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NMMountainMom
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Has anyone here read Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee Ilibagiza? I would really like to talk about this book!
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mamasue
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Amazing story!!
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Karen T
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I read it about 2 years ago - fabulous book. Not sure if I remember enough details to really discuss it though. I think she has another book out now as well.
Karen
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Donna Marie
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I read it...it was very powerful!
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Nique
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It took me 2 days to finish it..I just couldn't put it down! Did you find that too NMMountainMom?
I often recount the last time she was to see her father..and the scapular she gave to him as well as the rosary he gave to her..
Immaculee's faith was truly an inspiration during the Rwandan Holocaust!
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NMMountainMom
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| Posted: Dec 21 2010 at 12:09pm | IP Logged
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I posted this and haven't gotten back to the thread. Sorry! Anyway, I found this book amazing and inspiring on one hand but also a little disturbing. I'd like some input on the disturbing part. As many people do, I still really struggle with the concept of the suffering of innocent people. In one section of the book, Immaculee describes hearing a mother murdered and then listening to the baby cry throughout the night until presumably, he died too. I can't shake that passage. Similarly there is a famous photograph of an emaciated, near death, toddler crawling to a refugee camp in Africa. The vultures stand next to him waiting for him to die. That picture haunts me to this day. Here is the thing. God granted Immaculee tremendous faith and an ability to pray during this time. What I interpret is that she believed her prayers saved her. What about those babies and children... those who didn't have the mental capacity to cry out to God? Similarly, her family sounds like they were truly faithful people. But God didn't save them. I have encountered this in my past life as a Protestant... the so-called "health and wealth" gospel. That if you just have enough faith, God will heal you, or save you, or pay your bills, or grant you whatever other favor you wish. I'm rambling and short on time so I don't know if I have expressed myself properly. I'd appreciate any comments on the struggle I have with this book!
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Erin
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I've read both books, absolutely riveting and an incredibly powerful message about forgiveness.
Mmm you ask the 'hard questions'  
So why do innocent people suffer? Short answer is free will (I often ask God what was he thinking?  ) Yes there is Evil in the world and at times it appears to be winning however we have His assurance Good will triumph but... it is very, very hard when innocents suffer. In Catholic thinking suffering is not wasted though, suffering can be offered to Him, all those Graces.
So why were Immaculee's prayers answered and not those of her family members and fellow countrymen? I am familiar with the 'health and wealth' gospel (all my irl friends are Protestant)I didn't pick that up in the book. However the fact that Immaculee survived means she has an incredible opportunity to spread a message; firstly she shakes us up and makes sure we never forget the Genocide of the Rwandan people, I never really knew about this before reading her story, I'll never forget. Secondly her message of Forgiveness is so powerful. When she can forgive her neighbours and fellow countrymen of horrific crimes I find I put my life into a bigger perspective and ask do my smaller irritations really matter? I don't really know why some people survive War and others don't, I do know though that Immaculee has not wasted the opportunity of Life.
Now I'm not sure if I have expressed myself clearly either, suffering and love are such hard topics to express.
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Karen T
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I think Erin said it pretty well, but I wanted to add this:
Maybe that baby and mother weren't saved to live here on Earth, but remember they very likely were saved in a much better place. Immaculee survived b/c God wanted to use her to spread His message; it doesn't mean He loves her more than the ones who are with Him already.
If God meant in the Gospels that praying for something would bring us exactly what we wanted every time, we'd be treating Him like some lucky rabbit's foot or magic genie. I have a quote from another, very different book, that I've saved b/c it meant so much to me. This is from Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns. The character, a young boy, was giving a eulogy at his grandfather's funeral, and explaining "Ask and ye shall receive"
"Grandpa didn't think Jesus meant, by that, that we should ast God for things, or for special favors. He said we could trust that in the nature of things, without astin', we'll get lots of blessin's and happy surprises and maybe a miracle or two. When Jesus said ast and you'll get it, He meant things of the spirit, not the flesh. Right now, for instance, I could ast, "Lord, please raise Grandpa from the dead,' but it wouldn't happen. But I can say, 'Please, God, comfort me,' and I'll get heart's ease. Grandpa said Jesus meant us to ast for hope, forgiveness, and all like that. Ast, "Hep us not be scared, hep us not be greedy, give us courage to try.'
