Dear President Trump,
You recently met with President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, and with President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders at the White House. On Tuesday, August 19th, during your interview on “Fox & Friends,” you said:
“If I can save 7,000 people a week from getting killed, that’s pretty good. I want to get to heaven if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I hear I’m at the bottom of the totem pole. If I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”
It is rare to hear you speak in such a soul-searching and self-deprecating way. You have often recalled your brush with death last summer after being shot and how it changed your whole outlook on life. It seems that you have a different outlook today than you had when you said in an interview for Playboy Magazine in 1990: “I don’t believe in reincarnation, heaven or hell – but we go someplace.”
Like you are saying today, I hope we all long to enter heaven and seek eternal union with God, avoiding the fires of hell that come from our pride, our egos, and our sins. My evangelical friends remind me that we cannot “earn our way” into heaven through good deeds alone, but only by accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Yet I sometimes wonder: could Adolf Hitler, if he had accepted Christ at the end of his life, be in heaven, while the millions of Jews he exterminated are not—because they did not make that same profession of faith?
As a Catholic priest and fellow Christian, I am deeply moved that you care so much about the 7,000 lives at stake each week that you sat down and met with both Putin and Zelensky in just four days. A question I often ask myself—and perhaps you do as well—is: WWJD? WWJS? What Would Jesus Do? What Would Jesus Say?
The Gospels give us clear answers. Jesus praised the Good Samaritan who stopped to help a stranger left for dead, while condemning the Rich Man in hell who ignored Lazarus, the poor beggar covered with sores who sat at his gate. In Matthew 25, Jesus warns us: “Whatever you did for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did for me.”
Jesus tells his followers “to turn the other cheek when being struck on one cheek.” Jesus says, “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.” When Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive someone, Jesus says, “Seventy times seven.” And Jesus teaches us how to be a follower of his and a Christian when he says, “If anyone sues you and takes your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.”
As President of the richest and most powerful nation on earth, you hold the immense responsibility to care for the vulnerable and the forgotten—the very ones Jesus loves the most in the United States and around the world today. My prayers are with you as you strive to live out Jesus’ Beatitudes:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit….
Blessed are those who mourn….
Blessed are the meek….
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness….
Blessed are the merciful….
Blessed are the pure of heart….
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness….
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”
Respectfully,
Fr. Medard Laz
Since YOU are a follower of Jesus and a Christian, what Message would YOU send to President Trump?
THE POOREST PERSON ON EARTH WHO IS FRIENDS WITH GOD IS RICHER THAN THE RICHEST PERSON WHO IS NOT FRIENDS WITH GOD!
Please share my Letter to President Trump far and wide.
