Grief, family prayer, and the new creation in Christ
By Fr Antony Parankimalil VC
The feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle is a day of faith for the whole Church, and it has a particular meaning for those of us who come from India. Thomas carried the Gospel into a land that did not yet know Christ and proclaimed the apostolic truth that salvation is found in no one else, because there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). He paid for that witness with his life. I am able to stand as a Christian today because someone before me accepted the cost of carrying the faith. The Gospel often reaches one generation because another generation has suffered, prayed and remained faithful.
As I prayed about what to preach on this feast, the Lord brought me back to a date that is deeply personal: 3 July 2019. On that day my elder sister was killed. This date is deeply personal to me. Saint Thomas was murdered because he bore witness to Christ, and on his feast I remember the violent death of the sister who first helped to form my faith. Her death raised painful questions, but in time it also became connected with a new mission. Through human eyes I could see only tragedy; through prayer I began to recognise a commissioning.
The Sister Who Was Like a Mother to Me
I come from a family of ten children, eight brothers and two sisters, and I am the ninth-born. Three of my brothers are also priests. The sister who was killed was the second child in our family, seventeen years older than I was, and so she was not only a sister to me. She cared for me like a mother. My mother sometimes corrected me firmly, but my sister was always gentle with me. When I came home from nursery school, I would tell her everything that had happened. I slept beside her, went with her to the river and followed her wherever I could. She appreciated me, protected me and gave me the affection that a small child never forgets.
She was also one of the first people who taught me the faith. We had a small catechism book, and she prepared me for First Holy Communion. She taught me the Act of Contrition and the prayers that became part of my childhood. When I was about five years old she married and moved far away. During my seminary years I came home only for short holidays, and a seminarian has very little money. Later, when I became a priest, I was serving in Africa. Our meetings were brief and infrequent, and I never gave her the kind of gift that might have expressed what she had been to me.
When the telephone call came while I was serving with Divine UK Ministries, I learned that she had been murdered by a neighbour. The circumstances were violent and disturbing, and many details remained difficult to understand. What hurt me most was the realisation that I had never properly thanked her. I had not repaid her kindness, given her a small gift, apologised for the trouble I caused as a child or said a final farewell. I asked the Lord why He had not given me some warning, even a small sign that would have allowed me to tell her what she meant to me.
Later, while I was preaching a retreat, someone asked whether such an unnatural death proved that there was a curse, black magic, hidden sin or something spiritually wrong in my family line. The question made me sad because it turned a terrible loss into an accusation. I brought it directly to God. In prayer it was as though Jesus said to me, ‘My son, even I did not have what people call a natural death. I was brutally killed. Murder is not proof that the victim is cursed, rejected by God or a great sinner.’ The Cross itself destroys the idea that every violent death can be interpreted as divine punishment. Jesus was the beloved Son, and yet He was rejected and crucified.
When Grief Became a Commissioning
The answer I received in prayer did not remove the grief, but it changed the direction in which I carried it. I sensed the Lord telling me that my sister’s reward did not depend upon what I could give her. He had seen every act of love that I had failed to acknowledge, and He had called me to serve Him. Then He brought before me the mission that Father Joby and I had begun in Rwanda on 28 November 2021. At that time we were the only two Indian priests serving there, and we had entered a country marked by the wounds of genocide and the memory of around a million people who had been killed.
In that prayer I understood my mission in Rwanda as a gift connected with my sister’s intercession. What became clear to me was that the love I had not returned to her was not meant to end in regret. The Lord was asking me to carry that love to His brothers and sisters in Rwanda, people whose lives and families had been brutally broken and shattered by genocide. It was as though He asked, ‘Can you treat them as you would treat your own biological sister? Can the gratitude you could not express to her become tenderness, service and responsibility towards them?’
That insight did not make the murder good, and it did not erase the pain. Christianity never asks us to call evil good. What it revealed was that evil does not have the final word. A wound can become the place from which God entrusts a new responsibility. A memory that once produced only helplessness can become compassion. The person we can no longer serve directly may continue to shape the way we serve others. To human eyes an event may remain tragedy; through divine grace it can also become a commissioning.
Father Joby, who serves with me in Rwanda, has also known sudden family deaths. He understands bereavement not as a distant subject but as a wound carried in his own life. Sometimes the people best able to accompany a suffering community are those who know what it means to lose, to ask unanswered questions and still to continue serving. Saint Paul told the Ephesians not to lose heart over his sufferings, because those sufferings were connected with their glory (Ephesians 3:13). In the same way, the suffering of a grandparent, parent, spouse, priest or hidden intercessor may be sustaining a grace that others do not yet recognise.
We often judge sick or elderly people according to what they can produce. A person who is bedridden, living with cancer, recovering from a stroke or approaching death may seem to contribute nothing materially. Yet that person may be praying with a purity and perseverance that carries an entire family. We do not know how much of our own mission has been supported by someone else’s tears, sacrifice and intercession. Somebody has paid a cost so that our faith could continue. That is true of Saint Thomas, and it may also be true within our own homes.
