“A Catholic Reading the Bible One Chapter at a Time”… It took 20 years.

 On this edition of “A Catholic Reading the Bible One Chapter at a Time”… It took 20 years.

T●W●E●N●T●Y

"Why?"... "Why them? What did they do to deserve to die that day? They were just doing their job. What did they do to make God so angry?" A question that sat on my chest, my shoulders and every cell of my body could not be answered. No one could tell me. I got "things happen for a reason" and "you can't stop evil" as the answers. But they weren't answers. They were generic responses used as band-aids to ineffectively heal real pain.

 I stopped going to Sunday Mass.
 I stopped joining my family in grace before dinner.
 I stopped really caring what role "religion" played in my life because I just watched the entire world stop- and this God I prayed to my whole life did nothing to prevent it. He watched it happen.

17 year old Kristen didn't understand. And no one could tell me "why." So I was left to sit with the reasoning that "God let this happen because there is evil in the world" and I found no comfort in that logic or the scripture I had heard priests read TO and interpret FOR me my entire life.

And for 20 years bad things continued to happen. Over and over and over again. To list them all would take thousands more characters than this post allows. Yet for over two decades, no one answered my question directly: why were so many knocks made on doors that day? Why did two 110-story towers fall killing the heroes inside and below that were just trying to save lives. Why did people just going to work on a Tuesday and never make it home?

 September 3, 2021 at 6:34AM 

[pouring caffeine into a Yeti listening to "Through the Word" read me Luke, Chapter 13]

Jesus asked, "What about the eighteen people who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them? Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem? No..."

[Drops lid on counter and stares blankly ahead- Did He just say what I think He just said?]

A tower fell? People died? And Jesus says-- HE SAYS WITH HIS OWN WORDS THAT I AM HEARING-- that the people who died didn't die because they were bad people. He said it. It is written in HIS WORD. I didn't contort words to say, "well, He is talking about a man falling into a well, so let's just pretend it's a tower collapsing." No. The words LITERALLY say "when the tower fell on them."

And I cried in my kitchen.

Twenty years. I needed to hear those words for twenty years and they were in the Bible the entire time. For 2,000 years actually they were on that page. But I didn't know. No one told me and I was so mad at Him that I didn't look to see if they were in there. I didn't even own a Bible.

I'm going to read this verse and this chapter a few more times. Maybe a few dozen more times. And perhaps leave the state of shock I am in realizing that He had already spoken the words I needed to hear for two decades. But in my anger, lack of faith and failed understanding: I missed knowing they were there.

So why did I read them 8 days before the anniversary? Why did I read them when on my "to-do" list for today (written last night) was to ask the Chaplain for some verses that I should maybe "have on hand" to read when the thought of the 11th seems overwhelming. When the footage starts again. When the memories come back tenfold. How? What?....

Because I'm praying to a God who listens to me. I just wasn't listening to Him.