Karen
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NMMountainMom
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Ok, what I understand is that Immaculee believed God gave her a job at the UN and a husband (after the genocide) due to her prayers but he couldn't save innocent mothers and babies from death from by machete? Sorry, really struggling with this. I can't get this book out of my head, and not in a good way.
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Mackfam
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Immaculee's story is a heartbreaking story...and a story of great suffering.
How does one understand and accept God as a loving God...after reading of something as horrific as this...or accounts from Nazi Germany...or other similar horrific crimes that cry out to God...or even intense suffering within our own families?
We know that God hears all prayers. All. I have always understood that there is but one prayer in which we can be certain that God's will and ours unite and are the same -- and that is for our salvation. God desires our salvation. This is always God's will.
We also know that God never wills evil. As a result of the gift of the free will given to man, God allows us to make choices...of good and evil...and God also allows the consequences of those choices.
We know that as a result of original sin, we are subject to suffering and death.
The Catechism expresses your question and the answer beautifully:
Catechism of the Catholic Church #412 wrote:
| But why did God not prevent the first man from sinning? St. Leo the Great responds, "Christ's inexpressible grace gave us blessings better than those the demon's envy had taken away."307 And St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, "There is nothing to prevent human nature's being raised up to something greater, even after sin; God permits evil in order to draw forth some greater good. Thus St. Paul says, 'Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more'; and the Exsultet sings, 'O happy fault,. . . which gained for us so great a Redeemer!'" |
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Why did God save Immaculee, and yet, other innocents suffered in horrific, unimaginable ways that imprint themselves in memory and in our hearts? This is a question I cannot answer. God alone knows why He chose to allow this. We can entrust these innocents to Divine Mercy. We know that He heard their prayers.
We pray in the Our Father, "Thy will be done," and there is a reason for that...we can ask to be spared physical suffering, emotional pain, torment, and it is true that if it is good for our salvation and corresponds with God's will, He may, in His mercy, spare us. It may also be that as a tender Father that knows what is best for His children, He chooses to answer that prayer in a wholly different manner, according to His will, His mercy, what is best for our salvation, and always out of great love for us.
I hope I haven't trespassed too far into an area which is mysterious. The intense suffering we witness, particularly innocents suffering at the hands of evil, is painful to our hearts. God's plan is always perfect. I trust that. I've lived it when I didn't want to. I've lived through intense suffering. I've begged before the throne of God. My prayers were answered, not in the way I begged for, not with the miracle I asked for, but with God's grace I see how my prayers were answered...tenderly...mercifully.
The Father allowed His own Son, the Innocent Lamb, to be scourged, mocked, hung, and die a torturous death on a Cross. And yet, we see how God could untwist a moment so evil that His merciful plan of salvation was able to unfold. The gates of heaven were unlocked. Thanks be to God.
God's will be done.
Immaculee survived. God is merciful. Thanks be to God.
Other innocents suffered and lost lives. God is merciful. Thanks be to God.
God, in His mercy and tenderness gives us a Mother most Pure to show us the way.
Fiat -- Be it done to me according to thy word.
Our Lady of Sorrows knew the pain of watching Innocence suffer. How difficult, how utterly heart-wrenching was it for her to offer her Fiat, her continual Fiat, from the Annunciation...to the moment she removed her precious Son, the Son of God, from the Cross...to her Assumption into Heaven? Utterly beyond my imagination. Yet, she did so, continually. When my heart aches beyond my ability to understand suffering, I line up with her at the Foot of the Cross offering my meager fiat.
May I offer a prayer which is quite beautiful, and in which I find practical comfort as it gives my prayers words when I witness injustice, evil, hurt, pain: An Act of Reparation to the Sacred Heart. And, could I also recommend a follow-up book for you? You might consider Peter Kreeft's Making Sense Out of Suffering.
I'm not sure if this explanation is a help, NMMountainMom. Suffering is a beautiful gift, and it is full of mystery. We can't know the grace that was offered to those innocent suffering souls at the moment of their most intense suffering. We can entrust them to God's mercy. That is very consoling.
