cursing the sky!

Recently, a clergy colleague asked for my help in locating a family who were members of that church a generation ago when I was the priest there. Searching for them high and low, I finally found them way out west where I never expected.  

Following a "trail," I came across and read old Facebook and other posts online, watching as they moved from place to place over the years, and reading about the children as they grew. I baptized at least one of them in our years in the parish together. They were a close and loving single parent family. We hadn't been in touch in probably ten years or more.

One of the reports, from several years back, shocked me with news of a devastating health diagnosis for her, the head of the family, a single mom with several children. She reported the crisis, quoting her kids reaction to being told, their screaming and anger and outcries including "F - God" and curses at Heaven, and weeping. I wish I could have been there for them, and I hope some loving person was, but I don't know. 

Anger at God is a common reaction to terrible news. I've known it myself, one Time in raging, sobbing pain on being told about a cancer diagnosis for one of my children. And I've encountered it with parishioners now and then. I think every priest, pastor does when people are not afraid of God striking them dead.  

There is theological assurance. One of my books that was most helpful to me in parish ministry was "May I Hate God?" by Pierre Wolff, SJ, a Roman Catholic priest, SJ, a Jesuit, Society of Jesus. In my experience, the Jesuits seem to be the intellectual elite in the Church. They can also seem the most hardhearted practical, counter to the Franciscans!

It's a short little book, maybe sixty pages. Not sure, but I may have first bought it in my seminary bookstore, and at every church I served I used to keep copies to hand out when people needed it. In fact, I think I still have a couple of copies around, here or in my office at the church. 

A most excellent thesis. I'm not looking at the book to quote it now, but I remember Father Wolff saying that if we cannot hate God when we most need to vent anger and pain, then God is not Grace, which is UNCONDITIONAL LOVE; and if we dare not hate God when we most need to, then our faith is not strong; but he says that God offers himself, still, just as on Calvary, as an object of our bitterness, anger and hatred if we need that. It may seem a shocking thesis, but it's the deepest portrayal of the love of God that I have ever read outside the gospels.

My search for that "long lost" family brought all this to mind again. BTW, I did establish touch, not with the woman, the single mom (and I don't know how her health crisis developed, and was not told), but I found and exchanged communications with one of her children, who is grown and away at college. I got the information my clergy colleague needed, and passed to along to him.

Blessings and Pax!

T88&c