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The Rev. Dennis Zehren was new to Annunciation Church and School and leading his first morning Mass to mark the first week of school when gunshots came crashing into the church Aug. 27.

A shooter killed two children and wounded many others. Suddenly, the new pastor found himself navigating the grief of a congregation — and the spiritual questions of children around life, death and God.

“As soon as the children were brought to a safe place, you know, the first instinct was, somebody handed me a microphone and said, ‘Father, would you pray?’” Zehren recalled in an extended interview with MPR News about children, grief and resilience. 

“There’s this sense that, you know, that there’s this need, there was this need to pray,” he said. “Sometimes people ask why do we pray. And I think the best answer is, just because we sense the need to pray. You know, it’s something that wells up inside of us.”

Since he’d only started at the church a few weeks earlier, he didn’t know the children yet and they didn’t know him. In the two months since the shooting, he’s used his faith and stories from his own life to help the kids, knowing he can’t answer all their questions.

“The children wrestle with the big questions of life that even the adults don't have answers to,” Zehren said. 

“I mean, some of the teachers have said, ‘The children are asking big theological questions. Will you come and talk to them? Because I don’t know how to answer them.’ So there’s a sense that these questions are even too big for adults to answer. But somehow, the children are asking it.”

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Zehren found that while kids asked questions about heaven, hell, mercy and justice, they also wanted to know they’d be safe.

“They need assurances,” Zehren said. “So there’s assurances that the good wins in the end, that the light will always overcome the darkness. Darkness can never scatter light, but the light can scatter darkness. If it hasn’t ended well. then God isn’t finished yet.”

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has 89 Catholic schools, not including a handful of other independent Catholic schools, offering classes on philosophy, theology and daily mass. It’s in these settings, students can ask the hard questions, especially after tragedy.

“It’s still very difficult. It’s still very sensitive,” said Christopher Olley, a Twin Cities Catholic school consultant and former public school teacher. “But ultimately, we believe in God we trust. In that, we really do give it up when horrible things happen. It’s something that a Catholic school can produce on a consistent basis, even in the worst times.”

Olley said all schools are equipped to react with compassion in a tragedy, but being able to rely on God in faith-based schools adds another dimension to healing. He said he thinks Catholic, or any faith-based school, is likely wrestling with what the shooting at Annunciation means, students and teachers alike. 

“That’s especially hard when the adults don’t get it right,” said Father Joseph Johnson, rector at the Cathedral of St. Paul. “When we, ourselves as adults, are struggling with meaning in these terrible tragedies. How can we share with them? And so what I think the important thing is, we share with them a sense that the children are loved.”

Christian hope, he added, “is not the same as wishful thinking or optimism. Christian hope is something that’s rooted in the promises of God that evil will not have the last word.”

At Annunciation, Zehren said he’s been reflecting on the biblical passage when Jesus enters Jerusalem before his crucifixion, riding on a donkey that had never been ridden before and comparing it to the difficult journey Annunciation is on.

“There’s no playbook for what we’ve had to go through,” he said. “We’ve never been through this before. But Jesus was kind of giving us that example that, yeah, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. There will be sorrows in this world, but I have overcome this world.”

Zehren recalled being in and out of the hospital when he was 5 years old. His mother said that he kept asking, “Am I going to heaven?” he recalled. “I think children at a very early age start wrestling with the deep questions of life.”

After the shooting a young student left Zehren a colorful note in his Annunciation office with scribbled handwriting. 

Zehren read it aloud: “‘Father, I’m so happy today.’ I mean, this is a child who was in the church at the shooting.”

He said he’s convinced children who face hardships early in life have stronger spirits. They’re resilient, and there’s a lot to learn from them.

Even in their grief that day, he said, the kids were looking to see if their friends and family were OK. One child checked to make sure Zehren was OK.

“One of the first comments I got when I came out of the church after the shooting, one of the children said to me, ‘Father, I’m so sorry this had to happen on your first mass with us.’”

Zehren said the road ahead, “just like all roads in faith, remain a mystery.” But paraphrasing 

 he said the Lord “is the lamp unto my feet.” The light doesn’t always shine far ahead, but it shines enough to take one step after the other.

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Annunciation Catholic Church and School shooting

Kyra Miles

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After the mass shooting at Annunciation Church and School that killed two children in August, the church’s new pastor found himself navigating the grief of his congregation and the spiritual questions of children around life, death and God.

At Annunciation Church, lessons in grief, resiliency and the spiritual lives of children

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