Terrible cover up of the truth, written in heaven

DEAR EDITOR:

Last year at this time I spent 14 days in a First Nations community on the MacKenzie river, N.W.T. Each Saturday morning we had mass at the retirement home for about 20 elders. It was a splendid atmosphere for me, that can only come from people who are connected with their souls. Like Job in the Bible, they had caught on to what matters: “I know that my Redeemer lives, that I shall rise again.” One woman, received the Last Rites; the final assistance of the Church.

About 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve the doorbell rang. I found there a man in a state of great misery and drunkenness. He asked if he could visit with me. We went to the parish office and he told me about his life. He had been abused by a priest as child of the school. I spent more than an hour with him, recognizing a deeply wounded soul. He refused my invitation to attend midnight Mass. However, when I saw him there I was moved to offer him Holy Communion, which he refused, giving him more honour in my eyes. Was he saying the greatest prayer of all: “Lord, I am not worthy.”

A recent letter to the editor on the evils of residential schools recalled to my soul this man and his impact on my Christmas experience last year. Our faith persuades us to celebrate the coming of Christ, our saviour. In the gift of himself, he gives us back the splendour of our existence – making the memory of our sufferings his pathway to our souls. And what about all the abusers of the world! Is there no hope for them even if they are crying out: “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner?

Then I remembered the old, abandoned cemetery where I was astonished to see that so many of the nuns died young. They worked at the hospital, the orphanage and the first school; dying from poverty, cold and the diseases they encountered ay work. It is amazing that they kept on coming, driven by their charism to care for the sick.

In 2017, when Sen. Lynn Beyak, made a statement about one-sided reporting on the residential school issue, she was kicked out of the Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples by the Conservative party for saying: “There were good deeds and other positive aspects Canada’s residential school system.” This was a terrible cover up of a truth written in heaven, even if denied on earth.

Fr. Harry Clarke,

Penticton