I always think of priests as people who have heard and seen it all.
After years of listening to thousands of people confess their sins (large and small), and executing innumerable weddings, funerals and baptisms, I can't imagine that priests are surprised by anything anybody does. I'm sure their deep faith gives them hope and optimism about human behavior but there probably isn't anything new under the sun for them.
Until I read about Monsignor Robert Weiss.
Weiss is a priest at St. Rose of Lima parish in Newtown, CT and he horribly lost more than 10 parishioners in the tragic and shocking shooting of December 14 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. Weiss personally knew many of the children who died at the school for he had baptized them and he compassionately stayed at the scene to continue to counsel and absorb the anxiety, regrets and raw grief of the schoolchildren's parents.
Weiss was interviewed on television about the shooting. I watched him try to describe what the people of the town were feeling and during the interview he started to cry.
I silently thanked him for crying on television, for showing his vulnerability and his strength. It is not a sign of weakness to cry. It is letting your grief run free and in that freedom is where you can sometimes find the strength to go forward and to also find a sense of healing.
After my husband died, I cried a lot. My son had a hard time watching this happen and always asked me to please stop. But I really couldn't. Sometimes it was in public and sometimes it was privately. But my tears were my way of releasing my grief and I always felt better afterwards.
Grief that is held inside only keeps hurting.
People are afraid to talk to others who are grieving because they think that by mentioning the deceased person's name they will upset them and they will cry. So what if they cry? Take their hand and hold it. Put your arms around them and hug them. Quietly tell them they are not alone.
Monsignor Robert Weiss has shown us how to handle unspeakable acts of horror and deep grief. Here is The Washington Post story about his beautiful acts of human kindness:
By Anne Hull, Published The Washington Post: December 16
NEWTOWN, CONN. — As if it were any normal day, Monsignor Robert Weiss had his
usual breakfast at the Sandy Hook Diner — a short stack of French toast and two
strips of bacon. Waitresses call it the “Monsignor Special.”
Within hours of that hometown breakfast Friday, Weiss found himself in a room
at a firehouse, with parents on folding chairs, in what would become one of the
worst days in American history.
The 66-year-old priest is known as Father Bob to the 3,500 families who
belong to St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church. On Sunday, what Father Bob craved —
after long hours of counseling and grieving and not enough sleep — was a good
Scotch and a place to let go. Half of the 20 children killed at Sandy Hook
Elementary were members of Weiss’s congregation, and he had baptized many of
them.
After the 10:30 a.m. Mass on Sunday, in a rectory full of law enforcement
officers and priests, Weiss wept.
Nothing at seminary had trained him for this week. Nothing about his 13 years
at St. Rose. Nothing about his understanding of the world.
“I thought about Paul,” said Weiss, his black clergy shirt unbuttoned and his
white collar in his shirt pocket like a pen. “Paul said, ‘In my weakness I find
my greatest strength.’ ”
On Friday morning, Weiss was working in his office when he received a call
from authorities to lock down the school at St. Rose. There had been a school
shooting. Weiss left the rectory and walked 100 yards to the church, where
students were gathered for regular Friday morning Mass. Weiss interrupted the
priest who was officiating and told him to stop and keep the students inside the
church.
When Weiss heard that the shooting had occurred at Sandy Hook, less than a
mile away, he grabbed two other priests from St. Rose, and they rode in Weiss’s
BMW to the school. Three priests in clergy collars were a welcome sight.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” said the police officer who flagged them through
the secured perimeter.
When Weiss pulled up, he saw teachers organizing students into lines in the
parking lot. The second-grade teacher held up a sign that said two, and the
third-grade teacher held up a sign that said three. And the students — who had
been told to close their eyes while they evacuated the building to avoid seeing
the carnage as they rushed past — obediently began forming lines.
Not every child was there. Some had run into the woods when they heard the
shots. A few had run home. And some were inside the school.
Frantic parents were arriving. Children burst from their lines upon seeing
their mother or father, while parents ran toward the lines.
Reunion after reunion whittled the lines down, leaving only parents,
empty-handed and desperate. They were taken to the nearby firehouse where the
Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire and Rescue Company operated.
Weiss walked over, too. He knew half the parents from St. Rose. He had
officiated at their weddings and the baptisms of their children, some of whom
were now unaccounted for.
Inside the firehouse, parents texted relatives, called babysitters to stay
late and called around to likely places where their missing children might have
gone.
That room, too, was whittled down.
“If your child’s name was not called, please go into this room,” an official
said, directing the remaining parents into an adjoining room.
Investigators asked each parent for a photo of his or her child. Wallets and
purses came out. No shortage of photos. Next came the questions. What color is
your son’s hair? What did she wear to school that morning?
They all had a child in the first grade. They were hoping and praying that a
classroom had not yet been evacuated, or that their child had been taken to the
hospital. Couples debated which one should leave to check the hospitals.
In the room of folding chairs, time passed. Weiss felt the tension rising in
equal measure to the sense of dread. Parents started coming to him with
regrets.
A mother said she shouldn’t have taken her daughter’s DVD player away. “She
wasn’t a bad child,” the mother told Weiss. Another mother who came to Weiss
said it was her fault she sent her daughter to school that morning. She blamed
herself, telling the priest she wasn’t fit to raise her other children.
About 3 p.m., Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy came into the room. The gruesome
announcement was his to make: 27 people inside the school had been killed, and
20 were children. All would be taken to the medical examiner’s office.
With the news came the most raw display of human grief that Weiss had ever
seen or imagined — wailing, weeping, screaming, people sinking to the floor.
Some parents wanted to go inside the school and see their children. They
insisted or begged. They wanted to go inside the school. The answer was no. The
school was a crime scene and couldn’t be disrupted. The parents did not yet know
an assault rifle had been used to kill the children.
The room began to clear out. At 3:20, a mother’s cellphone rang with the
reminder to take her son to Cub Scouts.
That night, Weiss was called to the police station and was assigned to call
at the homes of two victims, along with a state trooper and a grief
counselor.
He knocked on one door at midnight — that of a husband whose wife had been
killed in the shooting — and the next door at 1:30 a.m.
Weiss knew both families well. They belonged to his church.
In all those hours of counseling and comforting, no one asked the priest,
“Why?” The question came later, starting on Sunday, and Weiss did not have an
answer.
