The 'repentance' of Judas ... wait until that one is picked up by the Blogisterium ...

Sátira del suicidio romántico - Leonardo Alenza

The Pope of surprises.

I was wondering what the Pope would have to say about Today's Gospel - I wasn't disappointed.

Speaking of the lost sheep Francis explained that it did not get lost because it didn’t have a compass but because it "had a sick heart" and was running away “to be distant from the Lord and was satiating an inner darkness”.

And pointing out that the Lord knows these things and never neglects to go out and look for the lost sheep, the Pope said the Lord’s attitude towards Judas is so symbolic:

“Judas is the most perfect lost sheep in the Gospel: a man with a bitter heart, someone who always had something to criticize in others, he was always ‘detached’. He did not know the sweetness that comes of living without second ends with others. He was an unsatisfied man!” he said.

The Pope said that because of the darkness in his heart Judas was separated from the herd. He said – more in general - that darkness can lead to living a double life: “a double life that, perhaps painfully, many Christians, even priests and bishops lead...”

Pointing out that Judas himself was one of the first bishops, the Pope recalled a beautiful sermon given by Father Mazzolari in which he described Judas as a lost sheep: “Brother Judas, he said, what was happening in your heart?” Francis said we need to understand lost sheep: each and every one of us has something in us of the lost sheep. - Vatican Radio

According to the narrative from Vatican Radio,  the reporter interpreted what the Pope said explaining, or suggesting the 'repentance of Judas' ... it's an interesting consideration.

The Repentance of Judas

The Pope went on to explain that is not so much a mistake but a disease of the heart that makes a sheep wander and he said it is something the devil exploits.

Just as it was with Judas whose heart was ‘divided’. And finally when Judas saw what harm his double life had wreaked in the community, when he saw the evil he had sown because of the darkness in his heart that caused him to run away, looking for a light that was not the light of the Lord, but artificial lights like Christmas decorations, he was thrown into despair:

The Pope said that the Bible tells us that “the Lord is good, he never stops looking for the lost sheep” and it tells us that when Judas hanged himself he had repented.

“I believe that the Lord will take that word [repentance] and bring it with Him” he said. And it tells us that right until the end God’s love was working in that soul.

He said that this is the message, the good news that Christmas brings asking us to rejoice with a sincerity that brings with it a change of heart that leads us to take comfort in the Lord, and not in other ‘escapist’ consolations. - Vatican Radio

Many times I think that when the Holy Father discusses priests and bishops, and a double life, he is speaking from personal experience, of men he knew, likewise, I'm convinced he has in mind the scandals of the last couple decades, involving bishops and priests.  I do not think the Holy Father bashes his priests.  When the fine points of what he says are dissected, and examined for 'orthodoxy', the message gets lost.  I read what he says like a child, I think.  Though it may be over my head, I just don't see his precautions as a general condemnation or mean-spirited criticism.

The meditation on Judas is provocative - and considerable.  Especially when despair is a frequent temptation in the lives of many - surely not the righteous - but those whose lives have fallen apart, those who wandered away, who separated themselves from others and are bitter and critical and therefore separate themselves from the 'fold'.  Sometimes this separation can be to such an extent, they can see no way to return, to be reconciled ...

That said, what the Holy Father suggests reminds me of what St. Paul wrote, "And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love."  I don't know about anyone else, but when the he speaks like this, he moves me to an even deeper repentance - and confidence and love - trusting in God's merciful love.

“May the Lord give us the grace to sincerely recognize our sins as we await Christmas, as we wait for the power of God who comes to console us." - Pope Francis

The suicides ...

The Holy Father's consideration on Judas, reminds me of the Fr. Ryan Erickson story - a Wisconsin priest who killed two innocent men, who were most likely initiating an investigation upon him for sexual abuse of adolescent boys.  The two men most likely knew about his sexual attraction to young boys and one of them may have confronted him.  Ryan shot them - later, under investigation, he hanged himself.  The case is closed now.  I did an ex-voto style painting in his memory, and I'll reprint an excerpt from that narrative - it might help in understanding what the Holy Father said.

What kind of priest was he?

The man was a good priest. Perhaps a bit doctrinaire, dogmatic and therefore rigid in his pastoral approach however. He loved being a priest. He loved the cassock, wore it everywhere, and in the winter, he wore a cloak with golden frogs clasping it. He loved traditional trappings: The hats and beanies and cape-lets and elaborate baroque vestments and man-lace. He was orthodox in his spirituality, deeply devoted to Our Lady, and scrupulously faithful to the Roman rite - he was a Novus Ordo priest to be sure, yet totally traditional. Father also happened to be an impassioned homilist as well as moralist. I suspect he would have loved Savonarola. None of that is bad or wrong of course, although his zeal tended to alienate many - he came on pretty strong.

