Posted on 08/16/2006 8:23:55 PM PDT by siunevada
ATLANTA, Ga. (CNS) – When he ministered to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, Divine Word Father Charles Smith found that his faith, instilled in him by loving parents despite the childhood pain of discrimination, enabled him to be Christ's representative even as the inmate verbally assaulted him.
"When I first came in (to see him) I thought 'God is the owner of my life,' and I went to him and he threw his feces on me and called me all types of names and said, 'You can't be a priest because I've never seen a you-know-what as a priest,'" Father Smith said Aug. 5. "The devil was messin' with me."
He made the comments in a workshop he led during the 2006 Interregional African-American Catholic Evangelization Conference, which was held Aug. 4-6 in Atlanta.
Other priests and Southern Baptist ministers had previously worked -- unsuccessfully -- with the man found guilty of bombing the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 and murdering the 168 people who died from the blast.
But Father Smith persevered in his ministry to McVeigh and the convicted murderer, who was a baptized Catholic, began to repent. "He did a lot of things, but in the end we had confession, reconciliation. In the end he asked me a question a lot of people ask me. He asked, 'Father Charles, can I still get to heaven?'"
The priest said he responded, "I am not your judge," but reminded McVeigh that he had told him, "You must submit your will and ask God for true forgiveness. ... You knew there were a lot of innocent people and children in that building."
McVeigh asked Father Smith to walk with him to his June 11, 2001, execution. "And the tears came running down. He was crying, I was crying because he did something that changed my life, too.
"As a man it's hard to ask but for him to ask for God's love and God's grace, that did something to me," he recalled, reflecting on how God's grace can transform even the worst evil.
As he walked with McVeigh, Father Smith remembered how, when he was a child, a porter in an Illinois train told his light-skinned parents that he couldn't serve their "wicked children," who had darker skin, and how Mississippi restaurants refused to serve them.
"I remember my mom and dad say, 'Just be patient. God is going to make a way. God is going to change you. God is going to rise, and you're going to be raised up. Your life will be redeemed and your people (will be).' ... I remembered all of that, being with Timothy McVeigh."
Father Smith and his brother, Divine Word Father Chester Smith, were the first black Catholic twins to be ordained priests. Both priests are in residence at St. Rita's Parish in Indianapolis.
In his workshop presentation, Father Charles Smith encouraged people to speak the truth in love and humility, never pressuring anyone to join the church and avoiding a superior attitude to anyone.
"I know if God can call two little black boys from the South Side of Chicago to live 16-17 years in an international religious order, to go around the world and to come back home to be with his people to teach and to preach and be free in the Spirit, I have nothing to fear," he said. "I'm not worried about what any man says. And my eyes are on the sparrow. God is with me, and I know God is with you and we shall be free forevermore."
He encouraged his audience to be bold but gentle as they speak up for what they believe is right, even if it's controversial. But "don't be afraid to use prophetic dialogue ... in teaching us how to live, ... in ministry, catechism, Bible study. Use what is there to speak the truth."
He prescribed for them "old-school spirituality" of morning, noon and evening private prayer, recalling how, when he was told as a youth that he couldn't learn and shouldn't go to college, his grandmother would say, "Child, you just pray and God will make a way." He went on to graduate from college as valedictorian.
"You are a child of God. If you give your all to God he'll give his all to you so we've got to be people of prayer," he said. "Pray for God's perfect timing in your life. He's going to give you the revelation that you need."
You need to re-read the article, beginning with the headline. We should always hope for everyon's salvation, and never desire that a soul be lost.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
As a side note, this is interesting:
The inspiration for Long John Silver from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, Henley was a 19th-century British editor and poet known for his red beard, unkempt hair and unkempt manner.
What Timothy McVeigh did was the most extreme offense against God, and it is true that no mere man can forgive what has offended God Himself.
But Jesus is the man who is God, the God who is man; and where there is repentance and a broken, contrite heart, He can forgive.
You (and I) have no idea how much greater God is than anything we can conceive. I truly hope that McVeigh truly repented, even if it means he has to be in Purgatory until the end of the world. I will pray for him.
My sins alone were enough to put Christ on the cross...
I live here in Oklahoma and saw the result of his heinous act. I am a Christian and if it makes me less of one then so be it, but I will NEVER pray for that man's soul. He has NO soul IMHO with the way he taunted families of the victims until the very end. Families did not deserve his comments and he never said he was sorry for the deaths of those children including babies. I have nothing for the man and less than that.
You make yourself his judge. I'm glad you won't be judging me upon my death. Surely you will want mercy when your time comes.
It gives even stronger support for rigorous faith formation in the young. McVeigh was baptized Catholic. Where did we Catholics go wrong, that one of our own should stray so far?
I think the priest put it very well. He told McVeigh that forgiveness comes only through true repentence with God, and that he was not McVeigh's judge, the implication being that God alone was.
Don't forget also that the Catholic Church maintains the belief in purgatory. McVeigh can ultimately have been saved, although his quote from Invictus seems like he was not; nonetheless, he will suffer for his crimes. God forgives the eternal soul; just as his forgiveness does not resurrect in this world the dead, nor does it spare McVeigh purgatory.
Your hardness is understandable. What happened was horrific. The challenge to all of us is the mystery of the Cross: repentence, and forgiveness; this is difficult. V's wife.
Lucifer was the highest and most intelligent angel once, look how he turned out.
When Catholics go bad, they seem to go really bad.
Corruptio optimi pessima est.
Lucifer was Catholic?
And a terror bomber by any other name would be an islamist in doing their murder.
That wasn't really what I was implying by that analogy, no. Is that what you thought my point was?
"It's a joke, son!"
Did you ever consider that the AP story could be wrong?
The AP does have a liberal bias often times.
McVeigh and Terry Nichols went to the PhilipenesGonna need a cite that McVeigh went to the Phillipines ... we know Nichols did.
I looked at it several times after I posted it and it's a long way from being a minute-by-minute account of everything that happened. I guess now I think it doesn't mention him but it also doesn't cover everything that happened, either.
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