Despite its wide-ranging presence in the Bible, we Christians have by and large lost touch with this dimension of prayer. It is something we need to recover.

At a certain time, a country was under attack by an assortment of Middle Eastern peoples. The crisis was acute and its leader called all the people to prayer.

This general description sounds painfully similar to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but, in fact, the time in question was about 850 B.C. The country was the biblical kingdom of Judah. The enemies were from Ammon, Moab and Edom (today all part of Jordan). The leader was the Davidic king, Jehoshaphat, and the prayer he called the people to—”We are powerless before this vast multitude that comes against us. We are at a loss what to do, hence our eyes are turned toward you” (2 Chronicles 20:12)—was lamentation.

Lamentation, a prayer for help coming out of pain, is very common in the Bible. Over one-third (50 or so) of the psalms are laments. Lament frequently occurs in the Book of Job: “Why did I not perish at birth, come forth from the womb and expire?” (Job 3:11). The prophets likewise cry out to God, such as Jeremiah does: “Why is my pain continuous, my wound incurable…?” (15:18) and Habakkuk: “…my legs tremble beneath me. I await the day of distress that will come upon the people who attack us” (3:16).

One whole book, Lamentations, expresses the confusion and suffering felt after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians.

We find something similar in the New Testament as well. People who are afflicted cry out to Jesus for help. Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, shouts out, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!” (Mark 10:47).

Jesus himself laments to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me…” (Mark 14:36). In his agony on the cross, Jesus makes his own the words of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me…?”

Despite its wide-ranging presence in the Bible, we Christians have by and large lost touch with this dimension of prayer. It is something we need to recover.

What Is Lamentation?

When we feel blessed in life, when we experience goodness and wholeness, we turn to God in praise and thanksgiving. But what happens when we experience just the opposite? What happens when we are overcome by the presence of chaos, brokenness, suffering and death, or by a sudden sense of our human vulnerability, as in the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania?

When we hurt physically, we cry out in pain; when we hurt religiously, we cry out in lament. Lamentation can be described as a loud, religious “Ouch!”

To begin with, the laments we find in Scripture are addressed directly to God: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice!” (Psalm 130:1) and “My soul, too, is utterly terrified; but you, O Lord, how long…?” (Psalm 6:4).

In more modern terms we might say, “I call to you, O Lord, and all I get is your answering machine!” We take our cries directly to the top. God, however, seems very far away, “O my God, I cry out by day, and you answer not; by night, and there is no relief for me” (Psalm 22:3).

We ask heartfelt questions: “How long, O Lord? Will you utterly forget me?” (Psalm 13:2), which implies: I am at the end of my rope, and I cannot hold on much longer; and, “Why, O Lord, do you stand aloof? Why hide in times of distress?” (Psalm 10:1), which implies: “I do not understand what is going on; this makes no sense. How long? Why?” These are not requests for information, but cries of pain.

The afflictions of the speaker(s) are described in broad, stereotyped ways with which all sufferers can identify: sickness—”…heal me, O Lord, for my body is in terror” (Psalm 6:3); loneliness and alienation—”My friends and my companions stand back because of my affliction…” (Psalm 38:12); danger and mistreatment by others—”O Lord,… save me from all my pursuers” (Psalm 7:2) and even aging—”Cast me not off in my old age…” (Psalm 71:9).

Finally, the ultimate affliction is physical death—”For my soul is surfeited with troubles and my life draws near to the nether world” (Psalm 88:4). All of these are manifestations of the realm of chaos and of brokenness invading and pulling our lives apart.

The Role of Enemies

Lamentations often speak of enemies. At times these are enemies from outside the community, also known as “foreigners” or “the nations”: “O God, the nations have come into your inheritance; they have defiled your holy temple” (Psalm 79:1).

At other times, it is an enemy from within who schemes and plots against the psalmist: “I hear the whispers of the crowd…as they consult together against me” (Psalm 31:14).

On more than one occasion, the psalmist suggests to God things to do to these enemies, which are known as the so-called “cursing psalms”: “So now, deliver their children to famine, do away with them by the sword….May cries be heard from their homes” (Jeremiah 18:21-22); “All my enemies shall be put to shame in utter terror” (Psalm 6:11); “Happy the man who shall repay you the evil you have done us! Happy the man who shall seize and smash your little ones against the rock!” (Psalm 137:8-9).

It is fairly obvious that as Christians we are not all that comfortable in speaking our pains, our doubts and our anger before God. Lament leaves us more than a little uneasy.

Unlike the Jewish community (think of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, speaking his pain and confusion to God), we have lost a certain sense of lamentation, and this has been, in the words of one scholar, “a costly loss.” What might we gain from a recovery of lamentation?

Accepting Lament as an Act of Faith

First, we feel, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and we might think, “I should not feel this way! I am losing my faith!” Lament corrects a false, naïve and overly rationalistic view of faith.

In the Scriptures, faith is not simply an intellectual assent to some statement about God. It is the trusting of our entire selves to God. At times, we do experience God’s absence; we do feel alone and confused, and we doubt.

Doubt is not opposed to faith; despair is. We see this in the case of the father who brought his son to Jesus for healing. When Jesus encouraged the father to have faith, he replied, “I do believe, help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).

Even St. Paul tells us he was “perplexed, but not driven to despair” (2 Corinthians 4:8). In despair we give up on our relationship with God. Doubt, on the other hand, is a sign that our faith is alive and kicking; it is part of the rhythm of faith itself. Lament is not a failure of faith, but an act of faith. We cry out directly to God because deep down we know that our relationship with God counts; it counts to us and it counts to God.

