The Healing Journey

August 30, 2023

In his book “Prayers of Desperation: A Questioner’s Prayer for Answers in our Darkest Moment,” Bishop Robert Baker says that a tragedy in our lives, such as the loss of someone we love, can create an avalanche of questions for God — many of them angry.

“My intention,” he says, “is to help people bring those questions to God in prayer and to remind them how those prayers, with a little help from God and the intercession of the Blessed Mother, can become prayers of faith.”

That sounds like an unusual path, doesn’t it? Very often our intense suffering causes us to turn our backs on God. Many atheists turned away from him forever because they couldn’t reconcile suffering, such as the death of a child, with an all-loving God. That just can’t be true, they concluded.

Each person has to walk that path alone.

“Following a great tragedy or disaster, human or natural, we may be led to question God from the depths of desperation. God where were you in the midst of all this?” Some of these questions are born of despair,” he says, “and one can only hope that at some future point, they will evolve into a prayer of faith and abandonment to God, in the way Jesus ultimately commended himself to the Father on the cross.”

Take note of that phrase, “at some future point.” Change does not come overnight, but over many nights that can be lonely and confused.

We may not understand God’s will, but a step toward gaining that understanding is to question him, especially when you lose someone you love.

So as the bishop urges us to do: Ask God “Why?” “How?” “When?” “What?” “Where?” And “Who?” Ask him often and ask him passionately.

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