Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

I want to write about losing inches from my waist and straightening all of my closets – or at least my sincere plans to do so sometime in 2011.

But I’ve just returned from the funeral of a priest who committed suicide four days after Christmas.

I didn’t know him well, but he had been rector for 16 years of the congregation that my husband started serving a year ago. Of course, the parishioners are reeling, vacillating between anger, confusion and profound sadness.

There are no answers to the questions of why. There is no canonical guidance to helping people heal. 

But from my perspective as an outsider (and a member of another diocesan staff), the bishop and the diocese handled this tragic event with grace, love, and compassion. There are lessons we can learn, even if we don’t understand why it happened. 

There was instant response from the leadership in the diocese, from the bishop, the canon to the ordinary, and other senior staff. When information was known, it was shared – and shared honestly. It would be easier to sweep the circumstances under the rug, but the guiding theme was compassionate truth-telling. 

The bishop was immediately in touch with the family and the congregations the priest had served. The bishop talked with the leadership – lay and ordained – and with people in the community. Members of the diocesan leadership team were dispatched to congregations for Sunday worship and for conversation and grief counseling during coffee hour. 

Nearly all of the clergy from the diocese attended the funeral held at the cathedral. Hundreds of people filled the pews. The bishop reminded us in his sermon of our own humanity, our own frailty – and our need for redemption. 

The grief has only just begun. And although the excellent diocesan response and support surely has helped, the journey to healing still will be a long one, for his family and friends, and for the churches who lost a trusted pastor. 

Other new year’s resolutions seem so small in the face of such grief. But Christmas brings us a reality stronger than any resolution: the promise of Emmanuel, God with us, even when life seems dark and bleak. 

“What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” 

Emmanuel. God with us. 

Always.