Skip to main content

Reflection on the Meaning of Suffering



 FROM THE DAD'S EULOGY FOR HIS SON:
On Wednesday night, I think I may have confused Ethan.  After arriving to the ER and after being worked on by the trauma team, Kristen and I were pulled into a waiting room to be told that Ethan’s heart had stopped…..that Ethan had passed, and that there was nothing the doctors could do.  I immediately ran into the trauma room where I found Ethan’s naked body on the table.  I grabbed him by the arms and said “Ethan, your a little scrapper, you know how to fight, so fight for daddy, you have to come back, daddy says come back!”  In that immediate moment his heart started up again.  I think the confusion for Ethan was that as he was making his way to Jesus, he heard my voice calling to him.  His mind full of wonder was probably attracted to the beautiful light of God but the obedient boy that he is, he came back when he heard me.  
 At that very moment, Ethan’s ministry began.  I didn’t see it then but it can’t be any clearer now.  The mobilization of prayers throughout the country and the world unified an entire global community.  Facebook exploded!  My analytical mind cant help but wish for an algorythm that could measure how many thousands of people connected to God through Ethan in prayer.  From Nepal, to Holland, Japan, California, Puerto Rico, Texas, and many more places, tens of thousands were praying.  And they were posting, and texting and calling. Even The Donald, yes Donald Trump prayed for Ethan.  Ask me later. It’s an amazing story.  And just as Jeff stands next to me today, your prayers supported us when there was no way we naturally could.  
 Ethan started something big.  A friend of mine who I hadn’t seen or heard from in over 12 years wrote to me saying, “Sam, I haven’t spoken to God in over 10 years, but today I spoke to God because of Ethan”.  Others wrote saying, “I am hearing God louder and clearer in my life than at any other time.”  And others expressed, “Ethan has restored faith in Jesus for me.” It’s so ironic, that as people prayed for a miracle in his life, the miracle was actually happening in theirs, in my life and in yours.  Some of you may have never met Ethan …but all of us met God at some point last week. I will never forget what Ethan has done to my life, never forget what God did in yours.  That will be his legacy forever.  A short life of 20 months that ministered to more people than some may do in 90 years of living.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News

DANCING WITH MR. D:   This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News : 'via Blog this'

Things Catholic

In my second chapter I discuss why the political terms "liberal" and "conservative" are misnomers for adjectives modifying the term "Catholic." This is especially important now, when, following the resignation of Benedict XVI, pundits will misuse these terms in discussing the Holy father's legacy. Read more on this here.

Women Warriors?

A s a Catholic man and history teacher, I always tell my classes that, for reasons of masculinity and chivalry, I oppose women in the military (I teach at an all-female Catholic girls high school). So this article gives a better explanation of my view from a Catholic man's perspective: WOMEN DON'T DESERVE COMBAT by Mr. Gabe Jones “For whenever man is responsible for offending a woman’s personal dignity and vocation, he acts contrary to his own personal dignity and his own vocation.” (Pope St. John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, 10) December 3, 2015 ought to be remembered as the date that any remaining vestiges of our country’s collective sense of chivalry died a tragic death. It was on this day that Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced his decision to require combat positions in every branch of the United States military – including the Marine Corps – be opened to women. Despite being one of the most significant news items in recent memory, if you did not p...

The Pope and the Pill

C atholic teaching on the natural moral law reveals that man does not have unlimited dominion over his body or his sexual faculties, as Paul VI reminded us in Humanae vitae , for both of these must be used within the limits of the order of reality established by God (HV 16). When these limits are ignored, rejected or exceeded, horrifying consequences result. Here we are brought to Pope Paul's prophetic words: "Let [responsible men] first consider how easily [artificial birth control] could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings . . . need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and e...

Nuns' Story, or Call the Sisters

(Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham / Fr James Bradley) I have been watching the PBS series, Call the Midwives , which f ollows the nurses, midwives and nuns from Nonnatus House, who visit the expectant mothers of Poplar, providing the poorest women with the best possible care. As I observe the way these Anglican nuns are portrayed, it strikes me that they are more like Catholic nuns than many Catholic nuns after Vatican II (see chapter 5 of my book). Thus, the story featured in this post does not surprise me, especially after Pope Benedict's  launching of the United States’ ordinariate for disaffected Anglicans seeking communion with the Catholic Church.  From  the Apostolic Constitution  Anglicanorum Coetibus , given in Rome, at St. Peter’s, on Nov. 4, 2009: “In recent times the Holy Spirit has moved groups of Anglicans to petition repeatedly and insistently to be received into full Catholic communion individually as well as corporately.”

