What the Sorrowful Mysteries Showed Me On This Day

Over the course of the last few months, I have been feeling utterly abandoned by my Catholic brothers and sisters due to the increasing backlash against the police in this country (see my last blog post).  As a Catholic cop, I am more than a little sensitive to this phenomenon.  I expect it from the public at large and especially from the criminal element, but I admit it threw me when I started to see it from my fellow parishioners, members of religious communities, and especially from the Catholic press.

It got to the point where I stopped praying my daily Rosary or doing any of the usual devotions I had been engaging in because I felt so betrayed.  I barely could get up the energy to attend Sunday Mass anymore.  Hard as I tried, I couldn’t separate my feelings from my spiritual life.

For many years now, I’ve been wondering if Jesus would give me a cross to bear.  I know that I have been blessed beyond measure by God with an unbelievably supportive and Godly wife and the most perfect children one could pray for.  My career has been amazing and it has allowed me to support my family well.  With the help of my beautiful wife, I found my way back home to the Catholic Faith where I have learned to truly love the Lord.  Could I really expect to escape this world without being tested?

Now I know what you are thinking: “Is this guy serious?  He has admitted to enjoying a happy, healthy life and family, and being blessed.  Is he now going to claim that just because some people have said some mean stuff about his profession that he has a cross to bear?”  With all the suffering all around us, is he really wanting us to feel bad for him??” I know.  I thought the same thing, but bear with me.  I’ll make you even more angry.

Forget the fact that cops are now getting murdered just for wearing the uniform due to the ongoing vilification of my profession and that my wife has to worry more and more each day if my brains are going to be blown out just for sport while I sit in my police car.  

Perhaps it is because I am within two months of retiring after thirty years as a cop that I am so sensitive, but I am starting to think about my “legacy” here at my department and the blood, sweat and tears-literally-that I’ve put into this job in the service of others.  I have endured a lot of vitriol and have had people try to kill me in earnest on several occasions, but I have always expected that from the bad guys.  Now though, I’m getting this hostility from my own faith community (even though none of them actually knows anything about police work, have never undergone one minute of training, have never been in a physical fight not to mention ever had to actually fight for their lives). 

As I reflect back on my career and the friends I’ve lost in the line of duty, and all the sacrifices made, I had been feeling completely disheartened because of today’s climate.  I am not exaggerating when I say I have lost much sleep over this and have agonized over it.  It has torn me up.

  

Today though, I forced myself to go over to my parish on my lunch break to pray the Rosary like I had been doing for the last three years or so but had let slip lately due to what I have already written about.  Believe me, I was not in the mood to do it.  As I pondered the Sorrowful Mysteries though, I thought about Christ as he was humiliated, tortured, and completely and utterly betrayed by those that He loves beyond understanding-those that He came down from Heaven to save.  They all not only turned their backs on Him, but many openly cheered for His death in the most horrific way imaginable, and some even participated in it.  His closest friends denied knowing Him.  Judas, hand-picked by Christ Himself turned Him over to the Romans for execution.  Still, He let it all happen with nothing but love in His heart.  Again, I know what you’re thinking: “Is he really going to compare his hurt feelings with the sufferings of Christ??”  No, I am not….but…..

I thought about how I could offer up my own feelings of betrayal and my disenchantment with fellow Catholics, especially the Catholic media, and some religious, and I thought to myself, if Christ can lovingly endure the unimaginable torture and death that He did, I certainly can join my suffering that pales in comparison with that of His.  I can take comfort in the fact that even while He was enduring the crown of thorns and the beatings, the plucking of His beard and the humiliation, if I were there and had approached our Blessed Lord with my piddling little problems, He still would’ve taken me into His arms like the loving Father He is, and He would’ve comforted me and healed me.  Today I asked him to do just that, and to help me concentrate on His Holy Bride the Catholic Church; to have faith in Him and all the promises He made to us and to realize my whole heart should be concentrating on getting my family and myself to Heaven and that nothing else in this world matters.  I left the cathedral feeling like a new man.

    

I’ll be resuming my daily rosary.