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KackyK
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I met Immaculee at a book signing at the National Book Festival a couple of years ago. There were lots of people in line obviously. There was a "handler" there, so to speak, who moved people along. Folks just told her what name to sign and they moved on. I however, couldn't NOT say anything, so I told her I was so moved by her devotion to our Blessed Mother. And before I could finish what I was going to say, her eyes just lit up and she started to talk all about Mary and how important it is to ask our Mother to pray for us and she talked about her book Our Lady of Kibeho. The "handler" was trying to get me to move on but Immaculee just held onto my book and kept talking about how much she loved Jesus and Mary. It was wonderful!
Do I think she thinks that God gave her a job at the UN and a husband, & that's why she is alive, no way! She is spreading the word of God as a living testament and as an author and even as a wife (and a UN worker).
Who knows why anyone dies, really? Why did so and so have her 4th miscarriage? Why did so and so have cancer AGAIN? The absolute answer to this is...we don't know why. But what we can do is this...we can trust that for whatever reason, reasons we can't even begin to understand, God wanted all things to happen. And yep, those things may hurt, they make may us suffer, they may make us sad and they may even disgust us. But it's not a punishment either.
And like basically what Erin said...all prayers are answered. They aren't necessarily answered how YOU want them to be answered. It's not up to YOU (US) to dictate HOW a prayer is answered. But God does want us to tell Him what we want too. He wants us to come to Him. It shows we believe in Him, we trust in Him.
Those babies that died, you are right they couldn't cry out to God, at least not how you or I do. (That's another topic, can we really know what a baby thinks???) But that's not "why" they died. I answer the question, why did they die? because God wanted them to be Him, He wanted YOU to question it too, He wants Us to come to Him and to have Faith in Him.
Okay I'm so rambling...sorry...I'll stop now 
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Willa
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NMMountainMom wrote:
| Ok, what I understand is that Immaculee believed God gave her a job at the UN and a husband (after the genocide) due to her prayers but he couldn't save innocent mothers and babies from death from by machete? Sorry, really struggling with this. I can't get this book out of my head, and not in a good way. |
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I am enjoying the discussion!
I am wondering if your concern is particularly with the way Immaculee expressed her belief that her prayers were answered. Did she say it in a way that sounded "wrong" to you? (I read the book 2-3 years ago and don't remember the details of how she put it)
OR does her story represent a more general concern you have with the way God answers some prayers and not others? OR I suppose, rather with the way people ask God for temporal blessings and think He granted them because of their faith, while people (perhaps just as holy and innocent) are suffering and dying elsewhere.
So I guess the question is whether you think Immaculee expressed her faith in an unorthodox way, taking too much of the credit for answered prayers to her own faith -- or whether you just in general have a concern about the way people pray for life and health and things like that.
I love the kind of book discussion that deals with the very serious issues the book deals with! That was a shocking book for me to read -- but I think the part that struck me most was how horrible people could be to each other. I think that I remember that her tall, charming, athletic brother was macheted by his own former schoolmates -- that seemed appalling to me, thinking of my own kids and their friends -- could race or religion divide them so much that they would kill each other?
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Nique
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Kacky, extremely well explained Thank you!
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NMMountainMom
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| Posted: Dec 22 2010 at 12:36pm | IP Logged
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Thank you so much for your thoughtful replies. My question is not really why do innocent people suffer (though that is certainly not easy to accept or to understand), but how does prayer relate to suffering and how should we pray in our every day lives?
I don't have specific quotes from Left to Tell, but here is a quote from Immaculee from her book about Our Lady of Kibeho. This is her father speaking to her: "we can obtain anything by praying for it faithfully. After he told me that he'd asked Mary to help me get into a high school that would pave my way to university," She expresses similar thoughts about God paving the way for her after the genocide... in providing a job for her at the UN and providing a husband for her who had the characteristics she prayed for. I was inspired by her unity with God in prayer in the bathroom and her ability to forgive the perpetrators of such horrendous acts. It is the events after the genocide and how she believed that prayer brought about certain outcomes afterward that I have a hard time with.
I am certain there were many people who prayed faithfully that they wouldn't be murdered with machetes or that their young daughters wouldn't be raped and then murdered by machetes, but they were. I cannot imagine the horror. Why would God not answer those prayers affirmatively, but he would answer a request for a job at the UN?
