{"id":1789,"date":"2016-07-31T14:01:11","date_gmt":"2016-07-31T14:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/?p=1789"},"modified":"2016-07-31T14:04:39","modified_gmt":"2016-07-31T14:04:39","slug":"horrible-desecration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/horrible-desecration\/","title":{"rendered":"Horrible Desecration"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Ramblings of a Country Pastor:<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

[The following is from the blog<\/a><\/span>\u00a0 on Thursday of Father Bill Peckman, whose church,\u00a0St. Clement Catholic Church in Bowling Green, Missouri, was horribly vandalized last weekend; please pray]<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

A Long Good Friday<\/h3>\n
\n

My Church sits dormant.\u00a0 It is lifeless.\u00a0 No sacraments can be celebrated in her right now.\u00a0 Late Saturday night, she was desecrated.\u00a0 Her confessional, baptismal font, holy water font, presider’s chair, lectern, altar, and tabernacle were smeared with human feces.\u00a0 The Holy Oils were emptied into the carpet.\u00a0 Her books used for Mass destroyed.\u00a0 Her vestments soiled with wine.\u00a0 Worst of all, the Blessed Sacrament within the tabernacle desecrated with human feces.\u00a0 My church sits silent.\u00a0 The fecal matter has been washed away.\u00a0 The vestments cleaned.\u00a0 The books replaced.\u00a0 Like a dead body cleaned for burial, she lies dormant.\u00a0 The hearts of my parishioners and my own heart hang heavy.\u00a0 The violation of our Church was a violation of our parish.\u00a0 It was a violation of our faith.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

When I found out about the violation of my parish, I was away.\u00a0 We were 3 hours away from beginning the second session of the summer camp I run.\u00a0 3 hours.\u00a0 My mind raced.\u00a0 It was too late for me to switch out responsibilities or to cancel. The attack was perfectly timed.\u00a0 As I was tormented about where to be, the diocese made the decision for me and told me to stay where I was.\u00a0 At that time I did not know that my church was not allowed to be the place of celebration of the sacraments until the evil that had occurred had been exorcised and made reparation for.\u00a0 This takes a bishop.\u00a0 In place of being there, there were flurries of phone calls with parish staff, with law enforcement, with diocesan personnel, and with the media.\u00a0 It unfolded like a slow moving nightmare. It seemed for 48 hours like every phone call added more hellish details.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In a conversation with my principal, we had both come independently to the same conclusion: Our parish is in a long Good Friday.\u00a0 We mourn as did the Blessed Mother and the disciples.\u00a0 We process the emotions that accompany this desecration.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

For me, the first 48 hours was all about anger.\u00a0 It was a displaced anger.\u00a0 I wasn’t mad at the woman who had done the damage.\u00a0 I saw the picture of a lost soul in need of mercy.\u00a0 It is dangerous and perhaps even sinful to speculate to her motivation.\u00a0 That is for the civil authorities to discern. I knew that if we as a parish was to stay true to our faith, that we must fight through the anger and tears and find mercy.\u00a0 My public statements reflected this.\u00a0 My internal struggles, though, were much more profound.\u00a0 Why?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Like my parishioners, I felt deeply violated.\u00a0 The confessional from which I have exercised my priestly ministry of the forgiveness of sins many thousands times over was desecrated.\u00a0 The baptismal font from which I had baptized 100’s over my 7 years as pastor had been desecrated.\u00a0 The pulpit from which I had preached and instructed on the faith for so many cumulative hours had been desecrated.\u00a0 The altar from which I had said thousands of masses, from which I had exercised my priestly ministry had been desecrated.\u00a0 The church in which I had celebrated every major event in my parish; her funerals, weddings, 1st Communions, and ordination..the true parish center of my parish had been willfully desecrated.\u00a0 The Blessed Sacrament, for which I have tirelessly made present by the grace of God, of whom I have preached for almost 2 decades had been desecrated.\u00a0 I felt as if I had been gutted.\u00a0 This violation had engendered deep anger at the situation.\u00a0 That anger had no where to go.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

