Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s stages of grief don’t include the effect on one’s faith or spirituality, not specifically. Presumably therapists who do grief counseling have their own ways of discussing this aspect if it comes up.
My husband and I had never had lengthy discussions about our own personal faith. We’d both been raised as Catholics; thus, we shared a common vocabulary. I knew that he believed in God, that he had sometimes prayed. We’d been to church together and even on a retreat together at a monastery. We’d talked about saints and the history of the Church. But in our reactions to what happened to Theo, we diverged. My husband’s response of anger was directed at the God he said he no longer believed in.
I don’t know how, but my faith survived. I felt shrouded in shock and grief, but underneath was the solid rock of my faith, my assurance of a loving God. I’m not trying to brag or claim this as a virtue. My firm belief is that faith is a gift to help us to love more and more.
At the children’s hospital, the various chaplains showed up in different ways, one by one. First was a Protestant minister, a woman, who spoke compassionately with me. A Catholic sister spent more time with me. “These things happen, we don’t know why,” she said, which doesn’t sound very comforting but again was a statement I accepted with faith intact.
My sister Adriene mentioned she had seen a priest go by. “So did I,” I said, then “I almost grabbed him,” we both said. This one I never met, but one morning we found a note at the head of Theo’s isolette saying that he had stopped by to pray for Theo. Among them, I felt well looked after by the hospital’s faith representatives.
Theo’s own faith is a mystery to me, like Theo himself. To date, he has received two of the seven sacraments: baptism and the sacrament of reconciliation (confession). Theo has “been to confession,” as we say, exactly once. This was at a biweekly session of SPRED (Special Religious Development) that Theo attended for some time. This first and only confession consisted of the priest asking Theo, “Are you sorry for your sins?” Theo responded, “Of course I am.”
Eventually, Theo turned against the concepts of God and religion, perhaps because of lengthy rants he’d heard from his father about being an atheist. When people would ask if Theo was going to make his first communion, I’d answer, “Not while he’s saying things like ‘I hate God.’” In fact, Theo was asked to leave the SPRED class because he was being disruptive during the “gathering circle” time of song and prayer. So, it was quite a surprise to hear Theo deliver what sounded like a homily on the subject of faith at the age of 19, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Next: Faith on the March
The Operations of Faith
Theo’s homily! I can’t wait!
Also curious about the homily!