When Mercy Hurts: A Father’s Retreat from Violence to Confession

After a holiday packed with family and noise, Sean Lynn retreated into silence—struggling to make sense of murder, mercy, and feeling like a failure. - By Sean Lynn

After all the kids and grandkids came home for Christmas—Christmas dinner with 23 people and Boxing Day with 40—I needed silence. Not just for my ears, but for my soul. I came here to breathe again.

I’m sitting out at Mount St. Francis in Cochrane, on a silent weekend retreat. I’m reading about my favorite saint, St. Joseph, and letting the slow pace settle into my bones.

The retreat is focused on the mercy of God. That word—mercy—has been haunting and healing me.

A Mother’s Mercy Amid Murder

For almost eight years, I’ve worked with youth at risk. I walk with them through their darkest seasons, trying to be a light, a presence. In mid-November, I lost one of those young men. Murdered. Killed by three other young men I knew from along the way. He wasn’t even the intended target.

He was just gone.

I tried to comfort myself and my coworkers with the truth that God is merciful. I prayed that in his last moments, he was calling out to God. I had no way of knowing. But I hoped. I clung to that hope.

A few days later, I visited his mother. She was from Sudan. While I was there, CTV stopped by to do an interview. What she said floored me. She forgave the three young men who had killed her son. She forgave their families too. She said, “Canada is a new beginning, and we don’t want the violence here, it is a peaceful country.”

That was mercy. Real, gritty, embodied mercy. A mercy I would struggle to offer myself.

The Light of a Lost Boy

Three weeks later, another one.

Another young man. Another murder. Another life cut short. He had been in my office just days before. Wrong place, wrong time. He was very much a bright light wherever he went. He had worked off several community hours both at my parish and at our annual God Squad conference last year. He was Muslim, and open to discussing faith.

At the marriage renewal and again at our conference, I suggested that he stay downstairs working during Mass—only to turn around and see him at the back of the church.

I got the news of his death while walking into my son’s play at St. Francis. “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” And somehow, God was merciful to me in that moment. He didn’t allow me to fall into despair. He gave me the gift of watching these young people sing and dance and laugh. He gave me joy when I was on the edge of sorrow.

Once again, I prayed. That God would have mercy on his soul. That He would meet him in that last moment.

A Father’s Silence Before the Cross

And now I’m back here, at Mount St. Francis, trying to make sense of it all. Trying to listen to God in the silence. They offered the sacrament of reconciliation during the retreat. And honestly, my first thought was: I just went a month ago. I’ll wait and go to confession with the dynamic priests at my parish.

Then I thought of St. John Paul II, who went to confession weekly. He said, “We live in a society that seems to have lost the sense of God and of sin. Christ’s invitation to conversion is all the more urgent.”

And I was reading about how St. Joseph was the reflection of God the Father to Jesus. It stung. I thought about how often I’ve failed to reflect that same fatherhood in my own life.

There I was, sitting across the hall from Christ—in the person of a priest—offering me mercy. And I was thinking, “I’ll go later.”

The Confession That Cleared the Fog

I got up. Crossed the hall. Stepped into confession.

Because it doesn’t matter how dynamic a priest is. Young or old. Whatever race or culture. In that moment, he is in the person of Christ. And Christ was offering me mercy.

I left with a clearer heart. A heart more able to pray, really pray, for the souls of those two young men. That God would show them mercy. That He would welcome them into His rest.

St. Augustine said, “It is thanks to the medicine of Confession that the experience of sin does not degenerate into despair.”

I believe that. I cling to it.