to get to where they are. I have prayed for Gina to help my family deal with the horrors we have faced. Yes, I believe she hears me.
God will not permit something evil to occur unless He intends a greater good from it.
This is the most consoling- and mysterious- fact of all. God will not allow the devil to win. All of the evil the enemy intended to bring from this horrific event, will fall short of the good God will bring from it. That is God's promise, and I cling to it. This revelation has given me purpose and conviction in my own suffering, to persevere, to triumph.
Where death, is your victory?
