The problem of evil and the pain of suffering have plagued humanity from the beginning. How do we reconcile grace and hope in a loving God in the midst of suffering?
On the Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time, two weeks before Ash Wednesday this year, the assigned First Reading at Mass was from the Book of Job. It was Job’s lament against suffering. I once wrote of Job’s protest, and my own, in a post entitled, “Upon the Dung Heap of Job: God’s Answer to Suffering.”
The Almighty’s answer was cryptic in the Book of Job, and it required some pondering – not only by Job but by me and by all who suffer. It might even seem trite in this age of individual gratification and instant relief. Here are some excerpts of God’s response to Job’s lament:
“Who is this that obscures divine plans with such words of ignorance? Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth? Have you ever in your life commanded the morning or shown the dawn its place? Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion?” (Job 38: 2.4.12.31)
Job got the message. So did I, and it isn’t trite at all. The response of God was twofold: Number 1: I have a plan; Number 2: Trust in Number 1. It’s the trust part that I find difficult. His broader answer is found in all of Sacred Scripture as a whole. The Biblical characters are believers who take upon themselves the plan of God. They all suffer. Many suffer a lot. Their very lives are our evidence that there is a divine plan.
God takes the suffering of humankind seriously and personally. When He took our form, He suffered in every way we do, including the humiliation of rejection to the point of crucifixion and death. Remember His trial before Pontius Pilate when “The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’.”
Like most posts I write, you saw “Upon the Dung Heap of Job” before I did. Because I cannot see this blog, the post was up for six days before I received a printed copy in the mail. I always know what I have written, but I don’t always know what images will be chosen for its content. When I finally got that post, I saw the very literal top graphic that Suzanne Sadler, our publisher, chose: Job sitting upon an actual dung heap.
I was just glad we don’t have one of those “scratch & sniff” blogs! I wondered whether that image would inspire or repel TSW visitors. Most read it, and many commented that they were better off for having done so. Some said that it gave voice and context to what they suffer. Like me, many of you have, at one time or another in your life, found yourself upon the dung heap of Job.
THE MOST DANGEROUS THING IN PRISON
While writing this post, I stumbled upon a scene in a TV drama. I’m not sure which one it was, but the scene was in a prison. A rough looking character had spent 20 years in prison on death row for a crime he did not commit. A younger man was telling him that his friends want to take up the death row prisoner’s case. “Tell them to stop!” the older man said. “Please don’t give me hope. The most dangerous thing in prison is hope.”
No doubt, that statement was perplexing for most viewers, but I readily understood it. It recalled some dismal feelings from a time when hope emerged in prison only to be cruelly shattered. The shattering of hope often feels worse than no hope at all. That’s the danger the prisoner was talking about.
For me, the shattering of hope began on September 11, 2001. Early that year, a writer for The Wall Street Journal took an interest in my trial and imprisonment, and the evidence of fraud and misconduct behind them. Gathering and photocopying documents from prison is a very difficult task, but over the course of that year, I labored to send reams of requested documentation to the writer. Then, just as the story grew into real interest, the forces of evil struck hard.
As you know well, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 destroyed the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. Their collapse damaged many of the surrounding buildings including the editorial offices of The Wall Street Journal on Liberty Street just across the World Trade Center Plaza.
Months passed while The Wall Street Journal relocated its offices to 1211 Avenue of the Americas. In early January 2002, a letter came from a member of the WSJ Editorial Board. All was lost. We had to start over. But I believed at the time that I could not start over. It seemed an overwhelming task. Hope was crushed along with the towers themselves.
The loss of thousands of lives added great weight to that sense of hopelessness. I could not possibly confront my loss in the face of so much human tragedy caused by so much human evil I will never forget the nightmare I had after receiving that letter. I was inside Tower One as it was collapsing around me. The nightmare was long, real, and horrifying. At the end of the dream I was still alive, but regretfully so.
By the time I recovered the resolve to start over in 2002, the Catholic clergy abuse scandal erupted in Boston to become a witch hunt that swept the nation. This made my hope, and The Wall Street Journal’s effort toward justice a much steeper climb. It has always struck me that the two stories – the hijacking of the planes that attacked Manhattan on 9/11, and the collapse of the dignity and morale of priests – both began in my hometown of Boston just weeks apart.
SORROW NEEDS A MORE PANORAMIC VIEW
I cannot tell you how to suffer. I do not even know how myself. I can only tell you that, along with most of you, I do suffer. Perhaps that means something as a starting point. Maybe those who know sorrow feel at some fundamental level that reflection on the experience from someone who also suffers means more than a smug and smiling Gospel of prosperity from some TV evangelist.
