Marian pilgrim bus crash, words of comfort

Many are injured and are still in the struggle for survival and recovery. Those who have lost loved ones have experienced a terrible loss. It is especially sad as these were devout people on their way to the annual Marian pilgrimage. Many who are returning from the pilgrimage are having their buses stop at the site of the accident in Sherman, to leave items in a shrine, to honor those lost, injured, and shocked survivors, and to pray. Here is an update and two very tender photos:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5935397.html

If I were able to speak to the survivors, and to their parish communities, and to their families, colleagues and friends, I would share the following.

Sadly, there are frequent accidents involving the road ways. Regardless of the reasons for the accident, a family is always left to grieve. But it would be dishonest to not acknowledge a particular sadness and sense of stunned let down that these were people who were God loving and pious, on the way to honor the Mother Mary. Mary demonstrated through personal visitation a particular love for the Vietnamese people, appearing to them in their suffering at Lavang. The many martyrs of Vietnam pay witness to God's love for them and the right to be called his people. So how can we mend hearts that have been so terribly broken?

We can look to St. Paul for our friend in this tragedy. In the times of Jesus they had the equivalent of buses: boats and ships. Travel by boat was very precarious and of course, the life of a fisherman was dangerous, and it remains the most dangerous occupation today. In the times of Jesus if one was going to travel long distance, as these pilgrims last week were doing, one had to rely on provision of the vehicle and the mercies of wind and sea. Many nameless people, including some of the earliest Christians, died along with regular people of the time in the course of normal group transport by boat or ship. Some were just going about their business, while others were the first evangelizers after Jesus Christ, following in his footsteps to preach the Gospel. How sad we can be imagining that people who might have actually seen and spoken to Christ, might have taken to the evangelizing road as a group, in a boat, and sank beneath the waves, losing their lives, with no one ever knowing what became of them. What pathos there is to think that undoubtedly more than a few who were the earliest believers lost their lives in what was the equivalent of our times traffic accidents, by ship wreck in the sea. It is not hard to imagine how sad it would be if people had books and written records, telling stories of how early believers who actually saw Jesus, or the Apostles, ended up dying in a routine way, as they embark on their evangelizing, from the pointless and sad accidental sinking of their boat.

But we do not need to imagine because we have the word of that great illumination of the time, St. Paul, for he was victim of shipwreck. Your families therefore are very close to St. Paul, and you can be assured that in the communion of saints in heaven that St. Paul will have special interest and grace in their company, and will intercede with God to help the wounded survivors. It is not as though St. Paul did not have enough to cope with as people sought to persecute and martyr him, beating and harming him in many ways. St. Paul who survived all of those assaults up until his final martyrdom, also almost lost his life in the course of group travel to spread the word of God, as he was shipwrecked. So we know from his first hand relating that travel has always been a precarious and dangerous endeavor, even when one is pure of heart and wanting only to evangelize and spread the good news. And so I hope that you and your families can find solace in knowing that a death is never in vain if it happens when one is in full communion with God, as these graceful people most certainly were. St. Paul would, if he could speak to you, invite you to lean on him and recall his survival of shipwreck (while others did not survive), and know that all roads, short or long, eventually bring all of the faithful together to the same place.

God bless you, your families, your communities and the souls of those who perished in this accident.