Are you trained to fly?

On July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy, Jr.; his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy; and her sister, Lauren Bessette, died when the single-engine plane that Kennedy was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr., was born on November 25, 1960, just a few weeks after his father and namesake was elected the 35th president of the United States. On his third birthday, “John-John” attended the funeral of his assassinated father and was photographed saluting his father’s coffin in a famous and searing image. Along with his sister, Caroline, he was raised in Manhattan by his mother, Jacqueline. After graduating from Brown University and a very brief acting stint, he attended New York University Law School. He passed the bar on his third try and worked in New York as an assistant district attorney, winning all six of his cases. In 1995, he founded the political magazine George, which grew to have a circulation of more than 400,000. Unlike many others in his famous family, he never sought public office himself.

Always in the media spotlight, he was celebrated for the good looks that he inherited from his parents. Known for his adventurous nature, he nonetheless took pains to separate himself from the more self-destructive behavior of some of the other men in the Kennedy clan.

On July 16, 1999, however, with about 300 hours of flying experience, Kennedy took off from Essex County airport in New Jersey and flew his single-engine plane into a hazy, moonless night. He had turned down an offer by one of his flight instructors to accompany him, saying he “wanted to do it alone.” To reach his destination of Martha’s Vineyard, he would have to fly 200 miles–the final phase over a dark, hazy ocean–and inexperienced pilots can lose sight of the horizon under such conditions. Unable to see shore lights or other landmarks, Kennedy would have to depend on his instruments, but he had not qualified for a license to fly with instruments only.

The Piper Saratoga aircraft never made it to Martha’s Vineyard. Radar data examined later showed the plane plummeting from 2,200 feet to 1,100 feet in a span of 14 seconds, a rate far beyond the aircraft’s safe maximum. It then disappeared from the radar screen.

Kennedy’s plane was reported missing by friends and family members, and an intensive rescue operation was launched by the Coast Guard, the navy, the air force, and civilians. After two days of searching, the thousands of people involved gave up hope of finding survivors and turned their efforts to recover the wreckage of the aircraft and the bodies. Americans mourned the loss of the “crown prince” of one of the country’s most admired families, sadness that was especially poignant given the relentless string of tragedies that have haunted the Kennedy family over the years.

On July 21, navy divers recovered the bodies of JFK Jr., his wife, and sister-in-law from the wreckage of the plane, which was lying under 116 feet of water about eight miles off the Vineyard’s shores. The next day, the cremated remains of the three were buried at sea during a ceremony on the USS Briscoe, a navy destroyer. A private mass for JFK Jr. and Carolyn was held on July 23 at the Church of St. Thomas More in Manhattan, where the late Jackie Kennedy Onassis worshipped. President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, were among the 300 invited guests. The Kennedy family’s surviving patriarch, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, delivered a moving eulogy: “From the first day of his life, John seemed to belong not only to our family but to the American family. He had a legacy, and he learned to treasure it. He was part of a legend, and he learned to live with it.”

Investigators studying the wreckage of the Piper Saratoga found no problems with its mechanical or navigational systems. In their final report released in 2000, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the crash was caused by an inexperienced pilot who became disoriented in the dark and lost control. 

His father, John F. Kennedy, said once in a presidential speech, almost prophetically about his son:

“I really don’t know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it’s because, in addition to the fact that the sea changes, and the light changes, and ships change, it’s because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, our sweat, and in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it, we are going back from whence we came.”

But why did this tragedy happen: “the crash was caused by an inexperienced pilot who became disoriented in the dark and lost control.”
What do we do when we get disoriented?

How do we make our way through the dark?

What do we do when we lose control in life?

Most of the time we rely on what we can see. We rely on VFR – our visual flight rules.

But the reality that most of life is Mystery, there is this whole other side of life that we cannot see or perceive and for that we need instruments to help us and guide us. We need IFR Training – Instrument Flight Rule.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church

II. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRADITION AND SACRED SCRIPTURE
One common source. . .

80 “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing, and move towards the same goal.”40 Each of them makes present and fruitful in the Church the mystery of Christ, who promised to remain with his own “always, to the close of the age.”

. . . two distinct modes of transmission

81 “Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit.”

“And [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound and spread it abroad by their preaching.”

82 As a result, the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation are entrusted, “does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.”

We read in the letter from Ephesians:

Brothers and sisters:
You have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace
that was given to me for your benefit,
namely, that the mystery was made known to me by revelation.
It was not made known to people in other generations
as it has now been revealed
to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit:

The mystery has been made known by revelation! It has now been revealed to the Apostles and prophets by the Spirit!

From the Gospel on the Feast of Epiphany, it was the chief priests and the scribes that were consulted:
Assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people,
He inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.
They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea,
for thus it has been written through the prophet:
And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
since from you shall come a ruler,
who is to shepherd my people Israel.”

The Wise Men were not only in tune with the living tradition but also sought the living Word of God.

After their audience with the king, they set out.
And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them,
until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.
They were overjoyed at seeing the star,
and on entering the house
they saw the child with Mary his mother.

They were guided through the darkness, through the night, through the mystery, and ultimately to Christ.

They prostrated themselves and did him homage.
Then they opened their treasures
and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

The truth is we need to be well trained in the IFR, Instrument Flight Rules, for spirituality.

Most of us think VFR, Visual Flight Rules, what we can see and touch as enough to get us by in life. But at some point or another, we will be plunged into darkness, into suffering, into mystery and it is then that we must turn to the instruments of Scripture and Tradition.

For John F. Kennedy Jr. “the crash was caused by an inexperienced pilot who became disoriented in the dark and lost control.”

Take every opportunity to learn about Scripture and Tradition. Become an experienced member of our faith not only for your own good but so that you can help navigate those you love through the dangers of life and into Eternal Life in Heaven.

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Five Ways to do this:
1) Read your parish bulletin and take the opportunities that are offered to learn about your faith.

2) Consider teaching PSR or RCIA. There is no greater way to learn than to actually have to teach it. 

3)Make a retreat.

4) Challenge yourself to the Program: Pray40Days at TheProdigalFather.org 

5) Download the EXAMEN App on iOS and Android or at TheProdigalFather.org – St. Ignatius says it’s the best way we can let God guide us every day.