Even if we do not experience the closeness, we believe that God does care. Even if God seems not to hear, we believe that God is always within shouting distance. In the Scriptures, God does not say, “Do not fear, I will take away all the pain and struggle.” Rather, we hear, “You have no need to fear, since I am with you” (e.g., to Isaac, frightened of the Philistine king—Genesis 26:24; to the anxious Moses being sent to confront Pharaoh—Exodus 3:11-12; to the disciples when they see Jesus walking on the sea—Matthew 14:27) and together we will make it.

We will survive, yes, even death itself. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, our security can be shaken, and our faith as well. Perhaps it is not lamenting, but the failure to lament that expresses a lack of faith.

Secondly, in lamenting we cry to God, “Why, O Lord?” Our suffering is so big; it does not make any sense; it lacks meaning. The desire to find meaning is a strong one. After the attacks on the World Trade Center, a photo made the rounds on the Internet showing what seemed to be a face (or a skull) visible in the smoke pouring out of the towers. Could this be a sign that this was the work of the devil? Others appealed to the predictions of Nostradamus and some of the superficial religious explanations of prominent media preachers to make sense of what had happened.

In our search for meaning, we can be tempted to look for cheap and easy answers. Lament teaches us that there are indeed things we do not understand; in fact, we cannot understand. God does not say, “Do not fear; you will understand everything and have all the answers.” Our human mind can take us only so far. At times we can do no more than speak our confusion to God, and lament tells us that we should do no less.

Thirdly, we feel against people who hurt us, personally or as a nation, “Happy the man who shall seize and smash your little ones against the rock” (Psalm 137:9), and we think, “I should not feel this way; it is against charity.”

Lament counters a false, naïve and overly romantic view of charity. Charity does not mean that everything is lovely, that we never get upset, that we sit around holding hands and saying how wonderful everything is. This is unreal. Negativity, injustice, hatred, brokenness are part of our lives and part of our world. In the face of this, we can have an instinctive feeling for retaliation in kind, for returning hatred with hatred. I do feel pain, hurt and anger, but these are not a good basis on which to act. The fact that I feel a certain way does not give me permission to go out and dump my negativity wherever and on whomever I want. Lament suggests that it is all right to express our uncensored feelings before God.

Acknowledging Our Pain

In this light, the “cursing psalms” make sense. They have often been a particular stumbling block. We need to recognize, first, that they are clearly spoken out of great pain and distress. The feelings are really in the psalms, and at times they are really in us.

But, second, the psalmist does not say, “I am going to go out and smash his little ones against the rock!” We do not, as it were, take things into our own hands. We say rather, “God, this is the way I feel; I leave it to you.” And God has never been known to rush out and do everything we ask when we are angry. We let God deal with it, and in the process, we get the feelings out of us; we can begin to respond more reflectively, more constructively.

It is true that Jesus’ example teaches us to pray, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34)—an attitude found also in some parts of the Old Testament, such as Exodus 23:4-5 and Job 31:29-30. This is indeed the direction in which we hope to move, the direction we want our actions to reflect. But our feelings may not always be there—at least at first.

Again, the feelings are real and will not go away, and if we do not recognize them and deal with them constructively, they will go underground and pop up later in destructive ways. Lament is a constructive way to deal with them.

It is often noted that almost all of the lament psalms (Psalm 88 is an exception) end on a sudden turn to praise (e.g., 6:9-11; 22:23-32). Scholars have offered various explanations for this, but from the viewpoint of prayer, the meaning seems clear. It is only after we lament, after we face and express the pain and negativity and get it all out, that healing can begin. In more theological terms, we can say that it is only by facing and going through the death that we can come to new life, to resurrection.

The structure of lament tells us that it is possible to praise too soon. The psalmist takes the time to let all the pain and anger out before the praise can set in. Perhaps it is not lamenting, but the failure to lament that expresses a lack of charity.

Recovering the Power of Lamentations

It is true that we have lost a healthy sense of lament in our personal prayer life. We have lost it as well in our communal, liturgical life. Almost the only remaining context in which lament is formally acknowledged is the funeral liturgy, but here too it is possible to give lament short shrift.

Some years back, after the changes in the rite of funerals, a family I knew lost a child in a boating accident. A lot of pressure was brought to bear to “celebrate the Mass of the Resurrection, to rejoice in his birth to new life.”

About a year later, their suppressed grief almost tore the family apart. Again, we must not deny honest pain, nor jump too quickly from loss to acceptance and skip over the lamenting process. Christian faith does proclaim a message of hope, but death and grief are still real.

Perhaps other situations exist in which some form of communal liturgical or paraliturgical lament would be appropriate: after a painful experience of divorce; in a religious community after dear members choose to leave; when missionaries depart for home after years of service in a foreign country; for victims of clergy abuse on the path of healing; in a neighborhood taken over by drug dealers; in a community hard hit by HIV and AIDS; in a community devastated by natural disaster (fire, flood, earthquake, tornado, hurricane); for people after the experience of rape. Or when terrorists attack a country and many lives are lost.

Perhaps we are discovering that, as a nation, we have been more traumatized than we initially thought; there may still be lamentation work to do.

How helpful it would be if we had some structures and models to allow us to express and acknowledge our grief, our pain, our confusion and our anger; to offer each other strength and support in difficult times; to help us, individually and communally, move forward with the task and challenge of life and to help us discern what is a good and proper response to any situation.

