Suffering Unleashes Love

On September 12, 2015, I gave a presentation (called "Love Unleashes Life") at Calgary's 40 Days for Life formation afternoon.  In that presentation, I quoted from St. John Paul II's "Salvifici Doloris" (On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering).  He wrote,

"We could say that suffering . . . is present in order to unleash love in the human person, that unselfish gift of one’s 'I' on behalf of other people, especially those who suffer. The world of human suffering unceasingly calls for, so to speak, another world: the world of human love; and in a certain sense man owes to suffering that unselfish love that stirs in his heart and actions."

The wonderful Victor Panlilio kindly recorded my presentation, and this (above) is a one and a half minute clip he put together.

When I Went to Auschwitz, by Stephanie Gray

Nine years ago I travelled to Poland; while there, I visited Auschwitz.  That came to mind today, August 14, because this day marks the day that a saint, Father Maximillian Kolbe, was murdered by the Nazis.  I went to the very cell where that atrocity occurred, and this was my reflection to family and friends back home:

Our next morning was extremely sobering as we went to Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II/Birkenau concentration camps.  I'm finding it difficult to find the words to describe the experience of walking around a place built for such evil.  It was gut-wrenching.

We were shown how the SS viewed everything about the Jews and other prisoners as a commodity and refused to let anything go to waste. They used clothes for soldiers and other Germans; they used hair for socks, felt stockings, and yarn; they used even human ashes from the ovens for fertilizer.  Human life was viewed as disposable, an object to be used or discarded.

Two images stand out in my mind in particular: 1) a newborn baby's white knitted sweater amidst rows of clothes and 2) piles of medical aids (crutches, leg braces, etc).  Children?!  Sick people?!  It is impossible to understand how they could harm anyone, but one is especially bewildered at how they could attack the most weak and vulnerable.

At the entry to one of the buildings, the museum placed this quote by George Santayana, "The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again."

And this is how, regrettably, the tragedy of the Holocaust lives on.  While society may remember the specific event of the Holocaust, it seems to forget the philosophy behind it.  When we fail to recognize the inherent dignity of human life, when we persist in considering the sick and the young (pre-born) as a burden, an inconvenience, or as having a low quality of life (the Nazis believed in “lives unworthy of life”) then our society maintains the very mentality that drove the SS to such destruction.

LIGHT AMIDST DARKNESS

This is why a Polish man who lived during the time of the Holocaust is such an inspiration to me: St. Maximillian Kolbe.  He was God's gift to a dark world, bringing an example and a message of hope for “such as a time as this.”

One of the most emotional moments at Auschwitz I was at Building 11 (execution block), cell 18, the cement basement cell where Father Kolbe was killed, a priest who freely offered to take the place of a fellow prisoner who had been sentenced to death.  For two weeks Kolbe sat cold and naked without food or water.  He helped calm those within the cell and surrounding ones by singing and praying.  The museum made a memorial to Kolbe in that cell and tells his story by saying the following: “Within concentration camps there were some resistance movements that were organized.  We tell Kolbe's story because he showed the greatest resistance to the Nazis: by staying human.”

In preparation for that trip, I had read a book about St. Kolbe called A Man for Others, by Patricia Treece.  In it is this powerful quote from Saint Kolbe, worth remembering on this day in particular:

“When grace fires in our hearts, it stirs up in them a true thirst for suffering...to show...to what extent we love Our Heavenly Father..for it is only through suffering that we learn how to love...In suffering and persecution [we]...reach a high degree of sanctity and, at the same time...bring our persecutors to God.”

Lessons from a Fire, by Stephanie Gray

Photo by MICHAEL MANIEZZO

One year ago, shortly after 7am, on a morning I had planned to sleep in, I was awoken by a fire.  Yelling startled me awake and when I looked out my bedroom window where I used to live in Brampton, Ontario, I saw that my breathtakingly beautiful place of worship, an all-wood onion-domed Ukrainian Catholic Church, was surrounded by fire trucks.  Initially, I just saw smoke.  But it quickly turned to flames.  And it didn’t take long until the whole building was engulfed by a fiery inferno.

