Gift of Peace in Grief
“My Lord and my God.”
You have heard me talk about
my momentous 30-day silent retreat I had many years ago.
Every now and then, when I get an opportunity,
I pull out my journals from that 30-days;
it is a rich well spring for me from which to drink
and I find it incredibly enlightening and uplifting.
I reread this past week part as a prayer;
it was on first week in the spiritual exercises of 30 days of silence.
One spends the very first part of the first week, they call it,
meditating on the goodness of God in your life.
One thinks about the goodness of God
in all of creation; in all of humanity;
and then in all your friends and family
and then in yourself particularly.
It is a very grace-filled moment
and it produces a well-spring of gratitude.
Then comes a harder part of the second week:
one ponders all the evil in the world:
from all the world evil that has ever taken place
in wars, atrocities all across time.
Then one meditates upon the evil
that exists closer to home in your community,
the nation and then one ponders one’s own sinfulness.
It can be quite overpowering
and this could be quite a dark period
because you spend about 20 hours in meditation on each of these topics.
It is not a small amount of meditation,
about 20 hours pondering evil in the world.
This can be a little overwhelming
especially when one gets to one’s own evil
that you, yourself have participated in.
But you always go with Christ.
At the beginning of each prayer,
you ask Christ to go with you and to guide you
and to not show you what you cannot take
but to enlighten you through the gift of his insight;
what he sees as your personal sin.
One divides one’s life into three sections.
I did this for about 20 or so hours.
It took a whole week to go through it.
I arrive at the point of pondering my own personal evil
in the three different parts of my life;
and I’m thinking okay when I get to my youth
I’m thinking “Okay this is a real whopper!
Jesus is going to hit me over the head with all this.”
I invited Jesus to show me where the evil is in my life
and I was sure he was going to show me all those things
that the Church tells us are the biggest sins;
all the sexual sins; all the stuff that you’ve done wrong;
and so this is what I was expecting.
I didn’t get any of that.
Instead, the Lord showed me one period in my life,
which was a particularly painful period for me.
When I was 24, my best friend back then,
was killed in a plane accident in Vero Beach.
I was so mad at God that after the funeral,
I vowed I would never talk to God again;
and that I would not enter a Church because I was so angry at him.
This lasted for some period of time.
In my prayer, Christ points out that time.
He says that is your greatest sin.
I was like “Huh? That?”
I didn’t even know it was a sin.
I didn’t realize it.
“But you’re the one who took him!
I didn’t do anything. You did!”
“Yeah,” Jesus says, “but you turned away from me.
You turned your back on me and you would not talk to me.”
And Christ was right.
I wouldn’t.
Not only would I not talk to him,
I refused to listen to him anywhere in my life.
As we were having this moment in my prayer,
I could feel the intensity and I could feel Christ weeping.
He says, “That is your biggest sin.
You turned away from me.
I was there with you, crying with you
as you lost your best friend.
I was carrying you in that time and you turned away.
You wouldn’t listen.
You wouldn’t hear me.
And I was there.”
And we wept together!
I was overwhelmed.
Of course, you can imagine, I was bawling my eyes out.
At the end of this prayer, I just simply said what Thomas said:
“My Lord and my God. I am sorry.”
He said, “I know. Please, never turn away from me again.
Never turn your back no matter what happens.
No matter who you lose in your life,
I will always, always be there.
Now give to others as I have given to you.”
It was such a powerful prayer.
It was such a gut-wrenching prayer that
I had to take a day off from praying.
I was so overwhelmed by both grief and peace.
It was interesting; it was both grief and peace.
It is that sense of betrayal that we are listening to in today’s gospel.
Just understand what is happening;
that the disciples turned away from Christ.
This was their friend and they had walked with him.
They had spent three years not just knowing him
and listening to him and believing in him
but loving him and being his best friend.
And then in his weakest moment, they turned away and ran.
They turned away.
You can imagine how profoundly sad that was for him
to hang on the cross
and to have none of his friends
but his mother and his mother’s friend.
It must have been devastating.
And so, what does he do?
He comes back to them and he forgives them.
He gives them mercy.
He says, “Peace be with you.
And now the peace I have given you,
now I send you to give that to others.”
That is what we are called into;
that same deep sense of relationship
with Christ.
I do not know where you are at in your life here tonight
and how your relationship is with God and Christ,
I’m sure there are people online tonight struggling
and I get it.
There is a temptation to be angry at God and turn away.
I know what that is like. I did it.
I know exactly what it means.
I know how angry we can get when things go wrong.
I know how frustrated we can get.
I know how confusing life can be;
and to turn away, I get the temptation.
But just know that God will never, ever leave you alone;
that his saddest moment is when you will turn away.
And he will weep for you to return.
That he offers you not only forgiveness
but he offers you peace in that forgiveness.
Especially young people here tonight,
whatever happens in your life
just please trust me, know
that God will never, ever abandon you no matter what ever happens;
even if you never hear his voice;
never see him
but just trust me that he is there.
And he will be always there.
And for those of us who are older,
I don’t think the message is any different.
We struggle in the same way.
There are times when we doubt if God is there;
is Christ there beside us?
I don’t need him.
We do need him.
We totally need him.
At the end of this is I hope
that you can say to your God, to Christ,
“My Lord and my God. I believe.”
And to accept his gift of peace.
And pass that peace to others.
“My Lord and my God.”