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During tragedy, family sustained by faith

By B. G. Kelley I have known Shane Montgomery's mother and grandmother for a long time. They are good people.

The body of missing college student Shane Montgomery (left), was recovered Saturday from the Schuylkill River in Manayunk, not far from the pub where he was partying the night of Thanksgiving Eve.
The body of missing college student Shane Montgomery (left), was recovered Saturday from the Schuylkill River in Manayunk, not far from the pub where he was partying the night of Thanksgiving Eve.Read more

By B. G. Kelley

I have known Shane Montgomery's mother and grandmother for a long time. They are good people.

Shane was the 21-year-old West Chester University student from Roxborough who, after spending a night celebrating with friends at a Main Street Manayunk pub, went missing in the early hours of Thanksgiving Day. Sadly, on Saturday, divers from the Garden State Underwater Recovery Unit discovered his lifeless body in the Schuylkill, not far from where he had disappeared. His Mass of Christian Burial and interment is today.

The grief of Shane's family was so poignant, so palpable, and so sharp during the five-week search for him that it would have been easy, even convenient, for them to blame God for what happened to him.

They didn't.

Instead, they remained steadfast in their faith by summoning family and friends to St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Manayunk, the central rallying point, for weekly prayer vigils, special Masses, the lighting of candles, the saying of the rosary, and strategizing about the searches.

I can empathize with the Montgomery family. My younger brother was killed in a vehicular accident at age 29. My family and Eddie's friends gathered at church to pray for his soul and to remember him, albeit bittersweet, in a scrapbook of warm stories. Our faith, too, was a sustaining force.

Still, such losses of loved ones feed frustration, anger, and a willingness to put God on the witness stand to defend - or at least explain - why such tragedies happen.

Because we are human, sometimes our hearts will question whether God's will has anything to do with the absurdities and tragedies of our existence in this sometimes darkling world.

Surely, for the Montgomery family - just as it was for my family, or the surviving family members of 9/11 and tsunami victims - the epochal question had to be asked: "Why didn't God save Shane?"

Well, God didn't even save his own son from enduring an ignominious death.

Perhaps we should rather ask: How many lives have been changed for the better because of Shane's death?

How many people were moved to confirm the character of their own lives?

How many people sacrificed time, money, and obligations to help make a difference for a family in need?

How many strengthened or forged relationships with people in the community?

How many were mobilized to resurrect a complacent or dormant faith in their lives?

During this gut-wrenching ordeal, the Montgomery family inspired and galvanized the community by never dismissing their faith. To do so would have invoked a certain hypocrisy, erasing all that came before in their faith history. Instead, they understood that faith is not simply a safe harbor for ships to dock until the storm subsides. Pinning blame on God is pointless.

Are their lessons to be learned from the unyielding faith of Shane's family? You bet. The ultimate one is this: Death is transformative and transcendent, not terminative, and so faith is able to draw life out of death.

And that's exactly what members of Shane's family are embracing as they send him home today.