Fr. Flanagan to Newsmax: Look to God After Tragedies Like FSU Shootings

Fr. Patrick Flanagan, reflecting on the shootings at Florida State University, tells Newsmax that Good Friday is a time to remember that God also suffered with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, but is always nearby to help people with their suffering as well. 

"In so many ways, people are looking for answers," Flanagan, who chairs the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at St. John's University in New York, said on Newsmax's "National Report."

"They're asking about God," he added. "They're asking about how God can let this happen? But one of the things that's keen on the reality of Good Friday is that God suffered, that God loved God's people so much, was passionate in that love, went to the cross to free humanity from its sins and opened the way to eternal life."

Good Friday is "not the end but just the beginning," said Flanagan. "So just as God suffers on Good Friday, Easter Sunday is a total reversal of everything and that's the good news.

So with the people suffering in Florida after the shootings, which claimed two lives, "it's crucial for them to understand that God is very much close to them, because God is not someone who's remote, but God is someone very close and who's suffered himself," the priest said.

And the joy that Easter reflects shows that God kept his promises, he continued. 

"The joy is kind of frightening because I suspect that most people were intending that nothing was going to happen, or that Jesus was not going to make good on the promises that he made," said Flanagan. "The Scripture scholars record for us that they went to the tomb with spices and oils, all things to help them deal with the stench and to take care of the body, but there was not much hope. There was kind of a sadness."

But then, "Jesus appears to them and says 'do not touch me. I am going to the father. I have risen from the dead,'" said Flanagan.

"That is the phenomenal news that Christians celebrate on Easter Sunday," he added. "That is the great joy that God made good on God's promises that God can be trusted, and that there's hope and a profound hope in our relationship with God."

Meanwhile, Flanagan said he found it "incredibly refreshing" to see President Donald Trump in the White House, praying with different faith leaders.

"That was the way I was brought up," he said. "Before we went to school, before we did our work, before we ate our meals, before we retired at night, we always said a prayer that called God to mind and thanked God for the gifts that are ours and asked God to accompany us."

Prayer is a recognition not only to "do our own work," but to God, "who has sent us to do the work," Flanagan said. "We're merely stewards on this Earth to do the things that need to be done. It's incredibly refreshing when we find ourselves seeing our leaders pause in prayer. It's happened throughout the world, and now it's happening in the United States. And this is something that I think people can take comfort in."

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