Haiti summons us to the cross
I’m sure we have been devastated by the latest disaster in Haiti. Imagine the magnitude—200,000 dead, 1.5 million homeless, spreading starvation and disease, buildings collapsing, including the presidential palace, the cathedral, the UN office, etc. And the crisis is still growing, in number and in intensity.
We really have to pray hard. That’s what we should always do, especially when we find ourselves helpless and cornered before an unfolding deadly adversity.
We have to mobilize whatever we have and can do to help. This is the immediate response. And it’s deeply gratifying to see the whole world practically scrambling to lend a hand to this nation in serious and unspeakable difficulty.
Images that have so far come to us through the media and the Internet are definitely breath-stopping. We run out of words to describe what we see and feel. And yet it’s heartwarming to note that in the midst of this sea of troubles, there are beautiful stories of heroism and deep, unshakeable faith.
An elderly woman, extricated from the rubble after one long and agonizing week, could only say she did nothing other than pray and talk to God. That’s all she could say. It all came from her heart. She had no other explanation.
Another, who lost husband and relatives, said her faith kept her strong and hopeful in what seemed like an eternity of darkness and uncertainty. Her faith was her last resort. It was what made her calm and sane.
I’m sure that through all this we have been asking ourselves, even if we do not want to say it aloud, why this disaster had to happen, what’s its meaning and purpose, if any…?
I’m sure many thoughts have come to our mind to try to answer and clarify. This is an unavoidable human reaction. We may not like to admit it now when the urgent humanitarian efforts are still going on. But that’s what is on our mind.
Of course, everything depends on our cast of mind and level of knowledge, on whether we just keep to reason and the sciences or we also take in faith and beliefs…
That’s why there had been many voices trying to explain things. The American evangelist Pat Robertson insensitively said Haiti is a cursed nation because of some pact with the devil in the past. Of course, he was immediately rebuked.
The Hollywood star Danny Glover said the disaster came because the rich countries failed to make an agreement on global warming/global cooling/climate change, whatever it is now, in the recent Copenhagen summit. Obviously, no one took him seriously.
The naturalists and science-dominated people just clinically gave an emotionless geological analysis of the situation. In this level, many of the atheists and skeptics gather and tend to agree. They don’t want to go beyond. For them, nature and science mark the boundary of speculation.
But the human heart wants more. It would take a wickedly deliberate and gigantic effort to muffle this spontaneous and earnest cry of our heart.
And it sooner or later realizes that it has to grapple with a mystery, a truth that can only be fully revealed not here and now, but in some distant state of life. The heart knows that much.
Reason and the sciences just cannot have the last word. They can give some light, all right, but they cannot explain all. They cannot give closure to the whole issue.
If we just rely on them, we will surely get stuck somewhere. And often we will just be left with depression, anxiety, fear, as meaninglessness sets in. This Haiti disaster, like all other disasters, is an invitation for us to go beyond reason. We need to disentangle ourselves from the exaggerated grip of reason on us.
We have to go into faith and into the misty ways of mysteries. The challenge of the mysteries is not meant to grind us to a halt in our pursuit of knowledge. Rather it is stimulate us to go further, with humility and simplicity, the prerequisites of faith.
Obviously, for Christian believers, the mystery involved in events like this Haiti disaster is the mystery of the cross, of why God to recover us had to send his son, and the son had to die on the cross.
It’s a mystery that will continually give us fresh glimpses of the eternal wisdom that can explain everything. It may keep us in suspense, but it reassures us that we are in the right orbit. We just have to remain humble, and pray.(Fr. Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City. Email: roycimagala@gmail.com)