We have such structures and models available to us in the prayer of our Scriptures. The loss of lament has been costly; we have much to gain by recovering it.

Father Mamich’s kidney condition was worsening, and he wasn’t sure where to turn next. The answer, as it turns out, was in the pews all along.

Father Joseph Mamich changed a flat tire in the gray winter light. It was 5:40 in the morning, and the priest was on his way to dialysis, a routine he’d kept for week.

“I’d have dialysis in the morning and be back in the office by 11:30,” Father Mamich says. The pastor of St. Joseph parish in Strongsville, Ohio, he shepherded a flock of 2,593 families assisted by three other priests; one was on temporary assignment. Father Mamich persevered in hearing confessions and other priestly duties, even scheduling funerals around his treatments.

“I’m not sure how I did that,” Father Mamich admits today. “I don’t think I ever knew how sick I was.”

Years earlier, Pope John Paul II listed voluntary organ donation among the acts of “everyday heroism” that build a culture of life. Father Mamich’s everyday hero lived among his own parishioners.

An Ongoing Problem

When he was a first grader, doctors had diagnosed the future priest withpediatricnephritis, inflammation of the kidneys. They predicted he would outgrow it. When he was a junior at Padua Franciscan High School, however, a biopsy indicated that he had Berger’s disease, a condition that impairs kidney function. Doctors warned their young patient that he could need dialysis, a transplant, or treatment with prednisone by the time he was 30 or 40 years old.

Life went on. After high school, Mamich entered the seminary. He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Cleveland in 2006 and served as parochial vicar in two parishes before becoming pastor of St. Joseph in 2011.

Not long after, his kidneys created other health problems. He began suffering from gout in 2012. For a while, his lungs retained fluid. After doctors prescribed prednisone, he gained weight and woke up for several hours each night.

In February 2013, he scratched his leg in the ocean while vacationing. Back home, doctors treated the ensuing infection with antibiotics during a two-day hospital stay.

“It came roaring back a week later,” the priest recalls. Nauseated, feverish, and experiencing rocketing blood pressure, he spent another week in the hospital with a staph infection. Doctors finally opted for emergency surgery to debride the tissue around his knee.

Then, on Palm Sunday 2013, the priest felt light-headed at the conclusion of Mass. He made his way to a chair in the sanctuary, sat down, and promptly passed out. “It was actually a pretty graceful experience,” Father Mamich says. “A 6-foot guy coming down on the [marble] floor would have been bad.”

Although he dismisses it as “not that dramatic,” news of the incident spread throughout his parish. People openly expressed concern for their pastor’s health. “One particular person had me dead and buried,” Father Mamich says.

Help Within the Parish Family

The pastor decided to curtailrumorsby explaining the situation to his parishioners. In a letter tucked into the weekly bulletin, he informed them of his history of kidney disease, and he asked for their prayers.

He offered an update two months later. “For whatever reason, the progression of the disease has sped up and has come to three possibilities,” he wrote. “Transplant, dialysis, or a miracle.”

Meanwhile, the Kidney Transplant Program at the Cleveland Clinic accepted Father Mamichas a potential organ recipient. He was an only child, and his parents were ineligible because of age; he would not find a donor within his family. He expected to wait for as long as six years for a kidney from a deceased donor.

When people heard about this development, several asked how they might become a living donor for him. At Mass one Sunday, the priest stressed that he was not asking anyone to volunteer, but interested individuals could call the Cleveland Clinic’s Kidney Donor Program.

In the pews, Jim Lechko shot his wife a sidelong glance. “I could just feel the wheels turning in his head,” Sue Lechko now says of the man she married 42 years earlier.

For two weeks, Lechko did not discuss the idea with his wife. But the impulse to volunteer to be a donor returned again and again. He knew the importance of organ donation. His high school football coach had received a kidney from another coach years earlier. “It’s really something I believe in,” Lechko says. “I’ve been signed up to be an organ donor since I was 16 years old when I got my driver’s license.”

At dinner one night, Lechko told Sue he wanted to be tested as a possible donor for Father Mamich. “There are thousands of people just in our country who need organ donations, “Lechko told her. “Their own family members aren’t even matches a lot of the time. What is the likelihood that I’m going to be a match? I just want to go and be tested.”

Still in his 50s, Lechko wasn’t too old to be a donor, and so Father Mamich’s transplant coordinator scheduled him for the first step, a blood draw. Lechko was working on an old convent in Cincinnati with his parish’s Mission of Hope when she called him with the results.

“Not perfect, but still a match,” Lechko says. As it happened, his O-negative blood type made him a suitable donor for patients with other blood types. He has donated more than 17 gallons of blood over the years.

“I go every eight weeks because I know it’s so rare,” he says.

No Doubts

Lechko agreed to report to the Cleveland Clinic for a psychological evaluation and two days of extensive medical tests to ensure he was healthy enough to be a donor. He also confirmed that he had his wife’s full support. “I didn’t want to get Father Joe’s hopes up and then at some point say, ‘I can’t do it,'” he remembers.

Sue Lechko worried about putting Jim’s healthy body through unnecessary surgery. But her husband told her the words of John 15:13 kept running through his mind: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” His rock-solid faith in the outcome also soothed her fears.

“I never doubted the decision,” Jim says. “I never got nervous about doing it [the transplant]. I just felt like I was called to do it.”