Six days before, I had experienced deep serenity as I stepped onto my patio to watch the setting sun light up the evening sky, illuminating the church’s dramatic silhouette.  It was as though a piece of a Ukrainian village had fallen from the sky and landed in a field in Brampton, bringing quiet and peace to the most populated part of Canada, the Greater Toronto Area.  People of all faiths and backgrounds regularly drove up to take in the awe and wonder of St. Elias the Prophet’s magnificent architecture.  When people would walk in, they would be hushed by the presence of the sacred.  The smell of incense and beeswax candles (the only form of lighting for the whole sanctuary, excepting sun beams shining through windows) were sweet to the senses.  The floor to dome iconography that took 10 years to complete was breathtaking to behold.  St. Elias was an experience of Heaven on earth.  In every way, it drew the human experience to heights that went beyond this world.

But less than one week later, I sat stunned and in shock as I watched St. Elias burn—literally—to the ground.  I can’t quite get an image out of my head, of my dear shepherd, Fr. Roman Galadza, sitting on the frozen ground between the rectory and the church, his black cassock blowing in the bitter wind, head in hands, as he watched what he had labored to build for over 25 years disappear before his eyes.  Agonizing.

I have so many memories from that day—hearing gut wrenching sobs, hundreds of people flocking to grieve, religious leaders of all kinds coming to express condolences, but what stands out most is two-fold, and both are Fr. Roman’s example.  Amidst this loss, Father knew what was most important—who the church was built for, not the building itself.  And so, with deep concern for the Body of Christ, he asked the firemen if they would attempt to rescue Our Lord.  Donning their oxygen masks, several brave men entered the inferno and successfully collected the Body of Christ and His holy word—The Gospel Book.  A fireman told me later that when he saw his colleague walking from the church, hunched over, carrying something wrapped in a blanket, he panicked thinking, “A body! Oh my gosh! There was a child in there.”  No, there was not, but what—who—his colleague was carrying demanded a kind of reverence with which he so carefully cradled the Sacred, that which we would give to a precious child—and more.

Then there was what Father did only a couple hours after the fire.  As more and more people flocked to the parish house, Father quickly prepared a prayer service for us all—and it was a service of thanksgiving.  That is right: amidst anguish and loss, he immediately focused our perspective by leading us to give thanks.

In his booming voice he recited from Job 1:21, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away,” and we responded as Job once did: “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

And a second time he boldly declared, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away!”

“Blessed be the name of the Lord!” we cried.

And a third time his voice thundered: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away!”

We shouted, “Blessed be the name of the Lord!”

This example has stayed with me ever since, and has been a source of consolation in trying times.  It is easy to give praise when life is good—but can we give praise when life gets difficult?  Can we maintain the perspective that no matter what we experience, God is good?  Can we continually give God the praise He is due?

At St. Elias on April 5, 2014, it was so tempting to only lament what we had lost, but the leadership of Fr. Roman challenged us to give thanks for what we had received—to remember the 25 beautiful years the church building had been a sanctuary for prayer, praise, and healing. 

Life delivers both joys and sorrows, and we cannot always control these.  But what we can control is our response—and look for opportunities to express gratitude and praise amidst the most trying of times.  Moreover, while objects may cease to exist, subjects do not.  How much more tragic than the destruction of a beautiful building is the destruction of a beautiful soul?  Protecting and nourishing the temple of the Holy Spirit should be our primary aim.

Indeed, each Sunday at St. Elias, and now in a school gym until the new church is built, the congregation lifts its voices and reverently sings,

“Let us who mystically represent the Cherubim, and sing the Thrice-holy Hymn to the life-giving Trinity, now lay aside all cares of life, that we may receive the King of all, escorted invisibly by ranks of angels. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

As we continue in this Easter season, let us remember that material possessions or not, we can receive the King of all.  So let us lay aside all cares of life.

Address at Westmont College Chapel by Stephanie Gray, March 16, 2015 in Santa Barbara

Learning to Weep by Stephanie Gray

Image source: File:Sépulcre_Arc-en-Barrois_111008_12.jpg

I can still remember the day—it was pouring rain.  Water was dripping from my hood and the guy I was speaking with, who was equally soaked, moved with me under a roof overhang.  I had just met this student on a university campus where he revealed profound suffering: he had been sodomized as a child, was so poor that he and his single mother had lived on food stamps, and he struggled with suicidal tendencies.  I remember at one point in the conversation, as I prayed for inspiration for the right words to say, all I could do was weep.  And as I let the tears pour down my cheeks, the rain continued to fall from the sky as if the Heavens were also weeping at his pain.