When I first met him, he was wearing his winter cape, I thought he was kind of a fruitcake. After I got to know him, I still held that opinion, although I could see he was sincere and wanted to be a holy priest, and eventually I found him rather like-able. He had a good sense of humor, but there was something there that told me he craved affirmation, respect, and deep down, he just wanted to be liked. Human respect was very important to him - despite the fact he had so many critics among his congregation. Could it be that human respect became motive enough to murder someone who might have exposed his secret life, revelations which would ruin his orthodox facade? Maybe. Father also loved guns and hunting, and he tended to be rather militant when it came to heretics and liberals - but was he capable of murder? Personally, I think he could have been found guilty on all counts - but not necessarily damned.

The ghost.

As I finished adding the details to the painting, I considered adding some things to suggest his sexuality near the rosary in the snow, as if they had fallen from his pockets. Just as I began to paint the items in I felt a hand grasp my shoulder, as if to hold me back from proceeding. A chill ran down my back and I sensed an interior warning to stop. I turned quickly to see if anyone was behind me, but I was completely alone.

The next day at work I told a co-worker what had happened. This man had great respect for the priest and could hardly believe the accusations against him, much less his suicide. In fact, not a day or two after his death, my friend's mother had a dream of a priest coming towards her in church with a message for her son, "Tell him I'm okay." It turns out my friend's mother had never met the priest nor had she heard of his suicide at that point - but when she described him, her description fit that of Fr. Erickson.

I no longer know what to think regarding the case, but I will continue to pray for the priest and the murder victims just the same. - Let the dead bury their dead

The suicide of Ryan Erickson

The Suicide of Danny Fitzpatrick

Staten Island boy who took his own life.

May the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace.

He gave up.

I facetiously posted on bullying yesterday, and a friend alerted me to the suicide story of a 13 year old Brooklyn Catholic schoolboy and was shocked by my ill timed post.  Rightly so.  Suicide is not an appropriate solution to bullying, especially the kind that is ignored and allowed to continue by school officials.  The story of Danny Fitzpatrick is truly heartbreaking.

At Holy Angels Catholic Academy in Brooklyn, Daniel Fitzpatrick’s biggest test had nothing to do with academics. 

The 13-year-old seventh-grader — like so many young people in schools across the country — was the target of relentless bullying because of his grades, his weight and his sweet disposition, family members told the New York Daily News. 

This summer, Daniel detailed some of his toughest struggles in a letter that accused classmates of turning on him — and school officials of ignoring his pleas for help.
Then, just days before his 14th birthday, he decided he’d had enough. On Thursday, he wrapped a belt around his neck and hung himself inside the attic of his family’s Staten Island home.

“I gave up,” he wrote in the letter that preceded his death by several weeks. “The teachers . . . they didn’t do anything.” - WP - The parents story here.

There appears to be more to this story.  From the Washington Post:

Documents obtained by The Washington Post offer a more complicated picture of Daniel’s life and reveal that some believe the teenager’s struggles extended beyond the bullying he faced at school.

The boy’s father, also named Daniel Fitzpatrick, told the Daily News that he had been at odds with Holy Angels ever since officials there recommended that Daniel repeat the seventh grade at another school. The suggestion was offensive, Fitzpatrick told the paper, because he attributed Daniel’s academic struggles to the merciless bullying he suffered, noting that the boy’s “confidence was completely shattered.”

[...]

Last fall, in a report filed with New York City’s Administration of Children’s Services and obtained by The Post, an investigator wrote that Daniel was failing his classes and engaging in angry outbursts in class.

“Danny said mom being drunk affects him in everything and makes him angry,” the report stated. “He said dad also drinks, but controls himself more than mom. Student can’t remember a time when mom was not drunk often.”

The report continued:

Danny denies physical abuse by mom and dad, but says Kristen, his older sister, hides him in the attic or his room when mom is drunk. He says his dad and Kristen protect him.”

Danny denies suicidal thoughts, but feels angry, sad, has thoughts of wanting to run away. Mother is blaming his teachers for his failures and has written several accusatory letters to school. Student is afraid of both parents anger. - Washington Post

My apologies for my insensitivity.

I don't approve of bullying.  I was being facetious in my original post.  Danny Fitzpatrick's situation appears to be completely different from what I was talking about, although I know how 'mean' it must have come off.  Again, I apologize.

That said, I was never bullied by playmates or schoolmates.  My family and the nuns did that.

Like Danny Fitzpatrick, my parents were drinkers and abusive - Danny said his parents weren't abusive - but his sister hid him whenever his mother was drunk.  I wonder if his surviving family members, especially a sibling still at home, is going to be honest about mom's abusive behavior?  I doubt it.   It took many years for me to admit it, but my older brother was abusive as well.  I grew up thinking my family pretty much despised me.  Suicide was never an option for me, since I was actually raised Catholic and taught about mortal sin and hell.  Knowing how deficient Catholic religious education can be, I wonder if Danny was taught that.

These days, suicide is discussed openly and is becoming all too commonplace.  Danny 'chose' that awful option.  Something was wrong somewhere: With his religious formation, his teachers, and his family?  Perhaps he suffered from some sort of unrecognized, undiagnosed clinical depression?  I have no idea.  If the stories are true about the parent's drinking, that in itself is often problematic.  Drunk parenting is often marked by some sort of emotional neglect.