Homosexual Marriage

The urgency of the issue of gay marriage at this time and the compelling arguments raised against it here, make this paper an important resource: Answering Advocates of Gay Marriage KATHERINE YOUNG AND PAUL NATHANSON Claim 1 : Marriage is an institution designed to foster the love between two people. Gay people can love each other just as straight people can. Ergo, marriage should be open to gay people. Claim 2 : Not all straight couples have children, but no one argues that their marriages are unacceptable Claim 3 : Some gay couples do have children and therefore need marriage to provide the appropriate context. Claim 4 : Marriage and the family are always changing anyway, so why not allow this change? Claim 5 : Marriage and the family have already changed, so why not acknowledge the reality? Claim 6 : Children would be no worse off with happily married gay parents than they are with unhappily married straight ones. Claim 7 : Given global overpopulation, why w...

The End of Fortress Catholicism?!

John Gehring in the Post editorializes:   Something unexpected and extraordinary is happening in the Catholic Church. Pope Francis is rescuing the faith from those who hunker down in gilded cathedrals and wield doctrine like a sword. The edifice of fortress Catholicism – in which progressive Catholics, gay Catholics, Catholic women and others who love the church but often feel marginalized by the hierarchy – is starting to crumble. I, as one endlessly pointing out the fruitlessness of using adjectives to describe Catholics , could not resist the following, penned by Pat Archibold of the NCR (NOT Reporter!!) Proof of Liberalism in the Pope: "It is true that the Muslim world is not totally mistaken when it reproaches the West of Christian tradition of moral decadence and the manipulation of human life." "It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from ...
George Weigel has just published a proposed blueprint for  the “New Evangelization,” entitled Evangelical Catholicism which, to the extent that it is read will greatly amplify the New Evangelization, i.e., t he Church’s duty   everywhere and at all times  to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was Pope Paul VI   who in Evangelii Nuntiandi observed that the work of evangelization was so necessary because of the de- Christianization of the twilight year of the 20 th century. Pope Montini noted the multitudes of baptized Catholics living lives that did not distinguish them all that much from those ignorant of the Gospel; also those who, while ignorant of the full gospel, nevertheless had faith and lived according to the natural moral law, and Catholics who desired a more heartfelt relationship with Jesus Christ not given emphasis in the catechesis they received as children. His successor Pope John Paul II said that his predecessor’s use of “New Evangelizati...

Dancin' With Mr. D: Non-Binary?

A n LGBT activist has admitted that the battle over men accessing women’s bathrooms and vice versa has little do with transgenderism,  and everything to do with re-working society and getting rid of the heterobinary structure—eliminating distinctions between “male” and “female” altogether. Male and female He made them. Riki Wilchins, who has undergone “sex change” surgery and is a far-left social change activist, has written   that p eople should be able to enter whatever bathroom “fits their gender identity,” but the fact that we even have “male” and “female” bathrooms reflects something about society that needs to change.  He added that there are many “genderqueer” or “non-binary” people, pointing to a student who recently “came out” to President Obama as “non-binary” at a London townhall as an example.  “Non-binary” people don’t identify as male or female and they often want to be referred to as “they” or “hir” or “zer.”  So the fact that there...

From: The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God

A turning away from the teaching of Catholic doctrine in favor of experimental liturgical activity and social protest prepared the way for the application to catechesis of the malevolent concept of “ongoing revelation” under the leadership of Gabriel Moran. For disciples of Moran, God was to be sought in the modern world, from which it follows that catechesis should be centered on finding meaning in one’s lived experience, an approach which was said to be authoritative following Vatican II. The following characteristics give indication of neomodernist inspiration in catechesis after the Council: ·        The prioritization of inquiry over the handing on of the Deposit of the Faith, wherein students under the catechists’ direction explore the meaning of their own experience; the net result of this method was to downgrade the bishop from the role traditionally assigned him as chief catechist in his diocese in deference to the “professional” expert more ...