Write for God

The face on the Shroud of Turin

Either we go up together or we go down together. (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

We are all busy during our workday and sometimes even a break or lunch eludes us, but we are always nestled in the hands of God and that He shows us His face in others. I had the blessing of experiencing that today.

A random post on a social networking group I joined recently led me to deep prayer for a stranger. A fellow communications professional asked for prayers for her nephew, who is in critical condition after a car accident that left him with a traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Since last September, our family has been dealing with our 13-year-old daughter’s TBI and its aftermath. I’ve posted entries about our ordeal here before but, in short: Our beautiful daughter was in a coma for five weeks and in rehab for another five weeks before she joined us at home. Young people with similar injuries are very special to me now because I know the hell that their families endure when they see their child with a TBI in intensive care.

When I read about the young man accident on my social networking group, I contacted the family and we’ve been in touch all day today sorting out this terrible event.  The young man is 17 and today he was due to be anointed with a glove that belonged to St. Pio of Pietrelcina, the beloved Padre Pio whose intercession we sought during our daughter’s worst days.  Please pray for Daniel Perrino today. He is in God’s hands today and our prayers are desperately needed for his healing.

As Dr. King put it, we can either rise or fall together. After a busy morning working and praying for Daniel, I finally made it to the bank to make two deposits for my employer. I was thinking of TBIs and beating the rain as I walked the block to the bank. Ahead of me, there was an old woman in shabby clothing. She had a tote bag hooked to her walker as she laboriously walked the few steps from the bank’s parking lot to the main entrance. Seeing the face of God in her, I hurried to open the two bank doors and she thanked me for my “beautiful heart.”

I walked to the line in the lobby, still thinking of how quickly I could leave before the rain began. As I waited, the same woman eventually stood behind me. I gave her my place in line so she wouldn’t have to wait longer than I and, again, she thanked me.

My deposits in, I walked out and the same woman was walking to the two bank doors to leave. It was as if God had put her in my path today for some good. Again, I helped her out.

On the sidewalk, she told me that she had come in for cash to pay for her handicapped tag. A state employee had been thoughtful enough to tell her that Florida is raising its fees on September 1. Paying for her tag early would save her a little cash instead of waiting to renew on her birthday, she said. I mentioned that I wanted to do the same thing with my tag because my birthday was coming up in October.

She stopped and looked at me: Her birthday was in October, too, and she asked which day. The 17th, I told her and, with a big smile, she told me that was her birthday, too. It turns out that she was exactly 30 years older than me. She told me that her name was Georgietta and I told her mine. We shared a moment and I told her to be safe as she drove across the street to the registration office to get her tag.

The odds of walking in and out with this stranger who shared my birthday are astronomical. Most of the times that I make a deposit at this bank, I walk in and out without talking to anyone except the teller. It seems that Georgietta needed someone to be kind to her today, and a stranger who shared her birthday and just wanted to beat the rain was God’s instrument to do that. 

I could be Georgietta in 30 years walking into a bank and hoping that someone I don’t know will care enough to hold a door for me or to chat for a minute. This afternoon, God showed his face to me as a disabled woman without much money but with the capacity to let me be kind.

Praying for a boy I don’t know or holding a door for an elderly woman who shares my birthday showed me that we are always in the hands of God, ready to love his people as He commands us to do, and that those he puts in our path bear His face.

Honor your father and mother (in Hebrew)

All of us have received a fat envelope from Publishers Clearinghouse promising untold riches. Inside is a pitch for magazines we probably don’t want to buy or junk gadgets we wouldn’t want to use. Some of us return them hoping there might be a chance we’d win and others just throw them way.

This morning I met an elderly woman who told me she was a victim of a Publishers Clearinghouse scam. At the age of 79 and on a limited income, she didn’t look too closely at the $5,000 check she said she received from Publishers Clearinghouse. She deposited it in her bank account and rejoiced over her good fortune.

A few days later, the bank told her the bad news: her bank account was overdrawn by more than $2,000. The real-looking check was a phony.  The bank accepted the check and, once it was discovered to be phony, it debited the victim’s account for its face value.

After writing press materials for a Florida consumer protection agency, I found the victim’s story a little odd. In 2001, Publishers Clearinghouse had run afoul of state laws and had changed its business practices to avoid questions about scams involving the elderly. It didn’t seem likely that they would be sending deceptive advertising to seniors in 2009 and yet the woman’s letter had arrived just weeks ago.

