I observed the joys and sorrows of military service while serving for nine months this year as a Catholic chaplain in the U.S. Navy at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, a country on the eastern horn of Africa. During my counseling and sacramental ministries, two stories stood out. They both give witness to God’s grace bestowed by the sacraments and pastoral care for those who had experienced post traumatic stress disorder in one form or another.

Joe’s journey involved past and present sufferings that revealed his profound gift of empathy. Margaret’s struggle with her past was transformed into a motivated charge to a future path of care. (Names have been changed to protect privacy.)

PTSD refers to memories from past experiences that cripple a person’s mental perspectives, thoughts, autonomic stress responses, muscular fibers and relationships. Loss of loved ones, chronic loneliness, war experiences and many other traumas can cause lasting splotches in the screen of consciousness, disrupting emotions, behaviors and self-understanding.

I ministered to many who suffered from PTSD. When combat or other traumas sear terrible images into the screen of our consciousness, our body appears to us to be functioning improperly. This results in painful physiological and psychological maladies—in short: suffering.

Suffering from PTSD involves damage and blocks within the memory. Healing, or the removal of splotches, thus must involve the intentional practice of re-associating or reframing feelings with their associated mental images. The two stories that follow reveal the impact made possible when human hearts are opened to God’s healing love.

Rekindling prayer

Seared into Joe’s consciousness were memories from foxholes of past deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. These flashbacks frequently caused sleepless nights and pounding headaches, pushing Joe out on midnight runs around camp’s lonely paths. His year-long deployment in Djibouti involved leaving his family of three high-school-aged daughters and his wife, who was struggling with health challenges. Despite these hardships, Joe used the deployment to Djibouti for personal growth and healing. He needed to face his past memories and look to a future that would be best for him and his family.

Djibouti is not actively in combat but as a developing nation is impoverished, has burning trash zones, and is doused with desert heat and humid sea breezes. The U.S. base has many conveniences like restaurants and gyms, but the roar of military aircraft and the heavily guarded barbed-wired perimeter barricades continually remind the residents of the severity of the environment. Djibouti exists in a precarious geopolitical reality. The country’s internal social struggles, its port access, and its location on the eastern horn of Africa render it volatile and unstable. External forces around the Red Sea and throughout the Middle East threaten the country’s security and autonomy.

The United States sees its presence there as a strategic bulwark against foreign threats. For American military personnel, fear of possible attacks from potential adversaries requires constant vigilance, which fatigues body, mind and soul.

One of these personnel, Joe, was baptized and raised Catholic, but drifted far from his faith over the years. During previous deployments, living in rough combat conditions and caught up in the warrior mentality and the pressure of military progression, Joe described feeling lost and angry.

During our pastoral counselling meetings, he told me he remembered praying the rosary as a child. Comforted by this memory, he rekindled the prayer early in deployment to Djibouti. He had forgotten how to work through the beads and the corresponding prayers. Yet the rhythmic flow of thought, the touch and movement of the beads through his fingers, and the peace that the stillness during his prayer brought his racing mind calmed the anxiety and stressful rush of deployment.

Joe visited the Eucharistic chapel after work or in a spare moment to pray the rosary and reflect on his life through the steps of the Examen prayer. He noticed the healing of past and present conditions. His demeanor calmed. He had patience with others and he responded to crises with adeptness. (Based on experiences like this, I am currently researching ways the Examen can be integrated with PTSD treatments for healing.) Joe’s family joined him in saying the rosary over Zoom.

Joe began attending the Mass that I offered daily. Early in my time in Djibouti, I advertised a program for people interested in becoming Catholic or for Catholics who wanted to be confirmed that would run from after Christmas until Easter. As Joe prayed the rosary and began the confirmation course, he said that he felt his soul lighten. Healing grace began to flow.

Exploring options for worship

In the foxhole of Djibouti, Margaret suffered with memories from her past. She was raised Catholic, or, as she told me, “it had been forced upon her.” In college, she was in an abusive relationship. She became pregnant, kept the child and attempted to raise the boy as a young, single mom while working through her college courses.

