LifeStory | Fr. Ned

Fr. Ned Weist | “What turns you on or excites you? Creatively, Spiritually, Emotionally?”

Reverend Edward F. Weist | 25 July 1942 - 6 January 2025 | RIP

"And she gets up and she says, and now Father Weist is going to tell us how sin comes into all of this. It was like being hit by a two by four, you know. Here's 100 people out there, and they're all, and but by God's grace, you know, I just flipped it over to the witness that I gave to Beth, and her husband, when I went to visit them. And what I've been able to do with many people that have gone through suicide things. And I told that whole story of how finally the Lord spoke to my heart and said, if you could love him so much, how much more must I love him? And then I close with the quote from Saint Paul, where it says, where Paul says, where sin abounded, there did grace more abound, you know, and then he said, I think involved in anything like that is on the survivors by being angry with God, getting in despair with themselves and things like that. But by God's grace and more abounded and overcame that sin. So and then I gave a little witness to the, ministers there. I said, you know, when you get a call, you're probably working on your sermon or visiting somebody else, and you get a call, there's a suicide of a parishioner, and it's the last thing you want to hear. Nobody wants to walk into that kind of a situation and, so, she, so anyhow, I said to them, but you've got to do it. I said, you're not going to come in there with the answers. There's no real answer to this. But you being there with your humanity and you're sharing with them, you know, your own compassion and everything, that's going to help them through it. If you come in there stern, like you know all the answers. And this is this. And one theologian says that, and they're right. You're done. You know, so don't do it. So I go and sit down, way in the back. And my, pastoral minister, Sandy was there. And then this Mary Fran Ehlinger who was the pastoral minister at Holy Martyrs Parish in Medina, she got up and gave me a big hug. And she says, you're one of the reasons I still stay Catholic. Oh, really, I know. So I sat down. So this survivors of suicide come up, and it's, a daughter whose mother committed suicide, and her father, and it was his wife who committed this suicide and everything. And so they sit down and before they begin, the daughter says, before we begin, I want to say something to Father Weist, and she leans down, looks back at me down there and she says, you know, when you came in with that collar on, I turned to my father and I said, there's the enemy. And I got a chill. Oh my God, you know. She said, but after what you shared with us, you're not my enemy. You're my brother. You're my friend. But I lost it, you know, it was like, oh my God, now that's amazing grace right there, you know? I mean, I could have gone another way. Yeah, but by God's grace, it all turned out that way. And then I got a letter, later on in, the week from this woman who was the Methodist minister at Spencer, Ohio. And, she wrote to me, and I guess I had gotten to know her through a wedding that we did together. And her husband was the, minister, Methodist minister in York, Ohio, Medina County and, he helped her with this wedding thing, too. But anyhow, she wrote this note to me and she said, Father Ned, I just want to tell you this was your finest hour as a priest, minister. You know, and I read those things, and it was like, wow. You know, at once again, God taught me that, you know, you got to take all your theology and all the things you've learned and everything like that and bring it to the scene, but bring your humanity there. Bring, you know, be connect with them. And, and how God's grace helps you through all of that. But, you know, that's something I processed later on and everything. But those are moments that, you know, are moments of amazing grace. Really."

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