Tea at Trianon: Faith and Grief

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Faith and Grief

A mother's reaction to her child's death.

Author Dawn Marie Roeder’s two-year-old son died under tragic circumstances, but she credits her Catholic faith for helping her survive, grieve and forgive. She now wants others to know that God’s heart is “so big ... beyond our understanding.”

“I just really hope to touch individuals who may be on the brink of losing hope or faith, to know they’re not alone. God loves them,” Roeder told CNA July 12.

“I wouldn’t have been able to survive without faith,” she said. “It’s critical, and it’s a cornerstone of my healing.”

Roeder’s 2011 book “It Doesn’t End Here,” published by Lanciano Media, tells her story. In the year 2000, an adverse reaction to a prescription drug caused Roeder to crash her car, killing her son and leaving her unconscious. She then took part in a five-year legal action against the pharmaceutical company that made the drug, saying it did not give sufficient warning about the possible dangers of the drug. The action put Roeder under intense scrutiny from the company’s lawyers and thrust her into the public eye.

Roeder, who now lives in Phoenix, said she wrote the book because she learned that Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary “are with us even in our most difficult and trying times.”

“I never felt abandoned by them,” she said. “If anything, I turned to them. I ran to them.

“He who suffered on the cross knows more than anything what it is to suffer. Our Heavenly Father, of course, through the loss of his son, knows what it is to lose the most precious thing in his life.”

She said the role of her faith in the aftermath of her son’s death has been “enormous.”

“We’re vulnerable at that time when we suffer loss. We need to make great choices, especially in our physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual part of our being, to be balanced.”

“Faith helped me as a foundation of being able to keep those other aspects in balance and keep me strong,” she said.

Roeder also learned the importance of forgiveness, saying it is a gift from God.

“He gave it to us from the cross. What are we to hold against anyone or any institution if we ourselves are sinners? We’ve been given the greatest gift on the cross. And we are to share that, as his children.”

While forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean trusting a particular person or situation again, she said, “we have to forgive with our hearts, with our whole being.”

Roeder’s book tells her experience across several chapters divided by reflections on the Seven Sorrows of Mary. She said she did this to honor the Virgin Mary as her “role model” who helped her grieve. She hopes the book’s sections on the Seven Sorrows will highlight the connection between “the suffering Our Lady had” and “the suffering of our everyday life.” (Read entire post.)