I don’t mean to pick on TV evangelists and God help me if I judge them harshly, but I have a hard time reconciling the trenches of suffering with the Gospel of prosperity that some of them proclaim. No one in prison listens to Joel Osteen. His Word is for the brokers, not the broken; not the brokenhearted.
A sanitized TV version of grace and glory feels nothing but empty and shallow against the real deep sorrow of the trenches. I find myself in one of those trenches, and, like Job on his dung heap, I was dragged there kicking and screaming at God for its injustice. For a long time, I have wondered what I did to deserve this trashing of my freedom, my name, and worst of all, my priesthood. I do, after all, have a King other than Caesar!
So does Peggy Noonan. She was a White House speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, and now she writes the “Declarations” column for The Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Edition. She is neck deep in the affairs of New York City and Washington, but she also has her finger on the pulse of that vast expanse of America that stretches from there to the Pacific.
Peggy Noonan’s January 27 column was entitled, “Who’s Afraid of Jordan Peterson?” Formerly associate professor of psychology at Harvard, Jordan Peterson has taught psychology at the University of Toronto for 20 years. Ms. Noonan wrote about a British TV report on his book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.
She was intrigued because the interviewer was critical of Professor Peterson for his resistance to adopting the new orthodoxy of political correctness. Ms. Noonan summarized that the interviewer tried to silence his…
“…scholarly respect for the stories and insights into human behavior – into the meaning of things – in the Old and New Testaments. Their stories exist for a reason, he says, and have lasted for a reason: They are powerful indicators of reality, and their great figures point to pathways.”
Those Biblical pathways, it turns out, are always through the dark woods of sorrow. As I have written before, Sacred Scripture – the story of God and us – is filled with irony. The characters that populate the Biblical stories experience transformations born of suffering and sorrow.
Why we suffer is a cosmic mystery, but it is so even for God. As Saint Paul wrote, “He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). With trust, suffering takes on a meaning far greater than itself.
GOD IS ON FACEBOOK TOO
Not long ago, I wrote a post entitled “Cry Freedom! A Prisoner Unlocks Doors from the Inside.” Here is how I framed my lament about my own plight in that post:
“I spent the last 23 years.. .in a dark periphery of my own called unjust imprisonment. Such a plight can cause a man to focus entirely on himself and his own bizarre fate. Those without hope here live in a prison inside a prison.”
I want to tell you about something that happened after I wrote “Cry Freedom!” The post was about my friend, Skooter, who left this prison five years ago to face a life alone. Saint Mother Teresa once wrote that poverty does not mean just a lack of money, or food, or housing. The deepest poverty on Earth, she wrote, is to live life with no one who cares about us, no one to walk with us in suffering or sorrow.
I will always remember the day Skooter left us. From a distance we saw him walk out the door carrying his life in two trash bags, but with no idea where, or to whom he would go. His life was missing the infrastructure that so many in Joel Osteen’s audience might take for granted.
Skooter was a young prisoner whom I taught to read and write. When he left prison, I never heard from him again except through a cryptic third party “thank you” from another young man who found himself back inside.
I did not know what happened to Skooter, nor did I know what exactly prompted me to write that post about him five years after he fell into silence. The silence was not his choice. When prisoners leave here, they are barred from contacting anyone left behind.
I do not know what prompted me to do this, but months after I wrote that post about him, I decided to try to find Skooter to see if he might like to read it. I called a friend, Charlene Duline in Indiana, a retired State Department official who helps with These Stone Walls. Charlene looked for Skooter on Facebook (using his given name), but the search yielded no result. A few days later, for reasons I do not know, I asked her to try again.
Now obviously, I have no access to Facebook and have never even seen it so I don’t have a clue how it works. I only know that my posts are shared there and that about 2,000 people “follow” them there. So while I was on the telephone with Charlene, she did the search again, but this time it yielded one result. I asked her to send a “friend request” from me. Within seconds, the acceptance came back with this message:
“G, is this really you? Is this possible?”
It seemed so bizarre that we were actually communicating in real time. Charlene sent Skooter a short reply telling him that she was on the telephone with me at that moment. Skooter sent back a number and asked me to call it. In the frigid cold from the top floor landing that I described in “The Days of Our Lives” just weeks ago, I placed a call to that number.