Soon after he scheduled the medical tests, Lechko saw Father Mamich at the parish picnic and informed him. Because of confidentiality rules, the priest did not know the name of any potential donor until then. He was acquainted with Lechko, who participated in several parish organizations, and they sometimes chatted in the sacristy when Lechko served as lector. But they were not close friends.

The priest introduced Lechko to his parents but told nobody else because Lechko wished to remain anonymous. He didn’t want his decision to be tainted by a need for recognition. “In my daily prayers, I would pray that I was doing it for the right reason,” Lechko says.

During his subsequent psychological evaluation at the Cleveland Clinic, Lechko was asked how he would feel if Father Mamich’s body rejected the donated kidney. “If God wants this to happen, it’s going to happen,” he replied. “If it is rejected, life goes on. I did what I could do.”

At the clinic, Lechko also learned that he would not be responsible for any medical or hospital bills. “Everything was handled through Father Joe’s insurance company,” he says.

Faith, Prayer, Perseverance

A week after the tests, FatherMamich’stransplant coordinator calledLechkowith the news that his blood pressure and cholesterol level were too high for surgery. She advised him to see his primary care physician to correct these problems and then return in three months.

Lechko’sdoctor recommended a Mediterranean diet and aerobic exercise. “SoI ate a whole bunch of food I typically wouldn’t be eating,” Lechko recalls. “Low-fat breads, a lot of tuna and nuts, dates, raisins, oatmeal, turkey. I started running again.” Before long, he was running five miles, five days a week.

“I went back to the doctor two and a half months later, “Lechko says. “I actually lost 27 pounds. My blood pressure came down. My cholesterol level came down.” He was cleared for the transplant.

Meanwhile, a side effect of one of Father Mamich’s medicines had caused bone deterioration. “I ended up having to have my hip replaced because of the prednisone,” Father Mamich says.

Lechko maintained his good health while waiting for Father Mamich to recover. He resisted the culinary temptations of the holidays, and he ran at 5:00 every morning. Whenever snow piled up, he jogged in the plowed streets.

The transplant finally was set for March 10, 2014. The parish planned an intercessory Mass for that evening. In the meantime, the priest’s kidney function worsened. He began dialysis. The surgery was postponed when doctors found fluid around his heart, and so both FatherMamichand his kidney donor attended their special Mass.

“It was a packed house,” Lechko says. “The prayers were palpable.”

In his homily, Father Mamich mentioned the inconvenient “flat tire” earlier that day. He emphasized the necessity of faith, prayer, and perseverance. When he introduced Lechko as his donor, the faithful prayed for both men by name.

A cardiologist had predicted Father Mamich’s heart condition would not clear up before June, but the fluid inexplicably disappeared within two and a half weeks. The transplant was rescheduled for April 28, 2014. Pastor and parishioner rode to the surgery center together. Neither felt apprehensive. When the two awoke hours later, each learned that the other was well, and that the transplanted kidney was functioning.

Within a couple of days, Lechko’s wife maneuvered him in a wheelchair to visit Father Mamich in another hospital wing. The priest already felt remarkably better. “I wanted out of that bed!” Father Mamich recalls. “I wanted to get going.”

Lechko returned to work after four weeks, but Father Mamich had to avoid crowds for three months. “After the transplant, you feel great,” the priest says. “You want to get out and do things, but you have to be careful how you interact with others so you don’t catch something.”

In time, doctors permitted him to leave his parents’ home and return to the rectory, where he met with parish staff. He was elated when more than 400 people came to the Mass of thanksgiving he eventually celebrated.

Raising Awareness

Father Mamich and Jim Lechko still nurture the friendship that blossomed during the transplant process. They occasionally go out to dinner or meet for breakfast. Father Mamich prays for Lechko every day, and when the Lechkos celebrated a milestone wedding anniversary, he attended their party.

Lechko experiences no residual effects of donating a kidney. “But Father Joe complains that he sweats all the time now,” Lechko says, laughing. “And I’m a heavy sweater. I don’t know if that came across with the kidney or not.”

Together, the two men work to raise awareness of the need for organ donation, which “fits into a consistent ethic of life. It fits nicely in the Church’s teaching on life,” Father Mamich says. “There are things we do and things we don’t do. It’s good to know both those things.” After their presentation to a Rotary group, Lechko met with an audience member who was considering organ donation. He was pleased when the young man later became an anonymous kidney donor.

Each spring, the two men address Padua Franciscan High School students in its MedTrack program, which includes four years of advanced science courses with a Franciscan approach to health care. “When I start my talks to the kids, I always say that God gave me the opportunity to do something really significant with my life,” Lechko says. “I said yes, and because of that we have a healthy Father Joe.”

“It sounds cliché, but you never know what one decision can do for someone else,” Father Mamich says.The priest, who was only 34 at the time of the transplant, says no donated organ functions forever. If tomorrow his life should end suddenly, he would still be grateful for the transplant.

“A lot of great things have happened these last four years that would not have happened if Jim had not stepped forward,” Father Mamich says.

Sidebar: The Church and Organ Donation

The US Department of Health and Human Services reports that 115,000 Americans currently await transplants of hearts, lungs, or other organs. Of these, 95,344 suffer from failing kidneys. The Church condemns the sale or trafficking of organs. In keeping with its teaching that the human body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, it presents these guidelines for voluntary organ donation:

• The benefit obtained by the organ recipient must be proportionate to the risk undertaken by a living donor.
• The donor must understand the risks involved and freely accept them.
• The donor must be able to continue living a healthy life after the transplant. For example, Jim Lechko enjoys good health with a single kidney.

