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Once plans began for myself and the others mid January towards preparations for this upcoming trip to Haiti I also continued to struggle with the horror and devastation of what I kept seeing over and over again on the television and internet news services. In many instances the pictures were very graphic and extremely difficult to look at… Not to mention just completely heart wrenching. Like the young mother searching frantically for her children only to discover they had perished in a toppled building as she cried out to the CNN reporter, “I don’t even have a photo of them to remember them!” My own heart crushed at the mere thought as tears began to swell… And often, I would have to get up from my seat and just walk away teary eyed… and I would turn in prayer wanting to grasp it all. The reality was so difficult to grasp even for us in our world.. But what these poor victims must have been going through was just completely incomprehensible!
As a believer I found my faith really being tested last January! I struggled so much with the “whys” of how God could actually allow such a horrible tragedy to befall this little peaceful 3rd world nation already struggling to survive in existence. I struggled because I couldn’t help in those moments but to see it as a lack of mercy from a God Who is supposed to be “all merciful”… No, I just couldn’t wrap my tiny mind around it all… It seemed so cruel.. These are our brothers and sisters. They are children of God no different than each and every one of us and they were already suffering tremendously as a result of a continual world crisis called poverty long before the earthquake. Where was God’s mercy in all of this?
And yet, when I arrived in Haiti I met some of the most faithful people I've ever met! It truly humbled me...
This was not the first of tragedies to befall the Haiti people… Only a couple of years have passed since torrential rains caused an unexpected mudslide catching suddenly nearly 2000 Haitians by total surprise during the night literally washing them into the ocean as they slept quietly in their beds. That horror was still fresh on my own mind when I learned of this sudden earthquake last month. Not to mention Haiti has certainly had its share of hurricanes as well.
I sat during Mass this past weekend and listened to the Gospel and the following words of Christ spoke very direct to me, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all the other Galileans? By no means!... Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them -do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? By no means!” Luke 13: 2-5 The Galileans in Scripture Jesus speaks of in this case are our Haitian brothers and sisters who are no more deserving of this horrible tragedy than any of us are. No one deserved this! Despite the extremely insulting and ludicrous remarks of Pat Robertson. Good hearted God fearing people suffering at the hands of labor pains as the earth went through more changes. A chastisement? Hard pill to swallow especially having just returned from there meeting not an evil people but a beautiful God loving peoples.
Some things in life are simply not able to be comprehended or understood. Tragedy is just one of those things. Whether it be a devastating earthquake that leaves almost a quarter million dead and millions homeless or a mother grieving over the sudden loss of her child. Personal tragedy is just a very horrible, undeserving and unwarranted experience to have to go through. We don’t know why… And naturally we are going to struggle especially to accept that somehow God is there through it all…
As a believer I feel that one thing that is for certain is that God gives us freewill and in that freewill we have responsibilities to live up to. Freewill does not mean do whatever you want. It means take responsibility to do what’s right without being made to do it. And it is not God who has divided this world into different rooms.. God has not separated one part of this world to remain in poverty and the other part to enjoy the benefits of wealth. This separation of peoples into separate rooms is the result of humanity and the course humanity has taken. Abundance vs. poverty..
In 2006 Pope Benedict while making the Stations of the Cross during Lent as the Holy Father traditionally always does spoke profoundly about the world poverty crisis. And during this one particular journey along the Way of the Cross the Holy Father made a plea to the world to help those in need and he beseeched God’s mercy upon all children of God. It was during the ninth Station, Jesus Falls a Third Time that the Holy Father stopped before that station and began,
"Where is Jesus in agony in our own time?
In the division of our world into belts of prosperity
and belts of poverty ... this is Christ’s agony today.
Our world is made of two rooms:
in one room, things go to waste,
in the other, people are wasting away;
in one room, people die from surfeit,
in the other, they die from indigence;
in one room, they are concerned about obesity,
in the other, they are begging for charity.
Why don’t we open a door?
Who don’t we sit at one table?
Why don’t we realize that the poor
can help the rich?
Why? Why? Why are we so blind?
Those words, words I remember well from way back then, once again struck my heart in a very profound way as we entered into 2010.. During the time Pope Benedict had said this in the spring of 2006 I was working on the streets of Windsor trying to help a homeless lady named Cathy to get her off the streets. So these words had a great impact on me personally then, just as they were grabbing my attention once again in this recent moment of agony…
During the first week after the Haiti earthquake I sat down at the piano and began to express my heart in a prayerful plea in song. I’m not much of a song writer but it didn’t matter. This wasn’t about winning a Grammy, it was about offering a heartfelt prayer for my brothers and sisters in a far away land in their own struggles and agony.. This was about calling out to the God of Mercy to have mercy upon these poor souls in their dire need and moment of great tribulation and peril… My heart ached tremendously at what I was seeing and the more I saw it the more I wanted to reach out and help. So one evening shortly after I had contacted Steve McDougal about volunteering with Hearts Together For Haiti I sat down at the piano and this song came to me literally in a matter of a few minutes. It was a prayer, a plea to God to help these poor suffering souls..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emO4EeaGXeM
I went to Haiti feeling as though God wanted to show me something.. I went to Haiti with the question What will I see? ………….. and now that I have been there I am left asking myself What can I now do to make a difference?”… This is what God is showing me.. what He is showing us… That His precious children, our dear brothers and sisters in a far away land truly need our help… The worlds help… Our help…