Skooter answered, and what he told me was astonishing. Skooter had been through a terrible dark night. After leaving prison at age 25, he struggled to build the life that he never had. He was alone, but he worked hard. Life was looking just a little promising and hopeful, then a cascade of dominoes began to fall.
Months before my sudden Facebook message reached Skooter, he lost his job. His boss in a small construction company was charged with some sort of corruption that Skooter had nothing to do with, but he was the collateral damage. Losing his job with no ability to plan was catastrophic. Paying rent by the week in substandard housing – a plight faced by so many former prisoners – Skooter then lost his place to live.
Everything he owned, which wasn’t much, ended up in storage. Then, unable to pay his storage bill, he lost even that. Living in a homeless shelter, Skooter went to a Christian food pantry for some help. He was asked for an address and he said he did not have one. He was told that he needs an address before they can give him food. Skooter roamed the streets and despaired.
Early in the morning after a sleepless night in the cold, he walked into the woods feeling totally defeated. He brought a rope. I’m sorry, but there is just no comfortable way to tell this. Skooter hanged himself from a tree. A hunter came upon the scene and cut down Skooter’s unconscious body, but he was still alive.
The hunter left Skooter on the ground and called the police from a highway rest area pay phone. Skooter was taken to a hospital where he had a 48-hour emergency commitment in the psychiatric ward. This is all dismal, but the rest shook me to the core. When Skooter emerged from this nightmare, he went to a city library to keep warm. He learned that he can use a computer there for free.
Feeling alone and discarded, the very poverty that Saint Mother Teresa described above, something compelled him to open a Facebook account. It was at that moment that I was on a phone from prison talking with Charlene when we searched for Skooter for the second time and there he was. Skooter told me that as he sat there wondering what to do next, my “friend request” appeared on his screen.
The photo of Skooter (below) was taken at a friend’s home at Christmas before his dark night brought him into a dark forest. I have been where Skooter was. I wrote of “How father Benedict Groeschel Entered My Darkest Night.” Now I have entered Skooter’s darkest night, and from inside These Stone Walls I walk with him through his pathways of suffering and sorrow. No one could today convince Skooter that God has no plan.
So, where were you when God laid the foundations of the Earth? Have you ever in your life commanded the morning or showed the dawn its place?
Editor’s Note: Journey through Lent with These Stone Walls:
Father Scott says
Dear Fr. MacRae,
I hope that things are going as well as possible for you in your circumstances. Please accept my thanks for your priestly fidelity and for your truly edifying blog.
I am one of the thousands of readers alerted to your situation and the blog by that post of Fr. Z’s back at Christmas, and I have been meaning to write ever since. I have remembered you in my Masses very often since that time, and your story and example have both troubled me and given me a big push toward really appreciating the graces that come from the Cross, even amid my own trifling complaints and struggles in the ministry.
I wanted to let you know that my parishes’ annual Lenten Alms will be earmarked for you this year. I always urge not only prayer and fasting but also alms-giving during Lent, and we generally raise between $500 and $1000 collectively. I announced at today’s Masses that you will be the recipient, and I gave a précis of your story and the plight of all falsely-imprisoned priests. People were quite moved, and I hope you get a lot of new readers and donors. Look for a check after Easter, but I’m sure that the prayers will roll in from now on!
How would you prefer to receive funds: by check in a letter or by the donation link on the site? If the latter, which category needs help the most?
Please be assured of my own poor prayers for you (and Max!). We are all part of the Mystical Body, and we priests must be especially closely united on the Way of the Cross that alone will lead to victory.
Keep fighting the good fight, Father, and spare me a prayer too if you can!
In Christ,
Father Scott
Liz F says
The whole Facebook deal and finding Skooter at the same time that he had just set up an account is just so incredible and that you were talking to him minutes later just boggles my mind. God is so good!
I offered my holy hour for Skooter yesterday and we are praying for him extra for the whole of Lent.
Skooter is such an inspiration to me. I am so moved by the story of his life, riddled with hardships and sufferings that I cannot even begin to imagine! He has manfully dealt with unbelievably difficult trials I am so proud of him for repeatedly picking up the pieces and starting anew after such difficulties. God bless and keep Skooter. I hope he always realizes now that he has reason to hope even when it seems like there is none.
God bless that hunter. I am praying for him as well.
Thank God for Fr. Gordon, Pornchai, Charlene and all that work for the greater good. I am inspired by you all as well.
p.s. Fr. Gordon, your writing is just so beautiful!