My best guess after talking to the victim was that she had been scammed by criminals pretending to be Publishers Clearinghouse instead of the company itself, which actually did change many of its sweepstakes tactics after several states brokered a settlement for $34 million in restitution. (Publishers Clearinghouse has a Web page describing to a T the scam that victimized the woman I spoke with, right down to sending money to recover the funds you’re owed. Publishers Clearinghouse asks consumers to contact the National Fraud Center.)

It’s ironic that March 1-7 is National Consumer Protection Week, a time when consumer advocates educate the public about the countless ways that scammers come up with to part hardworking people from their money.

The shame that the victim felt over having been “stupid” and the money she lost to the scam were crosses she had to bear, but a statement she made gave me hope.

“If I didn’t have my Christian faith, I would have been standing at a bridge prepared to jump,” she said. God was going to get her through this grief in her old age, she added. 

Satan is indeed loose in this world when scams to defraud seniors of their savings succeed, but God has the ultimate victory in all. God will get this victim through her ordeal, as He does for all His children. Three of us this morning prayed for her after she left our office.

May our prayers for her and for all the vulnerable senior citizens who are the victims of con artists rise like incense today. May God judge those who dishonor their elders in this evil way. Sirach offers guidance in the kindness we should offer the frail who may be our parents or strangers:

My son, take care of your father when he is old; grieve him not as long as he lives.

Even if his mind fail, be considerate with him; revile him not in the fullness of your strength.

For kindness to a father will not be forgotten, it will serve as a sin offering–it will take lasting root.

In time of tribulation it will be recalled to your advantage, like warmth upon frost it will melt away your sins.

A blasphemer is he who despises his father; accursed of his Creator, he who angers his mother.

In 1987. the Archbishop of Paris, the late Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, opened a diocesan inquiry into the life of a Frenchman who had died 30 years earlier. In 1993, the Archbishop opened the cause for his beatification.

What is remarkable is that the subject of the inquiry was Jacques Fesch, who was guillotined at 27 for a murder he had committed four years before. After a botched robbery, Fesch had shot wildly (he had lost his glasses) and killed the police officer in pursuit. Fesch was captured and sentenced to die.

Something remarkable happened to Jacques Fesch during his years in prison: God spoke to him and effected a transformation in his soul. Some of Fesch’s letters are in Light over the Scaffold and Cell 18: The Prison Letters of Jacques Fesch, as strong a testimony of conversion as I’ve ever read. Here’s an excerpt from a letter he wrote two years before his death:

“Little by little I was led to change my ideas. I was no longer certain that God did not exist. I began to be open to Him, though I did not yet have faith. I tried to believe with my reason, without praying, or praying ever so little! And then, at the end of my first year in prison, a powerful wave of emotion swept over me, causing deep and brutal suffering. Within the space of a few hours, I came into possession of faith, with absolute certainty. I believed, and could no longer understand how I had ever not believed. Grace had come to me. A great joy flooded my soul and above all a deep peace. In a few instants everything had become clear. it was a very strong, sensible joy that I felt. I tend now to try, perhaps excessively, to recapture it; actually, the essential thing is not emotion, but faith.”

God calls prodigal sons home and welcomes them, as did the father in the parable Jesus told to the tax collectors and sinners to explain the Father’s boundless mercy. I recall the nervous laughter from the glittering audience at the Grammy Awards in 1991 when Bob Dylan collected a prize and quoted his father:

“It’s possible to become so defiled in this world that your own father and mother will abandon you and, if that happens, God will always believe in your ability to mend your ways.”

God does believe in our ability to mend our ways. He graced Jacques Fesch with salvation and he uses all of in the same way. And yet, many states in our nation continue to use the judicial murder called the death penalty to punish sinners like Fesch. France abandoned the death penalty long ago, as did the civilized nations of the world that profess some measure of human rights. As a body, our Bishops have spoken out forcefully against the use of the death penalty, as did Pope John Paul II.

The United States stands with Syria and China as nations that still murder those who commit crimes. The Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, a political show pony who never met a media opportunity he couldn’t glom on to, signed a death warrant recently and, tonight, another human being was killed by lethal injection in our state. The judicial process couldn’t make time for DNA testing to ensure they were not killing an innocent man, even though it has no problem killing those they deem guilty, either.

Jacques Fesch is in a better place with his God, as are all those who are the victims of violence. Only God can judge us in life or death. Whether murder is committed by an individual the State then judges or whether it’s committed by the State that kills without impunity, murder is murder. We serve a God who believes we can mend our ways, to quote Dylan. It’s time to erase the death penalty from our nation’s history of violence.