In the case of deceased donors, the Church insists that:

• The donor must freely consent to organ donation prior to his/her death. Many people signal their intention through a notation on their driver’s license.
• Upon a donor’s death, his/her next of kin may choose to donate the deceased relative’s organs.
• A donor must be verifiably dead—no organs may be removed until death has occurred, i.e., organs may not be taken from persons in a permanent vegetative state.

Love is our foundation and our destiny, says this noted Franciscan. But how can we remove the barriers between us and God?

It’s so simple that it’s hard to teach. Our Christian mission is to awaken us to what we already know is true: The foundation of everything is love because “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). God’s love in us is seeking to love and be loved and to bring healing and wholeness to a suffering world. Love is our basic identity in God.

My own experience of God’s love has inspired me to be a channel of divine love for others. I try to remove the barriers—created by immature religion, bad teaching, culture, ego, and our own woundedness—that keep us from knowing God’s love for ourselves. My goal is to take us back to the basics that have been forgotten for so long and for so many reasons. Jesus summed up the entire law and prophets with these words: “Love God and love others” (Mt 22:36-40; Lk 10:25-28; Mk 12:28-31).

Faith in God is not just faith to believe in spiritual ideas. It’s to have confidence in love itself. It’s to have confidence in reality itself. At its core, reality is OK. God is in it. God is revealed in all things. The most powerful, most needed, and most essential teaching is always about love. Love is our foundation and our destiny. It is where we come from and where we’re headed. As St. Paul said, “So faith, hope, and love remain, but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13:13). God’s love is planted inside each of us as the Holy Spirit, who, according to Jesus, “will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you” (Jn 14:26). Love is who you are.

All I can do is remind you of what you already know deep within your True Self and invite you to live connected to this Source. John the Evangelist wrote, “God is love, and whoever remains in love, remains in God and God in him or her” (1 Jn 4:16). The Judeo-Christian creation story says that we were created in the very “image and likeness” of God—who is love (Gn 1:26 and Gn 9:6). Out of the Trinity’s generative, loving relationship, creation takes form, mirroring its Creator.

We Are Made in God’s Image

We have heard this phrase so often that we don’t get the existential shock of what “created in the image and likeness of God” is saying about us. If this is true—and I believe it is—our family of origin is divine. It is saying that we were created by a loving God to be love in the world. Our core is original blessing, not original sin. Our starting point is positive, and, as it is written in the first chapter of the Bible, it is “very good” (Gn 1:31). We do have a good place to go home.

We must overcome the illusion of separateness. It is the primary task of religion to communicate not worthiness, but union—to reconnect people to their original identity “hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). The Bible calls the state of separateness “sin.” God’s job description is to draw us back into primal and intimate relationship. “My dear people, we are already children of God; what we will be in the future has not yet been fully revealed, and all I do know is that we shall be like God” (1 Jn 3:2).

I can remember visiting my Catholic parish as a young boy and seeing all the statues, paintings, color, music, incense, and candles. It was a mystical place—and I was in awe. It felt like a different world. To me it felt like the real world.

That real-world feeling echoes my earliest memory of a God-like experience: I was probably 5 years old. I was in the living room. All the family members were in the kitchen talking, and the kitchen was bright. But the living room was dark with just the Christmas tree lit. I had the sense that the world was good, I was good, and I was part of the good world; and I just wanted to stay there. I remember feeling very special, very chosen, very beloved, and it was my secret. The family in the kitchen didn’t know what I was knowing.

Our first spiritual experience can be very ego-inflating. But, like the Apostle Paul, we know that chosenness is for the sake of letting everybody else know they are chosen too. I have spent my adult life doing just that—reminding people of their inherent belovedness.

My memory of the Christmas tree was like being taken to another world, the real world, the world as it’s meant to be, where the foundation is love, and God is in everything. It’s a benevolent universe where God is on our side and God is more for us than we are for ourselves, where “my deepest me is God,” as Catherine of Genoa says.

Your True Self

Your True Self is who you are and always have been in God; and at its core, your True Self is love itself. Love is both who you are and who you are still becoming, like a sunflower seed that becomes its own sunflower. Most of human history has referred to the True Self as your “soul” or “your participation in the eternal life of God.” The great surprise and irony is that “you,” or who you think you are, has nothing to do with your True Self’s original creation or its ongoing existence. This is disempowering and utterly empowering at the same time.

There’s nothing you can do to make God love you more; and there’s nothing you can do to make God love you less. All you can do is nurture your True Self.

According to Paul (Rom 8:28), becoming my True Self seems to be a fully cooperative effort, and this is affirmed in my own limited experience. God never forces us or coerces us toward life or love by any threats whatsoever. God lures us, yes—coerces us, no (Jer 20:7; Mt 11:28-30). God is utterly free and utterly respects our own human freedom. Love cannot happen in any other way. Love flourishes inside freedom and then increases that freedom even more. “For freedom Christ has set us free! ” shouts Paul in his critique of all legalistic religion (Gal 5:1).

We are allowed to ride life’s and love’s wonderful mystery for a few years—until life and love reveal themselves as the same thing, which is the final and full message of the risen Christ. Life morphs into a love that is beyond space and time. Christ literally “breathes” shalom and forgiveness into the universal air (Jn 20:22-23).

God Is Good

I would like to share an especially powerful experience I had in the Franciscan novitiate. I was kneeling in the choir alone. Suddenly, I felt chains fly in all directions.

