Paula (Oswald) McClave poses for a photo with her father, Paul E. Oswald, during the opening of her gourmet food shop in Billings, Montana.
The fact that my sister Paula took her own life on the Feast of the Epiphany has always brought a thawing of Divine Mercy to the ice of my paralysis of fear over her eternal destiny.
By Laurie L. Robinson
At about 8 p.m. on Saturday evening, Epiphany, Jan. 6, 2018, I received a call from my oldest sister, Jane.
“Laurie, Mac, Paula’s husband called me a little while ago,” she said, her voice cracking. “Paula took her own life this afternoon.”
I heard her words as if in an echo chamber, and my body, from head to toe, went cold as ice. To this day, I cannot recall the rest of the conversation — only that I asked how Paula, my 70-year-old sister, had chosen to exit this world.
“She hung herself from the balcony banister in her living room,” Jane said woodenly, as if she, too, had gone as cold as ice to steel herself against the pain.
What to do with the pain?
Fortunately, for me, as a Catholic, I could take my pain to the Mass the next day. As I entered the church, I met Fr. Juan Garza, the pastor of our parish in Newton, Kansas, at the time. I crumpled into his arms and cried, “My sister took her own life yesterday. What do I do with that?”
He held me and said, “You do nothing. She is in God’s hands.”
It wasn’t until I purchased the book After Suicide: There’s Hope for them and for You by Fr. Chris Alar, MIC, and Fr. Jason Lewis, MIC, (ordained a priest in summer 2023) that I could begin to accept the comfort and hope in his words.
The true teaching of the Church
On p. 32, the Catechism of the Catholic Church is cited: “We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for the persons who have taken their own lives.”
The authors continue to guide readers in praying in powerful and hopeful ways as Fr. Chris describes a conversation he had with a priest 10 years after his grandmother, Mary (Domansky) Alar, had committed suicide in 1993. On p. 42, he pens the priest’s words to him. “Regarding our prayers, God is omniscient (meaning all-knowing), so He knows every single prayer that we will every make, whether they are in the past, present or future. And He is omnipotent (meaning all-powerful), so He can take all those prayers into account and apply them to any point in time, even to the past.”
In other words, Paula’s all-knowing and all-powerful Creator and Redeemer indeed did have her in His hands. That same God also has me in His hands as I pray now about the then immediately before the noose strangled her. Yes, the Church teaches that her suicide is a grave, mortal sin. And yet, my prayers can make a difference about her eternal fate, helping her to choose God’s merciful and loving life at the moment before her self-hating annihilation.
Thawing of Divine Mercy
The fact that Paula took her own life on the Feast of the Epiphany has always brought a thawing of Divine Mercy to the ice of my paralysis of fear over her eternal destiny. The word “epiphany” means “a sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something.” In the Western Church, the feast focuses on the first manifestation of Christ as Lord of the nations to the Magi.
In Paula’s living room, I continue to pray and hope that in her last moments on earth, she beheld Christ’s essential nature — the loving and merciful Lord of her life — and embraced it as the healing for the final wound she was about to inflict. Because of that wound, those she left behind are hurting, too. The concluding prayer of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy continues to bring balm to my wound and a healing remedy full of hope:
Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion — inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself.
Visit SuicideAndHope.com to add a loved one who died by suicide to our prayer list or for more resources.
If you are having suicidal thoughts, please call the suicide hotline immediately at 988 (in the United States), 800-273-8255 (TALK), or 800-SUICIDE. Understanding professionals are on standby ready to help you.
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