Seeking a sense of purpose, she enlisted in the Navy. She could get away from the pressures of home and her relationship to earn money for her son.

Hesitant to give Catholicism a chance, Margaret came to me after attending a Sunday Mass where she chose not to receive Communion. She told me that she was exploring the many options for worship offered on the base. I encouraged her quest to find a home of peace. I invited her to see faith as a refuge from the trauma she had experienced in her childhood and the suffering she endured through abuse and as a single mother. After several more weeks of attending Mass, she expressed interest in the confirmation course. She felt that by re-connecting with her childhood faith, the faith that her father taught her, she would be able to obtain a clearer understanding in her life.

Joe, Margaret and many other military personnel reminded me of the centurion in the Gospels. The Roman soldier had approached Jesus asking him to heal his servant. He wanted Jesus to do this, however, from a distance. The centurion did not feel “worthy” to have Jesus enter under his roof.

Walking with these other military personnel, I heard their stories and offered consolation. They all faced differing effects of stress; some more formally diagnosed with PTSD, others dealing with the consequences of past behaviors and feelings of unworthiness. I saw their deep hunger for God in the foxhole.

Joe and others who had served prior deployments in severe combat situations expressed how dirty they felt. A conversation with another service member in Djibouti captured these sentiments: “I am too bad for God’s love, committed too much evil to receive forgiveness, too unworthy to receive the Lord under my roof.”

Eventually, Joe told me that he was not going to be confirmed. He was struggling with fatigue, anger and shame. He was mad at God for dragging him through the mud these last months and even years. Joe felt unworthy to receive the Holy Spirit.

Confirmation epiphanies

I told Joe, among other things, how, through confirmation, the Holy Spirit would flood him with divine strength and reveal to him his gifts to share. I was not sure if Joe would come to Mass on the Sunday after Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday), the day slated for the confirmation ceremony. Yet he did. In a meeting weeks later, Joe described being filled with the Holy Spirit’s love that day. When the bishop’s homily unexpectedly turned toward empathy, Joe had something of an epiphany:

I realized at that moment that the only thing I can relate to Jesus with is my empathy. As Jesus has empathy for every person, I have a small sliver of what Jesus felt, dying on the cross for all of us. It is the empathy part of me that ties into the feelings of people I love or have been connected to, or even my fellow sailors.I don’t know why I have that gift of being so damn empathetic…. Now, what am I supposed to do with this gift to serve him?

I did not see Margaret for several weeks at the end of Lent. We finally met during Easter week, a few days before confirmation was scheduled. She expressed how difficult the confirmation course had been. It had dug up old memories and shame. At the same time, she had explored her faith deeply, and it affected her marriage. Margaret and her new husband plan to get their marriage convalidated and become active in a local parish when she returns from deployment. She wrote:

As hard as the past shame and guilt are, I feel a strange peace or lightness in my chest when praying and reading. Is this common? Do other people experience this? I have felt so much pain for so long and had to fight for so much throughout my life. Now, I have acceptances to several master-degree programs, have opportunities opening to me, and my son is smart and is getting confirmed too. Why is God doing this to me? What have I done? I desire to care for others in a way most people cannot because of the trauma I have experienced and the pain that I have felt.

Margaret was sealed by the gift of the Holy Spirit with the others, on Divine Mercy Sunday. She has recognized her gift to support and advocate for past trauma survivors, especially sexual assault victims. She has many options to discern to best serve and care for those who suffer from trauma through the gifts she has received from the Lord from her experiences.

It is precisely in our suffering where God cultivates our empathy; where God forges in us the skills to heal and advocate for others who are crushed by traumatic wounds; where God inspires greatness in acts of selfless service—in the battles of life or even the struggles with God.

When we clutch on to God in those struggles, whether in Djibouti or in our homes and workplaces, in our doubts and shame—it is then that God’s blessings pour forth.

Christopher Krall, S.J., is an assistant professor of theology and neuroscience at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, and is a reserve Navy Chaplain.