Luke Russert Finds Healing in Communion of Saints

Eight years after his father Tim Russert's death in 2008, broadcast journalist Luke Russert still had not processed his own grief at this tremendous loss. So, he took to traveling around the world on a quest to discover who he was apart from his father. As he shared during a Christopher Closeup interview about his memoir Look for Me There, Luke experienced numerous spiritual epiphanies along the way. For instance, he became more aware of how God was working in his life because he started to pay closer attention to the people and signs around him.

During his journeys, Luke also came to a new appreciation of his Catholic faith, experiencing elements of it like never before, especially pertaining to the communion of saints. A friend suggested to Luke that he could still talk to his father, even though he wasn't physically here anymore. That sounded odd to Luke at first. Eventually, he said, "I got to a place of a deep, meditative peace through prayer and understanding that you can communicate with your lost loved ones. You can have these deeply spiritual, impactful meditative sessions where you can imagine conversations. . . . There's a real component of that in the communion of saints, and there's a reason why it's so prevalent in our faith."

Luke's travels did not just bring spiritual epiphanies, but ones about humanity and the world in general. While it might seem Pollyanna-ish to say we are more alike than we are different, his experiences confirmed that belief. Luke said, "I traveled to over 67 places, and I didn't have any bad experiences. . . . And I went to places where America, at least in their government stance, is not an ally. It's not liked. . . . You're always going to run into mean people. . . . But I would say the vast majority, all they're looking for is a semblance of respect. If you give off respect and kindness, it'll come back to you. I've lived it and I've seen it."

In light of his travel experiences, Luke has discovered the peace he was looking for by finally coming to terms with the loss of his father. He knows that Tim's message to him would be akin to, "Don't be angry. Do good. Live life to the best of your abilities. Be happy. Don't be sad. And go forward living."

"It took me a long time to get there," Luke noted, "because [I] felt like I had to ask permission to be my own person and not directly fall into his footsteps. But what I realized after a lot of prayer and meditation and an epiphany in the Holy Land was [that] our lost loved ones would not want us mourning them all the time, especially now, 15 years after my father passed."

Luke hopes that people who read Look for Me There find similar hope in processing their own grief or struggles. He concluded, "Your grief journey is your own. There's no perfect way to go about it. . . . You may never move on, but you can move forward. . . . We reach crossroads in our lives where we're trying to figure out, 'What's the best path for me? Maybe I need a minute to sit back and try to understand things.' It's okay to do that. Make that time for yourself, and make that time for prayer, for meditative prayer and thinking. So, my goal through all of it is that if folks can read the two parallel themes of self-discovery and processing grief, they come out of it feeling a little less lost."

This essay is a recent "Light One Candle" column by Tony Rossi, Director of Communications, The Christophers; it is one of a series of weekly columns that deal with a variety of topics and current events.

Background information:

The Christophers