That encounter came to mind when I heard about Pope Francis’ recent visit to the Philippines when he was asked by a 12-year-old, who had suffered great poverty and abuse, why God allows innocent children to suffer.  And Pope Francis echoed a sentiment then that he’s expressed several times throughout his pontificate: Let us learn how to weep.  When we do so, we seek to understand—we seek to acknowledge the painful journey of the other. 

Let us learn how to weep.

It has been said, “Tears are words the heart can’t express,” and in the face of another’s wounds, it is often the best way to communicate sympathy.  I remember a team member coming to me on a university campus where I’d trained her to dialogue with students about abortion.  She had had a particularly tough encounter with a very angry young man who was a homeless student and spoke about horrible evils he’d experienced in life.  He had been threatening, had been yelling and swearing.  And she came to me in tears.  But her tears weren’t because she feared for her own safety.  They weren’t tears of feeling hurt by him.  They were tears of hurting for him.  She told me she felt his pain so deeply that she was overcome with sorrow.

Let us learn how to weep.

Several years ago when I spoke at a camp for the National Evangelization Team (NET), training young Catholic missionaries in pro-life apologetics, I arrived an evening early and took part in their night of Mass, prayer, and praise and worship.  In the preceding days I had met many university students who had shared their stories of suffering with me, including the horror of rape.  During that night of prayer and song, I remember being overcome with tears as I thought about all the pain these young souls were carrying.   

Let us learn how to weep.  When we do so, we maintain a softness to our spirit that allows us to be gentle with peoples’ fragility and sensitive to their suffering and needs. 

In 2013, Pope Francis spoke in Lampedusa, a small island off the coast of Italy where migrants often travel there by sea from Africa, many of them losing their lives during the rough journey.  In remembering such tragedies there, Pope Francis said the following during his visit:

“Who among us has wept for these things and things like this?  Who has wept for the deaths of these brothers and sisters?  Who has wept for the mothers carrying their babies?  For these men who wanted something to support their families?  We are a society that has forgotten the experience of weeping, of suffering with.”

Let us learn how to weep.

Beginning the New Year and Each New Day in Prayer

The start of a new year is like the start of a new day—while incapable of changing the past, we can certainly do in the present moment that which we wish we’d done in the past, so as to make the future better.

I started this new year fulfilling one of my goals, which is to read more.  So I started reading Peter Kreeft’s book “Prayer for Beginners” and he gives fantastic advice that, if heeded, will make our year, and days, better.  Consider his insight:

 “Eating keeps your body alive, and prayer keeps your soul alive.  Praying is more important than eating because your soul is more important than your body.  Your soul is more important than your body because your soul is you, your personality, your self.  You will get a new body after death, in the resurrection at the end of the world.  But you will not get a new soul…Praying keeps your soul alive because prayer is real contact with God, and God is the life of the soul as the soul is the life of the body.  If you do not pray, your soul will wither and die, just as, if you do not eat, your body will wither and die.

***

“Three reasons God commands us to pray correspond to our three deepest needs, the fundamental needs of the three powers of our soul: prayer gives truth to our mind, goodness to our will, and beauty to our heart.  ‘The true, the good, and the beautiful’ are the three things we need and love the most, because they are three attributes of God.

“Prayer gives truth to our mind because it puts us in the presence of Truth itself, the divine Mind who designed our minds and our lives and our whole universe.  It gives goodness to our will because it puts us ‘on line’ with God, in love with the God who is love and goodness.  That is his essence.  In prayer we become like the God we pray to and conform to; we catch the good infection of Godliness by contact.  It gives beauty to our heart because plunges us into the heart of God, which is the eternal energy of infinite joy.  That is why it gives us joy and peace and delight and happiness.”

So as we enter another year, let’s remember that if we are going to eat each day, all the more we should pray each day.  And as many say that the most important meal is breakfast, so too will praying at the beginning of our days be transformative.  So let’s take time to be still, to be silent, and to communicate with the God who loved us into being.

Appearance on EWTN on Nov. 7, 2014