That is always dangerous.\u00a0 Displaced anger is a demon looking for a home.\u00a0 It is our human nature to want to find someone and somewhere to make the focus of the anger.\u00a0 I already knew that it couldn’t be the woman or God.\u00a0 I knew some in the parish were angry with me, with others, and with the woman.\u00a0 All were harmful places to deposit the anger as it creates the strife and division that was the desired product of the demonic nature of this attack.\u00a0 That’s when it occurred to me about this being a Good Friday.\u00a0 It was time for me to take my cues from the that 1st Good Friday.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

What was the attitude of Christ from the Cross as His Body was being desecrated and tortured?\u00a0 What was His attitude as His Blood was poured out and mingled with the earth into which it fell?\u00a0 “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”\u00a0 As I reflected on those words from the Cross of Christ, I knew that not only was this to be the attitude I was to have, but the attitude I would need to press upon my parish family.\u00a0 In His proclamation from the Cross, Jesus does not condone the evil visited upon Him, rather He asked that the Father not hold those responsible for this against them…for no one would be able to withstand such a judgement. Our attitude as a parish would have to be the same.\u00a0 Jesus did not allow the evil that was visited upon Him to change Him for the worse.\u00a0 Neither could we.\u00a0 This, though, is not going to be easy.\u00a0 It will be necessary.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

When I had the first conversation with my bishop, he very clearly told me to not allow this event to change me or my parish for the worse.\u00a0 He said this in response to me suggesting that maybe we needed to start locking up the church building for the first time in its existence.\u00a0 In the past several years, our parish had come along way.\u00a0 We are just starting to embark on a 3-5 year plan in which the major focus is re-catechesis, helping parents and youth, and evangelization.\u00a0 In so many ways, we had expunged so much of the devil and his natural charism of division out of our parish.\u00a0 Saturday night he roared back with a vengeance.\u00a0 But no more that Satan was able to defeat Jesus at Calvary, will he be able to defeat us unless we allow him.\u00a0 Our God is more powerful than he.\u00a0 If our parish had been found worthy to suffer violence for the name of Jesus, then so be it.\u00a0 For we know, the story doesn’t end in the tomb on Good Friday.\u00a0 Nor does our story end on this long Good Friday either.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Not often does a parish know the hour of its resurrection.\u00a0 We do.\u00a0 8 AM on Saturday, our bishop will be with us and exorcise the evil visited upon our Church and to make reparation for that desecration.\u00a0 We will reclaim what was defiled.\u00a0 We will, by the grace of God, watch the Holy Spirit breath new life into the dormant and lifeless church building.\u00a0 We will have Eucharistic Adoration afterwards, as must happen where the Blessed Sacrament has been defiled.\u00a0 When the time comes at 11 AM, we will punctuate our taking back of our Church building with a Eucharistic Procession which will encircle the outside and inside of the building. After our long Good Friday, we will experience our Easter.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I end with this:\u00a0 We also know that Easter wasn’t the end of the story. The Church, filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, was to engage in the mission of Jesus Christ.\u00a0 By the same token, we are not purging a building for the sake of of merely having a place to celebrate sacraments. These avenues of grace have a purpose: to give us the means necessary to get about the business of the Kingdom.\u00a0 Archbishop Sample of Portland Oregon reminded his flock a few weeks ago that the Church exists for the salvation of souls.\u00a0 Given our Church back this Saturday, perhaps we stand our ground to Satan and double down on our commitment to the mission of the Church. \u00a0 We will be given that chance.\u00a0 So many churches attacked as of late, especially in Iraq and Syria, will have to spend much more time in their own Good Fridays.\u00a0 Let us honor them and honor the mission of Jesus Christ Himself, and use this tragedy to\u00a0 give stronger and bolder witness to Jesus Christ and the power of His mercy and forgiveness!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Posted by Fr Bill Peckman <\/a><\/span><\/span>at 10:36 AM<\/abbr><\/a> <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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From Ramblings of a Country Pastor: [The following is from the blog\u00a0 on Thursday of Father Bill Peckman, whose church,\u00a0St..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}