Frances South says
Dear Fr Gordon
This post as ever proclaims the wonderful heights and breadth of God’s grace, love and mercy. Thank you and God bless you for sharing this good news with us. I note that this post has over 9,000 shares according to the website which is a great thing. However, I am a bit saddened that your post on the 24th January, which you expressly asked people to share, has only been shared 465 times. I am hoping that this is a glitch in the website rather than the actual number.
As ever, Father, I would be most grateful for your prayers and please know that you and all connected with you in any way are in mine. I ask your blessing.
Frances
Juan says
Father Gordon,
Thank you for being a living proof of The Theology of The Cross and for sharing about it in your touching article.
Skooter, count on my prayers; let them be mutual. How glad I am that you are still with us. The same applies to you, Father Gordon. Thank God for both of you!
I will share something now and end with a request. For the past few years I have been friends with a man in his forties from my parish, Ignacio (Ignatius), with whom I would have occasional chats after Mass. Ignacio was bright and polite, married, father of two, had a stable job. I did not have any clue to suspect anything wrong in his life. I wish now ours had been a closer friendship so that I had known him better. I also wish I had kept him in my prayers in a special way yet I never thought he was badly in need of them. I was shocked when I found out that he had committed suicide. This was three months ago. As I heard after that terrible deed, he had been down on several occasions and had had family problems.
Please, Father Gordon, Skooter and all of you reading or hearing about this tragic event, keep Ignacio in your prayers. Thank you.
May God bless you all,
Juan.
Monica Harris says
The Father has given you a father’s intuition, and a Father’s Love, Fr MacRae. Heavy responsibility, innumerable blessings.
Keith A says
Fr. G –
Amazing! The Te Deum on the lips of yourself, Scooter and the Readers and commentators of TSW might always be for the graces of the Holy Spirit to be open to the intervention of God in the lives of ALL.
I offer for meditation during this Lent of 2018 a somewhat different view: It has always struck me that we so often stop, and maybe stay, in the unfolding Mystery of Salvation. Some who are immersed in the fact of the Incarnation (“God so loved the World that He gave His only begotten Son … {Jn 3:16} ) stop in their relationship with God as almost a child and a mighty Santa Claus. Many who are invited into the Mystery of Suffering look upon the crucifix and become fixated, acknowledging the Resurrection but not necessarily living a Resurrected life full of hope. Then there is the Mystery of the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. All too often we relate to the symbols of the Spirit (dove or flames/tongues of Fire) rather than the PERSON of the Holy Spirit.
What I find in TSW is that you, Fr. G, have so integrated your relationship with the Triune God that it affects those around you and the readers. So, thank you, Fr. G, for accepting the grace to be open to the presence of the LIVING God. Always remember the first recorded Credo: “He is alive” Jn 20:18!
Chris Castle says
I can never say how sorry I am to hear of your mistreatment and betrayal, or how grateful I am that you share your insights with us. You shine a light in the darkness, and it points out thoughts on good and evil that I am sure we would never have considered. Do I remember correctly that you prefer not to be thought of as the pastor of your (captive) flock? How do you feel about being considered the docent for Heaven and Hell?
I apologize if this does not make you at least smile. Please pray for my wayward husband and son, who have turned away from Our Lord, and my other children who plod to Mass every weekend. We pray for you and your fellow inmates.
Today I saw an inmate being led to a medical facility. He looked woefully thin and sickly and not at all like a “dangerous criminal.” After you lit up the darkness of my ignorance, I can never see inmates in the same way again. God Bless you all.
Fr. Stuart MacDonald says
Father G
You prove, yet again, there is no such thing as coincidence. Reading your posts, how could one ever doubt God’s providence, even from the darkest peripheries? God bless you, Father. You are an instrument of his grace.
Fr Stuart
D.Sparkes says
Wow! Thank you for the update with regards to Skooter. It both prompts and reminds me to keep him in my prayers.
With regards to suffering, I am reminded of St. Paul (1 Cor. 13:11), “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” Note where he writes, “I reasoned like a child.” This resonates with me deeply especially when I consider how I address God with regards to my own personal suffering.
To my way of thinking, were I drowning, I would at the very least, expect God to throw me a lifesaver (Of course, if he really loved me then he would miraculously teleport me to safety!) Never mind the fact he allowed his only son to suffer and die on a tree (it’s dangerous to contemplate the crucifixion!) See, the modern cultural mantra claims God does not want us to suffer for any reason whatsoever … at least those of us blessed to be born in the first world anyway! Okay, what I want to believe, were I drowning, God will at least throw me a lifesaver … at least!
