Are You Listening? Grief and Pain
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May 5, 2022What do you do with the grief and pain when loved ones are senselessly murdered as in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building?
"Kresta in the Afternoon" host Al Kresta took note of both the Columbine school massacre and the Oklahoma City bombing anniversaries during an April program. His perspective was decidedly Catholic.
He acknowledged the tragedies, but he positioned these events in a contrast to the reality of "living Catholic" (my words) where we are celebrating the season of Jesus' resurrection – and the April birthday of Mother Angelica.
This was not a program of sad and bitter family members expressing frustration at the slow-burning wheels of justice and where the demand for "closure" was tossed around. Instead, Al marked the anniversaries with a rebroadcast of his 2020 interview with author/activist Jeanne Bishop.
Bishop wrote "Grace from Rubble: Two Fathers' Road to Reconciliation after the Oklahoma City Bombing." The book chronicles the characters of two men, intimately and profoundly affected by the attack, Bill McVeigh and Bud Welch, and their path of healing and reconciliation. Bill McVeigh's son Tim was the perpetrator of the bombing that killed 168 people. Bud Welch lost his daughter Julie in the bombing. She worked as a translator in the social security office housed in the federal building.
There were many personal connections that those of us from Oklahoma would find compelling and relatable in her book, but I was intrigued by Bishop's own story, so I did some additional research on Jeanne Bishop. Her pregnant sister and her sister's husband were brutally murdered in their home by an intruder in 1990. Bishop forgave her sister's killer, but never communicated that to him.
"He hadn't asked for forgiveness. I felt like he didn't deserve it. So, my forgiveness was for God, for Nancy, for me."
Eventually, Bishop came to the realization of Christ's love for all of us.
"It truly was realizing that as Jesus hung on the cross, he was praying for the people who were in the process of killing him, who had not apologized, who weren't sorry."
Bishop was moved to contact her sister's killer. She courageously requested a meeting. The man responded, writing a 15-page, double-sided letter of confession and heartbreaking regret for his crime. It dawned on Bishop that God was the Father of us all. She understood that she could not put up a wall and judge a person as having no redeemable value based upon one act. She could not play God.
There were many connections to the Catholic community mentioned by Bishop that made her interview very appealing. It was poignant to revisit this Oklahoma event since it was framed in hope. I was especially touched to learn that Julie Welch had attended Mass daily in my parish, Saint Charles Borromeo. Bud Welch and Bill McVeigh were both Catholic. Their lives were defined by loving their children and that opened the door that made their empathy and forgiveness possible.
Bishop and Kresta delivered grace in that interview, demonstrating the extravagance of God's mercy, excluded from no one. Extending that mercy does not remove the pain or grief, but it lifts the barrier that keeps us from seeking relief."
P.S. I listened to this program with my husband Steve. He is the one who suggested I write about it since we both were so moved by it.