Let the Word of God Read Your Life
The call to mission is not limited to priests and religious. Saint Thomas entered a foreign people, language and culture, and many Christians discover their mission in circumstances they did not choose. You may have married into a family that does not share your faith. You may live among relatives who do not understand prayer, the sacraments or the Church. The first temptation is to withdraw and say, ‘I cannot continue among these people.’ Yet the presence of a believer within a household can become a channel of prayer, patience and witness. Saint Paul says that the unbelieving husband is made holy through his wife and the unbelieving wife through her husband (1 Corinthians 7:14). The Christian is not placed in a family merely to judge it, but to carry Christ into it.
To recognise such a mission, we need more than hurried Bible reading. Many people tell me that Scripture is boring because they do not understand it. The Church gives us the practice of lectio divina, divine reading. We first read the Word as it stands. Then we meditate upon it. We ask what the Lord is saying, listen for the response that touches our present life and finally put that response into practice. The purpose is not to collect information but to enter a living encounter. Jesus says that His words are spirit and life (John 6:63), and Hebrews tells us that the Word of God is living and active, able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Hebrews 4:12).
I discovered this in a new way in Rwanda. Passages I had read or even skipped before began to speak differently in that country. The same verse may address me in another way when I read it in Melbourne, when a person comes for counselling or when a family is facing a crisis. Scripture is not dead print waiting for us to master it. We should not only read the Bible; we should allow the Bible to read us. When the Word reads our hearts, it exposes fear, pride, resentment and despair, but it also uncovers a mission hidden inside the situation we wanted only to escape.
Saint Monica shows what it means to live a word rather than merely quote it. She was the believer in a household where her husband Patricius was unbaptised and her son Augustine resisted the faith. Monica did not surrender either of them to hopelessness. Through years of prayer, tears and fidelity, Patricius was baptised and Augustine eventually became one of the great saints and teachers of the Church. The unbelieving husband was sanctified through the believing wife, but Monica herself was also formed through the trial. Her perseverance did not only change the people around her; it became part of her own path to holiness.
Marriage and family life can involve a hidden cost that the world does not see. The Christian tradition distinguishes the red martyrdom of those who shed their blood from the white martyrdom of those who surrender themselves through faithful, daily sacrifice. Saint Thomas bore red martyrdom. Saint Monica’s long fidelity helps us understand white martyrdom. The point is not that suffering is automatically holy, or that pain should be sought for its own sake. Suffering becomes spiritually fruitful when it is united with truth, prayer, charity and the grace of God.
God Knows the Measure of the Trial
Sometimes a person hears this teaching and says, ‘Father, it is too much.’ Saint Paul answers that no testing has overtaken us that is not common to humanity. God is faithful; He will not allow us to be tested beyond our strength, and with the testing He will provide a way to endure it (1 Corinthians 10:13). This promise does not make suffering easy, nor does it mean that every dangerous situation must simply be accepted without responsible action. It means that God does not abandon His children inside their trials. His grace can open a path that human strength alone cannot see.
Isaiah gives us the image of grain being crushed for bread, but not threshed forever or pulverised without measure (Isaiah 28:28). That verse reminds me of a childhood mistake. My mother once sent me about two kilometres to a mill with rice that was to be ground for puttu, the steamed cake we make in Kerala. On the way I forgot whether she had asked for flour for puttu or for appam. There were no mobile phones, so I could not call home. I decided it must be for appam and asked the miller to grind it very finely.
When I returned, my mother looked at the flour and immediately knew what I had done. Flour for appam must be very fine, while flour for puttu must remain coarser so that the steam can pass through it. She asked how one small instruction could disappear from my little head. To me, rice flour was rice flour; I only knew how to eat the finished food. I knew nothing about measurement. Years later, Isaiah helped me see the spiritual meaning hidden in that ordinary memory: the one preparing the grain knows the measure required for its purpose. God does not crush His children carelessly or without limit.
I once heard a pastor tell a similar story about a father who had five children and needed a large bunch of bananas carried to the market. He divided the load according to the strength of each child. The eldest received the largest portion and the youngest only a small bunch. The father knew their capacities better than the children did. Our heavenly Father also knows the strength, history and vulnerability of each child. We may not understand why a responsibility has come to us, but we can ask for the grace to carry what He entrusts and the wisdom to seek the help He provides.
This is part of the mission of every Christian. A priest is accountable for the souls entrusted to his ministry, but parents, spouses, grandparents and friends also bear responsibility for the people placed around them. One day we will have to ask not only what we achieved for ourselves, but whom we helped to find Jesus Christ. Saint Thomas crossed a great distance to carry the Gospel to India. Our mission field may be the dining table, the hospital room, the workplace, the family into which we married or the person whose suffering has become inconvenient to everyone else.