The Scripture that I had read that day was from Philippians 3:7: “What I once considered an asset, now I consider a liability. The law that I thought was going to save me, now is my curse” (I’m paraphrasing). Suddenly, I knew that God’s love did not depend on my following all these laws and mandates or being worthy. I knew I wasn’t worthy, and yet here I was experiencing absolute grace and absolute acceptance from God.

The whole system I’d grown up with had implied that God will love you if you change. That day I realized God’s love enables and energizes us to change.

I had that boyhood secret discovered in front of the Christmas tree: that I’d been taken over to another world, which was really this world as it truly is. I’d realized, My God, this is what everybody is living inside of—and they don’t see it! Now, once again in the novitiate, I somehow knew that I was good, God is good, life is good. And I didn’t have to achieve that goodness by any performance whatsoever. I am saved by grace. Grace is everything! In that one moment, I understood the Gospel.

I can’t say that in the intervening years I’ve always believed this on a daily basis. Just like the biblical writers and the saints, I would get it and then lose it for a while. Sometimes I would let irritations, resentments, and annoyances eat me alive and would not be able to live in the state of grace and inner freedom. Or I’d get caught up in the drama of life—even good and exciting things—and wouldn’t have time for God’s unconditional love.

Love was still and always flowing through me, but I wasn’t resting in it or consciously enjoying it. Even now there’s a temptation to think I have to earn God’s love. There is still an inner voice that says, I am not worthy enough or good enough. And that’s where I continue to grow in love and faith—by not believing those negative voices and trusting grace’s absolute givenness.

Lord, lover of life, lover of these lives,
Lord, lover of our souls, lover of our bodies, lover of all that exists . . .
In fact, it is your love that keeps it all alive . . .
May we live in this love.
May we never doubt this love.
May we know that we are love,
That we were created for love,
That we are a reflection of you,
That you love yourself in us and therefore we are perfectly lovable.
May we never doubt this deep and abiding and perfect goodness
That we are because you are.

This was adapted from Father Richard Rohr’s book Essential Teachings on Love (Orbis Books). Editors Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger contributed to this article.

A Catholic agency helps resettle families from war-ravaged Syria and Iraq, helping their dreams of a better future become a reality.

In war-ravaged Syria, Abdulrahman Mohammed and his family would go for months at a time without bread or running water. “We and our neighbors were constantly under attack from mortars and snipers,” he recalls.

Miles away in neighboring Iraq, ISIS militants swept through Mosul and nearby towns, destroying homes and churches. The violence forced Sameera, an Iraqi Catholic widow, and her family to flee. Their home and church would be destroyed.

Today, Abdulrahman and Sameera and their families are starting over in the suburbs of Detroit.

The families are among 1,100 refugees—most of them from Syria and Iraq—who were resettled in the Detroit area from October 2015 through September 2017 with the assistance of Catholic Charities of Southeastern Michigan (CCSEM).

However, after a record-setting year—the agency resettled 813 refugees in 2016—CCSEM is contending with a virtual shutdown as a result of President Donald Trump’s executive orders, which sharply reduced the flow of refugees.

“We’re a program in hibernation right now,” says David Bartek, executive director of CCSEM, which operates under the Archdiocese of Detroit. “We no longer have any staff [assigned to] refugee resettlement.”

In the current fiscal year, which began October 1, 2017, and ends September 30, 2018, “we will have resettled five refugees,” says Bartek. “That’s five—one, two, three, four, five.”

Welcoming ‘The Lucky Few’

Abdulrahman’s and Sameera’s families were among the last refugees resettled by CCSEM during the spring and summer of 2017. “[They] were the lucky few,” says Farrah Shammas, CCSEM’s program manager until she was laid off because of the agency shutdown.

Detroit has long been a destination for immigrants from the Middle East, who were attracted to the birthplace of the American auto industry. According to 2015 US Census data, some 2 percent of Michigan residents report Arab ancestry, the highest in the country.

For refugees, the CCSEM staff was “basically here as their best friend, if they come in and have nobody here,” says Shammas. “We help them find language programs. We help themenrolltheir kids in school. We help them get their public assistance that they need.”

CCSEM provides 90 days of services to each refugee family. “We look for furniture donations, household items, clothing to get them by until all their public assistance comes through,” says Shammas. “They have multiple health screening appointments, and they are required to be assessed and vaccinated. We help them get their Social Security cards and all the necessary documents that they need.”

Amid Bombings, ‘It Was Time’

Now living in the suburbs of Detroit, Abdulrahman Mohammed and his wife, Zahrahaj, consider themselves fortunate despite the violence and trauma that forced them from their home country. The family escaped from Aleppo, the Syrian city at the epicenter of the refugee crisis caused by the Syrian civil war, in 2013.

“We are lucky we got here,” says Zahrahaj, whose family is Muslim and of Kurdish descent. The family and their children spent four years in a refugee camp in Turkey before arriving in Detroit on March 27, 2017.

The Mohammed family described what they lived through and why they decided to flee Aleppo.

Zahrahaj says her first cousin saw her three children die as they played in the street when a bomb fell from the sky, Zahrahaj’s daughter Yildiz had filled out paperwork to attend the university in Aleppo and left just 10 minutes before bombings on campus left more than 80 people dead, including some of her friends, on January 15, 2013. That’s when Abdulrahman, 47, who supported the family as a taxi driver, decided to make plans to leave.

