Sunday 23 (A-2005): A few spiritual lessons of “Katrina”
From a spiritual point of view, what are we to make of the devastation and its aftermath
caused by the hurricane “Katrina”?
It certainly makes us face the double mystery of life and death.
As regards death, we are shocked and saddened by the cruel, indiscriminate
and sudden demise of so many.
As regards life, we marvel at the stories of escape and of heroism just as
we lament the stories of man’s inhumanity to man and the suffering of so many innocent and already sorely tried people.
Katrina makes us face our mortality, our social fragmentation, our powerlessness.
On the positive side, she makes us face the deep resourcefulness of humanity, the fighting resolve and the hopeful determination
of so many.
She makes us aware of the power of nature and of the fact that, in the end,
there are no exceptions to nature’s rules. We would rather never have heard of Katrina, but she has made herself heard
and we have to listen to the lessons she teaches us.
This is neither the time nor the place to speak to the social and organizational
aspects associated with the hurricane’s effects. And time prohibits us from dwelling on the age-old problem of innocent
suffering or why God permits natural catastrophes to happen.
Instead, I would like to dwell for a few moments on two of the many spiritual
teachings these tragic circumstances afford.
The first is a necessary statement of the obvious: ultimately, we human beings
are vulnerable to death at any time and in any way.
In centuries past, mankind stood in awe of nature, seeing in it an instrument
of God, if not God himself. They accepted death as part of being human and being human as part of a greater, mysterious reality
which centered on God.
But in more recent eras, especially since World War II, we have come to know
the world almost exclusively through science, not wonder, not faith.
We now act, not on the basis of what is moral, that is, of what we ought to do, but on the basis of what science says we can do, that
is, of technology.
Freedom is thus cut loose from moral obligation and responsibility and acts
as if it were now itself the supreme power. God then becomes at best irrelevant, at worst inexistent.
Man becomes the final judge of himself; nature, instead of being respected
as the place where God reveals himself, becomes raw material for man to show his power when, where and as he likes. Man has
set himself apart from reality and examines it clinically through a microscope, not with the eyes of his heart or his conscience.
In such a mindset, having to admit mortality is taboo. For death denies the
self-proclaimed dogma of science and trips up the engineered infallibility of technology.
Death tells us we cannot know everything and we cannot do everything. Death
itself, if we are thinking aright, is beyond our control.
The reality of death in this sense is actually a blessing which takes away
the blind arrogance of which the scientific and technological man can be guilty. The salutary remembrance of death restores
man to his true and beautiful, mortal and fallible self and, in so doing, it restores man to God.
This does not mean that science and technology are bad. Nor does it mean that
death is good in itself. All of these are only good if they serve as instruments for the moral soul of man as he strives to
obey the truth of God’s law.
Should we not then use science and technology to save lives? Of course we
should! But hurricane Katrina reminds us that they do not heal us of mortality and so they should not be allowed to claim
a quasi divine role in individual or social life.
Science penetrates reality but only in a scientific way. Reality is much bigger,
much more complex and much more mysterious and beautiful than science can ever know. And death is not the disaster it seems,
but a passage to the Lord and Life of all reality.
A second teaching which the events of recent days has underscored is that
even in the face of death, hearts and minds can remain hardened in sin.
In the prophetic Book of the Apocalypse, the plagues inflicted on a large
part of humanity are intended to make people repent, but like the hardness of Pharaoh’s heart, many persist in their
sins: “they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their fornication or their thefts” (Rev. 9:21).
Hopefully, the scenes of looting in New Orleans, and the evil news of worse crimes still, make
us justly indignant. It is unthinkable that someone who has lost everything, including their loved ones, should then be raped
or otherwise abused.
Those responsible seem unconscious of how close they have come to death and
therefore to the judgment of God. This demonstrates how resistant sin is to change. Hearts and minds become prisoners of the
tyranny of sin.
How dangerous sin therefore is in the heart of scientist, priest or pauper.
It also makes one wonder about the eternal destiny of people who are apparently so unwilling, and maybe even unable, to repent.
But, of course, we hope in the mercy of God for all these people, a mercy
which may need to take the form of tough love. And we need to hope in that mercy for ourselves.
For who among us is without sin, and who among us can say for sure that in
the face of death itself we would fully renounce our sin? From this angle too, then, we can let this horrible disaster teach
us some very sobering lessons.
Our life on this earth is not immortal and the hour of our death can be any
time: a 9/11 in New York, a 3/11 in Madrid, a 7/17 in London, an 8/29 in New Orleans. Whatever
that hour is we need only pray that when it comes our hearts will be free from sin.
That means that from this hour
forward we will do to death all and any sin in us, through sacramental confession, through the Eucharist, through practical
charity, through prayer, fasting and almsgiving.
We can only hope that those who died because of Katrina were ready to meet
their Lord. Of those who were, we can now ask their intercession that we might learn the lessons of wisdom which this disaster
offers for those with eyes to see.
And we can ask of the Merciful Father the gift of humility and obedience for
ourselves and for the scientific and technological man of today, so that, in all and over all, the majesty of the Creator
might be glorified and the brokenness and fragility of the creature might be most mercifully redeemed.
And may Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour
of our death. Amen.
Msgr. Peter Magee
Sunday, September 4th,
2005
Annunciation Parish, DC –
10.00 am
