Hope Floats
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Monday, April 19, 2010 12:00 PM
The pope spent the weekend in Malta.
He was there to celebrate the 1950th anniversary of St. Paul’s shipwreck on the island.
Paul’s near-drowning became the instrument of the Maltese faith.
Two moments in particular move me greatly.
Of course the abuse crisis hung like a cloud of volcanic ash over the pilgrimage, to use reporter John Allen’s simile, but I actually think that made the moments I’ll describe more poignant.
There is a lot of rage in the public discussion of abuse, but little talk of how to help victims find healing. I have read that if you have been abused as a child, what you most need is for the sin done against you to be named and an apology: in other words, forthright acknowledgment that you were wronged and it was not your fault. If your abuser can’t or won’t offer the apology, it helps to get it from someone in authority over him.
Benedict XVI met with abuse victims (as he did here in the U.S. and again in Australia) on his Malta trip. Here’s a story in Italian that paints the scene, and Fr. Z. translates the reaction of a man named Lawrence Grech, the leader of a group of men harmed in a case notorious in Malta.
“I saw the Pope weep from emotion and I felt myself freed of a great weight.”
“I did not expect excuses from the Pope but I saw in him and in the bishop of Malta the humility of a Church which in that moment represented the entire problem of the modern Church.”
“He put his hand on the head of each one of the participants in the meeting, blessing them. I felt myself freed and relieved of a great weight.”
“For a long time I didn’t go to Mass any more and I had lost faith, but now I feel myself a convinced Catholic.”
Grech also said his meeting with the Pope was “the greatest gift I’ve received after the birth of my daughter.”
Doesn’t that move you? I picture the human drama of the scene. People who have been grievously wronged entering the room with anger and pain and other emotions I can only imagine. And gentle, good Benedict entering like a grandfather who must console his grandchildren for wrongs committed by one or more of his sons. He has his own welter of emotions: pain for the children in front of him, shame, perhaps helplessness, for what can he say that can possibly help?
And yet the solution to a tangled human problem turns out to be so simple. A word, a tear, a blessing.
Grach’s reaction is like the moment in Pilgrim’s Progress when Christian finally reaches Calvary and the burden of sin falls off and rolls away. Or like the scene in The Mission when the penitent priest, having atoned for his sins, finally forgives himself and is freed of his chains. Forgiveness is one of the great gifts of our faith: healing, beautiful and liberating for both wrong-doer and wronged.
That is grace at work, and grace can achieve what we with all our angst and wranglings, pain, rage, shame and sorrow cannot.
The second scene that moved me came during the Pope’s visit with young people (the picture here is of a boat tour of Valetta the Holy Father took as part of his encounter with youth).
But as this post is already long, I will save that for tomorrow.
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