“It was time. We were subject to bombings, kidnapping, rape. The kids understood that it was for a better future,” he says. From Aleppo, they went to a village where relatives lived. One night, guided by a full moon, they walked three hours through woods from the village to the border with Turkey. Now the children laugh when they recall that, during the escape, they encountered a hissing snake rising from the forest floor. Abdulrahman carried his disabled daughter on his back.

They express no bitterness, despite the four-year ordeal of living as refugees in Turkey. The family rented an apartment in Istanbul. Abdulrahman worked as a laborer unloading trucks. He also cut material by hand and machined it in a small shop. Daughter Yildiz worked with her dad at the shop, but once she picked up the Turkish language, she also worked at a clothing store. They didn’t have money to pay for all the children to go to a school where they could learn in the Arabic language to which they were accustomed instead of Turkish.

The family’s struggle was also amplified when the couple’s disabled 15-year-old daughter died. On a cell phone, Zahrahaj brings up her photo. “Her name was Golestan. She died in Turkey.”

Doughnuts and Grape Leaves

In Detroit now, smiles and laughter punctuate the conversation, despite memories of deprivation, fear, and tragedy.

Last summer, the parents went to school three hours every weekday to learn English. Yildiz learned some English while in Turkey. She plans to attend community college. In the meantime, she rises early every morning for a 3:30 a.m. shift making doughnuts at a nearby Tim Hortons drive-through.

They had no relatives or connections here. But the neighbor next door, who flies an American flag outside, brought them a cake in welcome Zahrahaj reciprocated with a plate of grape leaves.

“All the neighbors raise their hands to say hello,” says Abdulrahman. He sought work as a chauffeur or taxi driver and hopes someday to open his own business, such as a used-car lot. Within days of landing in Detroit, the three youngest children—Amina, 14, Mohammad, 12, and Ahmed, 10—were enrolled in local schools. Their oldest daughter, Dunya, married while in Turkey and is now living with her husband in Germany.

“At first, school was tough,” recalls Amina, who says she wants to be a police detective. “I got used to it. It was better than not going to school in Turkey. Here, life is better.”

Mohammad points in the direction of a street just blocks away, noting in English, “I have friends. We play PlayStation.” He’d like to be a biologist.

When the youngest child, Ahmed, is dropped off from an English-language class, he walks into the living room and shakes the hands of the journalist and social worker.

“What’s the word of the day?” his dad asks him in Arabic. Ahmed juts a finger upward and responds, “Sky.” And he throws in “cloud” for atmospheric amplification. Ahmed’s thinking of becoming a pilot, impressed as he was with the airplane ride that brought him to the United States.

“My kids have big dreams. They’re all different,” says Abdulrahman. But they cannot imagine going back to their previous lives.

“Who would I go back to? I have no family back in Syria,” says Abdulrahman. “There is nothing.”

Praying for a Better Future

For Sameera, there is nothing to go back to in the northern Iraqi city of Qaraqosh, where she grew up with 10 siblings, married, gave birth to one son and two daughters, and buried her husband.

The family members are Iraqi Catholics—known as Chaldeans. After Islamic State forces conquered the Iraqi city of Mosul in June 2014, the militants steadily vanquished historic towns and villages where Catholics lived for hundreds of years, descendants of some of the first followers of Christianity. After Mosul fell, Sameera, her three children, and others in her family fled Qaraqosh, home to one of the largest Catholic communities in Iraq.

Qaraqosh fell under ISIS control, and the home where Sameera lived and the Chaldean Catholic churches where she worshipped were destroyed. There’s a fledgling effort under way to rebuild these historic Christian communities, since Iraqi and US forces drove the Islamic State group out of the region in fall 2016. The Knights of Columbus, for example, has announced it will contribute $2 million to rebuild the Christian town of Karemles.

But after spending three years as a refugee in Turkey while seeking resettlement to the Detroit area, Sameera cannot imagine a life in Iraq. Sameera, who asked that the family’s last names not be used, arrived in Detroit with her three children, her mother, and a sister.

Sameera’s mother, Zamira, raised 11 children, and is distraught that her youngest son, Samir, had to remain in Turkey to await approval as a refugee.

While in a town about three hours from Ankara, Turkey, the grandmother says family members were subject to hostility and disrespect. They couldn’t go to Mass because there weren’t any Christian churches in their town. While they applied for resettlement in the United States, Sameera and her sister Hiba found work in a school cafeteria. Her teenage son, Abdallah, got a job at a restaurant, while his sisters, Noor and Donia, stayed in their tiny apartment.

“We were afraid. We were scared. We had no control,” says Sameera. “We couldn’t stay in Turkey, and we couldn’t go back to Iraq. Work, home, work. The kids didn’t go to school for two to three years. We couldn’t pay for private school, and Christians were not welcome.”

“Our town is destroyed. They burned the houses to the ground. It’s like a desert,” Hiba says of the ISIS occupation of Qaraqosh. “Sameera’s home is destroyed. Our mother’s home was burned and the furniture is gone. The church where Sameera married, St. Jacob, is destroyed.”

Sameera asked to be resettled in Detroit, where an older sister, Rita, has lived for five years. When the family arrived in June 2017, Rita met them at the airport. In Sameera’s apartment in suburban Detroit, the family has hung three framed photos, including one of her late husband and another one of her late father.

In their first weeks in Detroit, they visited a lake, enjoyed a picnic lunch, and went swimming. “The first time in our lives we went to a big lake,” says Sameera. Abdallah tried Mexican food and enjoyed it. Within two months of arriving in Detroit, the family was celebrating some joyous news: Hiba became engaged to a Chaldean immigrant who worked with Rita.