In Immaculee's book about Our Lady of Kibeho, Mary delivers messages that tell us that prayer can change the course of world events. She foretold the genocide and implored people to turn to her Son and to pray. Also, Our Lady when she appeared to Catherine Laboure (of the Miraculous Medal), her rings gave off rays of light, but also darkness. Catherine asked our Lady what the darkness was and she replied that it represented what we DID NOT ask for in prayer. Again, it seems that we are told that prayer can actually change events.
When my youngest son was born, he was born not breathing. The situation was so serious that we baptized him because we thought there was a good chance he would die. My husband and I begged God to save our son and he did. If we didn't beg hard enough or didn't have enough faith, God might have let our son die? I just can't believe that is how prayer works.
How do we pray in the day to day when there is such immense suffering in the world? How dare I ask for small favors when there are people starving, being tortured, being murdered, watching their beloved family members die? In our family prayer time, we ask for traveling mercies, or assistance with our family business or that God would provide a house for us (we currently rent and would like to buy). We also offer Thanksgiving, prayers for deceased relatives and prayers for the salvation of others. The latter prayer requests I feel confident are good and pleasing to God, but I'm not so sure about the former. For example- prayers of safety: what if God wishes to bring one of us home to Him? Prayers for our business: what is so important about our finances? What if God wishes us to be poor or to struggle financially? A house purchase: God never promised a roof over everyone's head.
Wow, more rambling. Thank you for wading through this.
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Willa
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NMMountainMom wrote:
My husband and I begged God to save our son and he did. If we didn't beg hard enough or didn't have enough faith, God might have let our son die? I just can't believe that is how prayer works.
How do we pray in the day to day when there is such immense suffering in the world? |
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When my two youngest sons were severely ill in the hospital I saw some people who didn't profess to be believers go home with healthy children, while others who prayed constantly would lose their children to catastrophic illness or death. So surely sometimes people who pray don't get specifically what they ask for while those who haven't even thought of praying might have good things happen to them.
At the same time, prayer is good for us -- asking for what we need is an act of faith, that we know that good things come from GOd. I think it does more good than we know, not just in that particular situation but all around.
I suppose the "health and wealth" gospel you mentioned in an earlier post is sort of like God as big Candy Dispenser in the Sky and we just have to push the right button to get Him to dispense. So if I don't get what I ask for, that means I didn't pray the right way? That would seem wrong, like thinking that our prayers were somehow like bargaining chips we could use to get good things out of God.
But God encourages us to become like little children and little children trust to their parents to provide. A newborn cries when it is hungry and the mother responds, and their love for each other is strengthened. This isn't like candy-dispensing, but like a relationship of trust.
St Augustine says some things about prayer that might be helpful:
Quote:
| But again one might ask whether we are to pray by words or deeds and what need there is for prayer, if God already knows what is needful for us. But it is because the act of prayer clarifies and purges our heart and makes it more capable of receiving the divine gifts that are poured out for us in the spirit. |
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Quote:
| He whose attitude towards Christ is correct does indeed ask 'in his name' and receives what he asks for, if it is something which does not stand in the way of his salvation. He gets it, however, only when he ought to receive it, for certain things are not refused us, but their granting is delayed to a fitting time. |
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This seems to be what Jesus modelled in His Life when He taught us to ask for our daily bread and to be delivered from evil. Then He did this in His own life when He asked that this cup should pass from Him, but added "Thy Will be done."
I hope this is to the point of what you are asking! If it's any help, I struggled with these questions when I was praying for my son to survive (he was critically ill for months and months). Sometimes I felt guilty for asking so fervently for something that other people would not receive. It seemed to me that when Jesus wept over Lazarus' grave, He showed that He really sorrows along with us and that even when bad things happen, they can't totally overcome us. I felt that it would be a worse choice NOT to ask God for my son's healing -- as if I thought He was indifferent to us. Of course, I tried to say and think "Thy Will be done" too.
I guess there are no easy answers, and I hope that something in this long post might respond to what you asked!
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Willa
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4Real Forums : Book Club
Topic: Any one read Left to Tell?
