At such times, we find ourselves at a crossroads: our spiritual attitude either matures or is crushed.
When I visited India in 1998 to facilitate several days of recollection for the Jesuits, I heard of an ordeal endured by a priest there. The holy man in question was a strict disciplinarian in a private residential high school. And so, when he discovered that some of the boys were involved in using drugs after school hours in their rooms, he expelled them. For revenge, these boys coerced another young man in the school to claim the priest had behaved improperly toward him. Although the accuser had changed his obviously fabricated story many times, they still managed to convince enough people to stir up trouble.
The situation reached a pitch when a crowd gathered with torches one night outside the rectory. When the priest finally came out to face them, the crowd forcibly marched him through the streets. They planned to walk him 28 kilometers to the village jail where they would imprison him without a trial.
On the way others who really knew nothing about the situation, but saw an opportunity to join in the frenzy, incited them further. At one point they shaved the priest's head, stripped him naked, taunted him and hit him with branches as he was marched through the street. It was a real Calvary scene. Yet, the darkness was not to triumph in the end. Because of faithfulness, a light dawned in a number of ways.
First a group of nuns voluntarily walked to the prison every day to provide him with food because they feared he would be poisoned if they didn't. Second, poor farmers from his village protested outside the jail until he was released. When a journalist asked how they could afford to do this — especially at harvest time — one responded, “I could not remain in my fields, I could not sit comfortably at my table eating dinner, as long as this innocent holy man who was so generous to me and my people was unjustly locked in jail.” They were faithful to him; they demonstrated the value of real community. In this dark time, they discovered spiritual courage that they didn't know they had until this point.
The final and most dramatic story of faithfulness, though, was within the man himself. When he was finally released, he met with a group of people who knew and loved him. When he walked to the front of the room to speak, it was as if someone had thrown a heavy blanket over a blaring radio; the noise of the crowd suddenly became muffled, then disappeared. It was absolutely quiet.
The man then spoke softly but with great conviction. Even people in the rear of the room could feel his strength. He indicated that there was no need to recount his ordeal in detail. The newspapers had in fact covered much of it. But, he said he wanted to tell them something that had happened within him as a result of this:
“I want you to know that because of this shameful episode I have lost nothing. They have taken nothing from me. As a matter of fact, actually because of these events, I have become even closer to my God. I know God in a way I never knew before. I have truly found the living God and I am grateful.”
The lesson? God does not necessarily send the darkness, but within all unhappiness and trauma are hidden special joys and new perspectives to strengthen us and offer us new previously unrealized blessings.
(This article courtesy of the Arlington Catholic Herald.)