During a retreat in Nairobi, I asked those who had received faith during the retreat to raise their hands. To my surprise, almost ninety per cent did so, and I laughed, ‘Then you came to the retreat without faith!’ The moment contained humour, but it also revealed how easily faith can weaken and how powerfully it can be renewed. We should never assume that the person who seems far from God is beyond His reach. The Lord can awaken faith in a crowded retreat, in a quiet home, through a mother’s tears or through one verse of Scripture received at the right moment.
I Will Save Your Children
A mother once came to me because her son was trapped in alcohol and drugs. His condition had become so unstable that he had threatened her with a knife, and she was afraid inside her own home. I placed before her Isaiah 49:24-25: ‘Can the prey be taken from the mighty, or the captive of a tyrant be rescued?’ The Lord Himself answers that even the captives of the mighty can be taken and the prey of the tyrant rescued. Then comes the promise: ‘I will contend with those who contend with you, and I will save your children.’
I asked the congregation to repeat those words because families hear another message again and again: ‘Your children are lost. Your family is finished. They have been seized by addiction, unbelief, a destructive relationship or another bondage, and nothing can change.’ Scripture does not deny the seriousness of those realities. It refuses to give them the final authority. Even when a son or daughter has abandoned prayer, rejected the faith or entered a life that terrifies the family, the promise of God allows parents to intercede without surrendering to despair.
We encouraged that mother to begin with the promise of Isaiah and then pray the Memorare nine times. Later her son was converted, and he testified that for a month Jesus had repeatedly appeared to him because of his mother’s prayer. The central point is larger than one extraordinary experience. A mother who appeared powerless was not without a spiritual weapon. She held on to the promise of God and continued to place her son before Him in prayer.
Jeremiah says that when we search for the Lord with all our heart, we will find Him (Jeremiah 29:13). Saint Thomas was a seeker. He struggled to believe the testimony of the other disciples, but when he encountered the risen Christ he confessed, ‘My Lord and my God.’ Whatever pit a child, spouse, relative or friend has entered, God is able to reach that person. Jesus says that it is not the will of the Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost (Matthew 18:14). We therefore pray from the character of God, not from the apparent hopelessness of the situation.
Your Family History Is Not Your Final Identity
Psalm 84 is a song about the beauty of God’s dwelling place, yet its heading connects it with the descendants of Korah. Korah’s rebellion against Moses and Aaron became one of the dark memories of Israel’s history. Nevertheless, later descendants held fast to God, served around the Ark of the Covenant and became worshippers who could sing, ‘How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts.’ Their family story contained rebellion, but rebellion did not remain their identity. A later generation chose worship.
This matters when people are consumed by fear about ancestors, curses or tragedies in the family line. There may be real wounds in our history, and honest healing can require prayer, repentance, reconciliation and the repair of consequences. The danger is spending our whole life searching backwards as though the past possesses greater authority than Jesus Christ. The descendants of Korah did not spend every day repeating the sin of Korah. They held on to God and began to serve Him. Their worship became the new testimony of the family.
Perhaps some of your ancestors were unbaptised, non-Christian or openly opposed to the faith. Perhaps your family history includes violence, addiction, broken relationships or rejection. These facts need not be denied, but neither should they become a prison. God may be assigning you to rebuild, restore and repair what has been devastated. The new mission may begin when one person decides to pray, serve, forgive, seek truth and bring Christ into a place that has not known Him. That is the missionary pattern of Saint Thomas, and it is not reserved for priests or nuns.
When you marry someone of another nationality, language, culture or Christian tradition, or enter a family that does not share your faith, do not assume that difference itself is a curse. It may be part of an assignment that calls for patience, humility and witness. We should not conclude that God cannot work through a difficult or unfamiliar family situation. The believer is called to remain rooted in Christ and to ask how grace can begin something new.
Saint Paul gives the decisive word: ‘If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new’ (2 Corinthians 5:17). The Paschal Mystery is stronger than the past. In Christ, a family line can turn towards worship, a tragedy can open into service, grief can become compassion and an unanswered question can become a mission. My sister’s death remains a wound in my life, but it is not only a wound. Through prayer, it became connected with the people of Rwanda and with the responsibility to love them as my own.
My dear brothers and sisters, when tragedy strikes, do not panic and do not immediately interpret it as proof that God has abandoned you. Bring the pain honestly to Him. Let His living Word read your heart. Ask what new responsibility may be hidden within the wound, whose soul has been entrusted to your prayer and what part of your family story He is asking you to rebuild. God does not waste the faithful surrender of His people. What appears to be an ending can become a commissioning, and what human eyes see only as tragedy can, in Christ, become the beginning of a mission.
Pastoral note: This teaching should not be interpreted as requiring a person to remain in immediate danger or to endure abuse without intervention. Prayer, fidelity and hope should be accompanied by appropriate pastoral, medical, psychological, safeguarding and legal assistance where violence, coercion, addiction or serious harm is present.
Adapted and edited from a homily delivered by Fr Antony Parankimalil VC at the Healing Mass at Holy Family Church, Doveton, on the Feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle during the July 2026 Divine Australia programme.