On an early Saturday afternoon in December 2019, Tomas and Juanita Bonilla were sitting at a table outside the cafeteria of Dolores Mission School in Boyle Heights to talk about a group that no one wants to be a part of.
Started in 2014, “Healing Hearts Restoring Hope” is for individuals whose lives have been forever changed by the homicide of a loved one, but who have focused on forgiving and healing.
For the Bonillas, that change came on Halloween 2010. Still angry about their recent breakup, the ex-boyfriend of their 19-year-old daughter, Zurisaday, drove his vehicle into the Bonilla’s home.
The car smashed through the bedroom where the family was, killing Zurisaday and 18-day-old baby Naomi. For the parents of four children, getting past such an unspeakable tragedy came down to the choice to forgive.
“I didn’t have time to think about him,” Tomas said of the man who murdered his daughter and granddaughter. “I was thinking about my wife, our other children. I talked to my wife, and she said she did not feel anything for him.”
The couple, who spoke to Angelus News while the group held its annual Christmas party, recalled feeling concern not only for their family but for that of the perpetrator, too.
“We focused on restoring and healing our other children first, and to make sure that our children were going to be OK,” recalled Juanita. “And we also knew the other family, who had recently lost their grandfather as well. So the pain that we were feeling, the other family must have felt as well. We understood that and focused on healing. We didn’t have time for hate….”
The above comes from a Feb. 12 story by R.W. Dellinger in Angelus News.
I would have liked to know if the assassin-boyfriend was an Illegal Alien. No one seems to mind anymore, but I do. The Wall President Trump is building with such indefatigable dedication will make US much safer. God is not done with America as yet.
For those who care about persons killed by those who’ve entered the country illegally, often repeatedly, and their loved ones, there is The Remembrance Project, https://theremembranceproject.org. While most undocumented immigrants are not criminals, it should be noted that virtually every year more than 100,000 convicted criminals who are here illegally are arrested by ICE. According to the Associated Press, “Nearly 3 percent of illegal immigrants in Arizona end up in state prison or jail during the course of a year, four times the rate of U.S. citizens and legal residents, according to a study that uses federal reimbursements for prisons and jails to try to calculate one of the most important yet elusive statistics in the immigration debate. In New Jersey, illegal immigrants are incarcerated five times more often, and rates on the West Coast are triple that of legal residents and citizens, according to the study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform.”
Can we forgive people who are unrepentant?
Kind of enabling is it not? If people never have to suffer the consequences of their actions, why should they change?
I must admit that I did not see or read the blue link at first and all the article. What I did not find is if the young perpetrator survived smashing his car into their house. That makes for a whole different situation. The young people would need our prayers though they passed away.
I am not saying that we should not eventually lovingly detach from the people who harmed us, but I am saying that they should face some punishment for what they did. Although Pope John Paul II forgave the man who shot him, he did not try to get him out of jail for his crime. After all there are other potential victims to consider.
Just as in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the sin is forgiven, the punishment remains (with the exception of Divine Mercy Sunday, the Sunday after Easter.)
“The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment. On that day all the divine floodgates through which graces flow are opened.” Jesus to Saint Faustina, Diary, 699