See, this is how I believed and this is how I lived my life. Then, one day, rather recently I must admit, it occurred to me that God’s ways are really not anything like my ways whatsoever. Yes, God might just save us in a manner hoped and expected, (say a last minute tossed out lifesaver – it could happen!). But then again, maybe he won’t.
More to the point, God will save me, he will save us, but he won’t save us per our specified definition. He is not at our beck and call like some genii from a bottle. The point being, I no longer expect God to toss me a lifesaver. No, what I now suspect (and it’s only a suspicion) that should I find myself drowning, and all seems lost or hopeless, the one thing I absolutely can count on is Jesus being there – drowning with me.
Maureen Dawson says
Thank you for sharing this touching miracle! What a story! God truly put his hand in Shooter’s life, and gave you a new hope that he truly does have a plan even for you in your dark prison. I so hope that Skooter is a successful man living in freedom.
Ronald June says
Thank God that hunter came along when he did. That is a beautiful picture of Skooter, looks beaming and so happy, I pray he still is and I am adding him to my prayer list. I have shared this post on my Facebook.
Cynthia Torrella Evasco says
Fr.G.this is my firsy time to read your blog and happy that this reaches my wall
Your post is an inspiration truly GOD is everywhere
though you are not in the pulpit to give sermons
Though you are in that confining cell
Still God uses you to inspire
to help
I will include you in my prayers from now on
Keep moving po Father G.
truly GOD has His own plans no man could even ponder
GOD BLESS po
MaryJean Diemer says
Hi Fr. Gordon!
God does have a plan for Scooter and I will pray that he will know it soon and be at peace with it.
So wonderful how our God intervenes for us. He knows who to give the trials to, who will eventually triumph through His will.I thank God that Scooter has you again in his life.
Sending love and prayers on this Ash Wednesday and Valentines Day. to all, including Scooter. He, and all who I have come across through you are in those daily prayers including those like Anthony that are with the Lord.
Charlene says
Skooter is an admirable young man. When we found him on Facebook it was a God-moment. Something told Fr. Gordon that Skooter needed help and he reached out and we found him. I am so happy that they are back in touch. Skooter did not know how to get in touch with Fr. Gordon and probably would not have had he known. Skooter is a proud man and he told a friend that he would not do anything to go back to prison because “It would disappoint G.” He was prepared to die feeling that he had nothing or no one who cared about him. He knows that Father Gordon cares and has always cared about him and other prisoners. We are now back in touch with him and we – you the readers, prayer warriors, God, and Father Gordon – will never let him feel hopeless and alone again.
Sue says
Charlene, does Skooter need any help with getting additional schooling, obtaining job skills, etc., that some of us might be able to help with? I’ll ask my husband if we can send him some money to help him with expenses. But, we’d like to do anything we can to help. Thank God that Fr. G listens to God’s voice! Thank you! “Hi” to Fr. G!
Erin says
We would like to help Skooter
any way we can. Please let us know what we can do.
Maureen Kubasak says
Thank you for putting my complaints, ailments and minor sufferings into perspective. At times I think I know better than God. How foolish! May God bless you Father. I pray for you every day and I will add Skooter to my list.
May God continue to give you the grace to persevere in your circumstances!
God bless you,
Maureen
Michael says
God love you Skooter. You’ve been in my prayers, on and off, for a few months now. I’m going to make sure you stay in them for good now!
Kimberly says
Thank you for continuing your priestly mission even from prison. I love you, Father! Thank you for guiding me. It is an enormous help. ❤️
Juli B. says
Is there any way possible to send Skooter a couple of bucks?
Father Gordon J. MacRae says
Thank you Juli. I have already sent him what I could. If any reader wants to help out through TSW I will gladly forward it to him. He’s doing better and more hopeful and I am certain Skooter will pull through from this. With Lenten blessings to you and all, Father Gordon MacRae.
Maria Stella says
Thank you and God bless you, Helen, for that great thought. I will also have a Mass said for Skooter.
Maria Stella says
Fr. G, I weep as I read this. I have been praying during my daily rosary for a number of your prisoner friends by name – asking Our Lady to wrap her mantle of protection around each of them. Skooter is one of them…. I thank God for you, Fr. G, and am so glad Skooter survived his moment of despair, as did you when that talk by Fr. Groeschel pulled you back from the abyss.
I hope that you will be able to let Skooter that there are people who are praying for him daily.