Suicidality, Divine Mercy and Healing

Once I was on a train ride talking to a black woman who lamented some of the inner city realities which we are too familiar with–lack of jobs, poverty, disconnect with opportunity. We do however cheer because, as she said, hope is strong regardless and this she can attribute to her feeling blessed and loved by God despite any setbacks. She credits her church, her Bible, her family who taught her how to love God, something that she seeks to impart to her growing children and workmates. As we were talking, a white woman took interest in our conversation. As I said that I can confirm that even though the odds stacked against the minority populations are high, they somehow do not have high suicide rates because precisely of what she said–faith in God. “Do you agree?” I asked the white woman in the train. She vigorously said yes and cited that the white population of which she is a member of and who are mostly educated, comfortable and employed do get little buffer when they get sick or heartbroken because precisely they have put their faith on material things. They have become unchurched or not God-loving for the most part and this, she says, is just an honest fact that needs to be reversed if change towards greater resiliency and hope has to happen.

More recently, I tell people about the correlation with this, when whole communities are blessed with a resilient and gentle spirit, they may be poor but they are loving and giving to the best they can. Like poor families, who nonetheless bask in the happiness of their simple meal, it is an early heaven.

I talked to my friend today who lost a good friend. She says the friend’s relative has come to ask her to accompany her because she is now so afraid of death, as she is not a woman of faith unlike my friend, who knows Jesus is looking after her and loves her.

What a game changer. Even though the relative is wealthy, educated and young, she dreads suffering and the cross, having no awareness of its beautiful necessity or of resurrection after death. It is a sad life, something that those who have faith, should realize to engage and witness to others as much as possible. I too was such a woman. What crazy pointless times to not be living and modeling yourself after the Only One that truly matters?

I write because of Divine Mercy Sunday. To receive the Eucharist that day, which meant return to God and the Sacraments for fallen away Catholics and continued conversion for sinners, means being able to get indulgence, they are blessings like no other, an erasure of the divine punishment of one’s sins.

I hear of people seeking to forgive others because it is their choice to heal faster. They sometimes articulate it, which could help people realize that they perhaps have something that they should seek forgiveness for, the fact they have been forgiven. This reaction is a marker of maturity and spiritual health. It is also an imperative, for as one priest said, if you do not confess a mortal sin or forgive, grace will be blocked, the Sacraments offered by the Church will be of naught. We are called to do as Jesus did who even taught us to pray–Father, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who trespass against us.

One Jan. 22, Day of the Unborn, at a church with my friend, the priest lectured on the evils of abortion and the wrongness of providers and the women who have done them for whatever reason. He exhorted the rich congregation to use the rest of the day towards acts of mercy like praying for them or donating to similar pro-life, pro-dignity causes, because he was rather conscious that they wouldn’t go so far to open their mansions to house the homeless. He once again emphasized that abortion destroys the family up to the societal level and that it must be fought hard and valiantly and that women should know better. I was shocked at the young priest’s bluntness, especially at the issue of abortion. I rushed to my friend who was post-abortive and was reeling from the anniversary of her son’s abortion that week.

“Weren’t you upset during the homily?”

“No,” she said, “it is true.”

These days, those who speak such statements will be vilified and will be called haters. But my friend, who has been to the abyss and redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb, as all of us sinners have offered by Christ new life, know it only as reality. Without color, without drama. Abortion leads to death, plain and simple. Sin is its bigger category. Jesus who has defeated sin and its after-effects, death and eternal condemnation, is its cure. “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

“In dying, He destroyed our death; in rising, He restored our life.” This is the Good News exemplified in the Passion and Easter. It is also summed in Divine Mercy Sunday with the message: Live the life I give you with mine, with full trust and surrender and mercy to others. Live the Divine Mercy, be the Christ, in the here and now of this earth and heaven will be the logical continuation of that journey, for we will all be united in the God Who is Love, Who has made us.