“Inshallah,” says Sameera, which is Arabic for “God willing,” as she describes her hopes for stability and safety in Detroit and to be reunited with one of her younger brothers left behind in Turkey.

“We get by,” Sameera says with a glimmer of optimism. “We hope. We pray for a good future.”

Sidebar: ‘Unconscionable’

The Trump administration said it would accept 45,000 refugees for the fiscal year that ends on September 30. But William Canny, executive director of Migration and Refugee Services for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said it’s likely only half that number will be admitted.

The federal government’s practices “have slowed refugee admissions to a trickle,” says Canny. The Trump administration contends that tougher vetting of refugees, immigrants, and visitors is necessary for national security.

Catholic Charities of Southeastern Michigan is among 90 Catholic-affiliated programs that help with refugee resettlement across the country, says Canny. “Many have downsized and about 20 have closed or are in limbo, and it’s not clear how many will continue into the future,” he says.

The impact on Michigan agencies is profound because many specialize in helping refugees from majority-Muslim countries targeted by Trump’s evolving travel bans and security advisory lists affecting refugees, immigrants, and travelers. “It’s primarily due to fewer arrivals of refugees from Syria and Iraq. Those are the largest nationality groups that have resettled in Michigan,” Canny says.

National Public Radio, for example, reported that the United States had accepted only 11 Syrian refugees through mid-April 2018, compared to 15,479 in 2016 and 3,024 in 2017. Canny and others are lobbying federal officials to bring in more refugees, with a target of at least 75,000 in fiscal year 2019.

“Many are stuck in refugee camps that are just horrible,” Canny says. “It’s really unconscionable for our country. Bringing in 75,000 refugees to a country this size isn’t a heavy lift, and many of us feel this is the least we can do. By not helping, we’re actually hurting ourselves. We’re weakening our own caritas, our own ability to love, our own enrichment from the diversity that refugees bring.”

No, sorry, that is not only incorrect, but that’s not what Pope Francis meant or said. The pope used the word redeemed and not justified. Only God can redeem, and that redemption takes place because of Jesus’ death on the cross. No human can redeem himself. Only through Jesus do we have a chance at salvation. That means everyone—including atheists—have the opportunity to reach a perfect union with God.

God’s Map

There are two aspects to the question of salvation. One is God’s role (which is what Pope Francis was talking about), but the other is our role. That role is our response to God and his plan for salvation, which is why Jesus taught as he did in the Gospels. He did this not just by words and instructions, but also by his own lived example.

The Gospels are God’s map—our GPS, if you will—as we all walk our pilgrimage on this earth. God, in fact, says to every person, “Come to me.” But only we, given our free will, can say “Yes, God, here I come.” It is amazing that some humans say no to God. He will not force anyone, no matter how much he wants us with him.

Achieving Salvation

Even though we must say yes, the Lord is abundant with grace to help us. The truth is that if anyone is not saved, it is his fault and not God’s.

Another important factor is that God alone understands perfectly the circumstances of everyone’s life. We have to admit that we are truly blessed to have been given the gift of faith. But imagine someone who, through no fault of his/her own, doesn’t know who God is. Consider a native in central New Guinea. God will not demand something of someone who is incapable of meeting that condition.

What about a person raised in an environment where he/she has been influenced away from God, but who still chooses to have faith? God knows it is a great responsibility to believe and follow the Gospels of Jesus. That’s why it is unchristian and imprudent for some of our brothers and sisters in faith to determine who is saved and who is not. That’s why the Church has never said that any particular person is in hell. A person’s response to God can only be known by God. He alone knows every human heart.

And that is why bishops of Vatican II said so wisely in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their own actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation” (847).

Shannon and I jokingly reflected that no one should teach at the school, or they would get a chronic disease! From that coincidental health story, a prayerful one developed.

Now, over three decades later, Shannon and I talk about the challenges of living each day with a chronic disease. A big part of our coping is through prayer.

Eternal Timeline

Since the diagnosis, both Shannon and I have prayed for healing. I did not tell many people at first that I prayed each day to be healed of the devastating effects of multiple sclerosis. I had a feeling that it was not good theology—or faith—to pray for healing so relentlessly. I wondered if one should pray for healing like this. Was I being realistic? I asked Shannon, who has a doctorate in systematic theology, if this prayer of petition was theologically sound. She comforted me with her thoughts: “God heals in so many ways beyond our imagining. Healing happens in all kinds of ways, not just in the miraculous, instantaneous cure of a serious illness.” Shannon reminded me that God’s timeline and our timeline are not the same. Having a disease for 30 years is a drop in the bucket in the overall scheme of eternity.

I have prayed for decades for a cure. About 18 years ago, the first disease-modifying injections for multiple sclerosis came out, which slow its progression. To me, this was an answer to my prayers for healing.

I pray daily that I might walk better, as my legs have weakened over the years. I bumped into a physical-therapist friend—whom I had lost track of—and we met for lunch. She encouraged me to restart my physical-therapy program. To me, this is another answer to prayer.

It Works

I pray each day for healing, using my favorite Scripture passage, John 14:13-14: “And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.” I think I wear that verse out.

My friend was having colon surgery, and I placed her name on our sisters’ email hotline. She called me when she was released from the hospital.

“I felt a sense of peace and energy surround me,” my friend said. She knows she will be able to face whatever comes in her health story.

Handy Tips

• Bring to God your requests for healing.
• Notice the healings that take place in your life.
• Expect surprising gifts from your God!

Next Month: Let Go, Let God