Suicide is very complex.  Bullying probably contributed to it, even though Danny was able to defend himself: He states he fought back.   Nevertheless, bullying played a role, but there has to be more to the story - I can't know all of the details, only what I've read in the news and documented here - so I'm simply speculating.  I'm neither attempting to defend bullying or promoting it.

My ill-timed and inappropriate post not withstanding.

+

Prayers for Danny Fitzpatrick and all kids tempted to suicide.

Contemplating suicide: Here's another thought.

 "Job's very righteous and virtuous friends tell him that this is his fault..." 

The internet has been awash for the past couple of days with discussions of suicide. The discussion seems to break down into three basic groups: people who have actually experienced suicidal depression who are trying to explain what it is, people who have never experienced it but who are trying to offer compassionate support, and people who have never experienced it but are pretty sure that people who do are whining narcissists. 

This experience of forsakenness, of emotional anguish to the point of desiring death, is not a product of selfishness, narcissism, self-indulgence, or ingratitude. It does not only happen to bad people. Scripture tells us so. Look at the book at Job: Job in his anguish not only pleads for death, but demands to know why the stars did not close their eyes on the day of his birth, why the womb brought him forth. He not only wishes for death as an end to his present sufferings; he is so overwhelmed by pain that he wishes his entire existence to be stricken from the scrolls of Being. And of course Job's very righteous and virtuous friends tell him that this is his fault, the punishment for some secret sin. But God tells them that they have spoken wrongly. - Melinda Selmys

"Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide." - CCC

I love how Melinda brought up Job's friends - Job's friends have been on my mind since commentary on Robin William's death has shown up online.  Nearly every comment or post by Catholics online has reminded me of something Job's friends might have said.  Some have gone so far as to denigrate Robin William's religious faith.  How can anyone possibly do that?  How can anyone know his state of soul, the stage he was at in his faith and relationship to Christ before his suicide?  Perhaps one may be able to say he was a Christian, although not a Catholic - but there is no way to know much more that - especially for those of us not acquainted with the deceased.  We just don't know.  One may critique his work, his comedy, his life style, and so on - but we cannot judge his conscience, his soul.  We can make observations on his Christian denomination, but we can't judge his soul.  Only God can do that.

Likewise - just about every person who dies has a family, loved ones who survive them - how would you feel if someone was judging your loved one and denigrating their memory?  Rich. poor, celebrity, common man, refugee, prisoner, soldier - when a person dies they deserve respect - no matter who they are.  Unless you want to be like the Westboro Baptists who show up at funerals telling family members their loved ones are in hell and that God hates them all.   

Pray for the suicides.

"I am sorry, friends and brothers, that I cannot express this clearly. But woe to those who have slain themselves on earth, woe to the suicides! I believe that there can be none more miserable than they. They tell us that it is a sin to pray for them and outwardly the Church, as it were, renounces them, but in my secret heart I believe that we may pray even for them. Love can never be an offence to Christ. For such as those I have prayed inwardly all my life, I confess it, fathers and teachers, and even now I pray for them every day." - Fr. Zosima, Brother Karamazov, Part II, Book 6, Chapter 3

"The Suicide" - Antoine Wiertz (1806-1865)

On Robin Williams: The best I've read so far...

"But when you get there, it's hard to talk. 

You are reaching out from such a far away place."

"Perhaps it was that unrelenting stream of emotion that led Williams down a difficult path..." 

Following a performance of her one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, a few years back, Carrie Fisher was surprised to see one of her longtime friends show up backstage, alone and in a particularly serious mood. His name: Robin Williams.

 "He was something you just don't see, like a comet. I hope he's like a comet and he comes again, but that would be selfish,” she said, adding that his energy and comic delivery was "unstoppable." "I'm sorry he punctuated his sentence before it had run its course. But he packed in five lifetimes before he left."

So accomplished was Williams that Fisher likened him to legends like Charlie Chaplin and Mark Twain.

"The reason I bring up the conversation after the play is because we were both slowed down. That was the one time that he was very serious. … I could tell he was struggling then. … But when you get there, it's hard to talk. You are reaching out from such a far away place. What do you say? You don't want to be a burden and you don't want to seem like you feel sorry for yourself — it's humiliating among so many other things," Fisher said, before tearing up on the other end of the line. "He made us all feel like he wished he could. He brought joy and surprise, and he would take you places you wouldn't even know you wanted to be. He gave you all the things he would've wanted to have. And that's what made him so generous." - Source

I feel very sad.  Prayers for Robin and his family - and Carrie Fisher too.


+May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.+


Song for this post here - don't know why...

+RIP+

O All-hymned Mother of God, crushed by thy sorrow at the Cross of thy Son and God, accept our tears and expressions of sorrow, and save from every sorrow, affliction, and eternal death all those who hope in thine ineffable kindheartedness and cry out to God: Alleluia! - Kontakion XIII