Massacre witnesses teen's joyful faith

By FR. RON ROLHEISER, omi
Rome

Soon afterwards a story began to circulate about her death. Several classmates who had been in the room with her when she was shot said she was visibly praying when the gunmen entered. The gunmen asked her whether she believed in God.

Then, here's how he described what happened: "She paused, like she didn't know what she was going to answer, and then she said yes. She must have been scared, but her voice didn't sound shaky. It was strong. Then they asked her why, though they didn't give her a chance to respond. They just blew her away."

But that story was soon disputed: One story claimed that this never happened; another said that it did happen, but not to Cassie; and another claimed that she did give some kind of witness to her killers, but not exactly in the manner just described. To set the record straight and to try to come to grips with her daughter's death, Cassie's mother, Misty Bernall, wrote a book, entitled, She Said Yes - The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall.

The book met mixed reviews: Sections of the secular press considered the story of Cassie's faith testimony before her killers as pious fabrication, made up by members of her faith community to help them deal with her death. Certain sectors of the religious press rushed to canonize her as a martyr. What's the truth?

Misty Bernall's story of her daughter, Cassie, is an essence under a spotlight. She doesn't sugarcoat her daughter to make her angelic, but shows us a confused, lonely, insecure, often alienated and sometimes bitter, young woman.

And that she was! Cassie Bernall was an exceptional soul and her story speaks of something more important than technical martyrdom.

More important than her affirmative answer to her killers' question, was her struggle and eventual victory over some of the worst forces of darkness that exist on the planet, loneliness and rejection. She said yes to God and to love on the day of her death because she had already, after a monumental struggle, said that yes in the months and weeks before.

There's a powerful irony in her story that shouldn't be missed. The two young students who killed her had cause for their bitterness. They were unpopular outcasts, lonely rejects, considered "losers" by their peers. This experience drove them to an anger and hatred so deep that it eventually led to mass murder and suicide.

Cassie Bernall, by her own description of herself, wasn't much different. She was also an outsider, lonely, "a loser without a date for the prom." And. indeed, at a point, she was strongly tempted to the same kind of anger, hatred and bitterness as her killers.

Yet, how different her life ended from theirs. Her killers died angry, hysterical, mad with rage. She died, not unlike Jesus, praying, refusing bitterness, loving, even as she could taste the exact same loneliness as her killers. In describing the death of Jesus the Gospels don't emphasize his physical sufferings, but instead focus on his loneliness, his rejection, his being the outcast, unanimity-minus-one.

Both Cassie Bernall and her killers knew the taste of being unanimity-minus-one and the temptation to bitterness that this brings. But in Cassie's case the good won out, she died in a fashion remarkably similar to Jesus. Like Jesus she died refusing bitterness in the midst of rejection.

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