Last week, when I was in India visiting my mother, I also visited a former classmate living in my neighborhood. He and his wife had recently lost their 24-year-old daughter Shami shortly after she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. This loss was devastating not only for her parents but also for the entire village.
The parents could not handle the pain and completely shut themselves off from everyone else. I spent a couple of hours with them, listening. They were crying bitterly as they shared their pain. Shami was the Cantor in our parish church and well-loved by all. Her parents told me that she would bring the entire family together in prayer every evening at 7 PM. She was the joy of their life. Her parents felt so sad that God did not hear their prayers to save her life. They felt sadder that she could not even hold her baby in her arms for a day nor feed her as a mother. She had died of Covid in the hospital. The parents were lost and even contemplated ending their lives.
Their sadness led to such bitterness toward God that they stopped praying. They did not want anything to do with God. The father showed me a sack full of religious pictures and relics he had removed from the house. He said, “Why should I pray to a God who never heard me.” I had no words to console them. However, I told them they should thank God for giving her to them for the past 24 years. Our children don’t belong to us. They belong to God. One day you shall see your daughter again. We don’t know “why” it happened; we need to ask the question, “what for?” If you turn back to God, he will turn your misery into mercy, your sorrow into joy. I read Psalm 23 with them, prayed with them, and assured them of a God who is always with us even if we walk in the valley of the shadow of death. I am happy to share that they decided to place the picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus at the center of their home at the end of my time with them.
Friends, Lent gives us a chance to listen to God’s voice in our lives and begin afresh. As the Psalmist says in today’s reading, “In my distress I called upon the LORD and cried out to my God; from his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears.” No matter what stage of life we are in, no matter how stubborn we are or how deaf we are to God’s voice, he never gives up on us. God hears our crying out to him. He comes to us during our time of distress. He invites us to become new creations in him. I ended my conversation with my classmate and his wife by quoting Isaiah 43: 18-19: “Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; See I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? In the desert, I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers.” Our faith in Jesus, who suffered and died for us, will turn our misery into mercy and hope.
Father Pinto's inspirational homily was recorded live this morning during Mass at the Father Peyton Center. Please view the video on our Facebook page. (You don't need a Facebook account to view.)
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Father Pinto Paul C.S.C., ordained a priest in the Congregation of Holy Cross in 1999, worked with tribal populations in northeast India as a missionary for ten years. In 2010 he came to the US for further studies. While working as a campus minister at Stonehill College, he assisted pastors in local parishes, led seminars and workshops for teachers and students in the US and earned a master’s degree in Educational Administration from Boston College and a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from Lesley University, Cambridge. He is currently working as the International Director of the Boston-based Holy Cross Family Ministries with missions in 18 countries.
.jpg "Father Pinto Paul, C.S.C.")