A Merciful God Also Chastises
It wasn’t supposed to happen. The recent south Asian tsunami disaster is the kind of stuff you read in fictional books as incredulous smart alecks and practical atheists will tell you. But there’s no denying it. The cold hard facts are there for them to see.
Headlines bannered the grim news in the front pages of every major daily across the globe and news networks flashed real gripping footages of the disaster on their TV screens. The unthinkable inevitably happened.
The reality of the catastrophe’s nightmarish aftermath put these skeptics’ (un)beliefs on shaky ground. Literally. Almost two weeks after the 9.0-point earthquake that rocked Banda Aceh, Indonesia, repeated aftershocks continue to terrorize shell-shocked survivors who now begin to sift through the rubble as they turn over a new leaf in their lives.
The sheer scale of the destruction boggles the mind like a bee buzzing in one’s bonnet. Eleven countries suffered the brunt of the tsunami’s wrath yet over forty nationalities figured among the dead.
Mother Nature proved indiscriminate in her fury. She didn’t play favorites. Not even tree- hugging ecofreaks could have escaped the carnage. Whether one’s Caucasian or Asian, adult or child, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or Christian, simply didn’t matter.
The cold and stiff corpses of well-heeled tourists and out of pocket beach hands and cleaning ladies on shoestring budgets ended up cheek-by-jowl in hastily dug mass graves; the poor and obscure literally brushed elbows with the rich and famous.
How does one make sense out of all this? Is this the handiwork of a vengeful God?
Dyed in the wool sentimental apologists readily give short shrift and take umbrage at those who insist that the greatest debacle in recent memory is God’s wake up call to repentance for mankind. They are at loggerheads over how God could have sown so much destruction and killed countless numbers of innocent children.
How convenient. Their selective and namby-pamby memories don’t seem to give a tinker’s damn to the Deluge, Sodom and Gomorrah, Herod’s slaughter of innocent infants, the fall and ruin of Jerusalem and much closer to home, the wanton destruction of Manila in 1945 or the more recent Mt. Pinatubo eruption in 1991 - all of which transpired under the watchful eyes of an omniscient and all-merciful God.
It doesn’t take much brain to figure out how much man has strayed from God in the last 100 years. The proverbial writing is already on the wall. As one modern scribe aptly reminds us, C.S. Lewis once wrote, "pain is God's megaphone to a deaf world."
It is not for us little creatures of God to question His infinite and unfathomable Wisdom. He always acts with due proportion and utmost perfection. Not a single strand of hair falls from a man’s head without Him ever knowing it. Everything is weighed, counted and measured.
It behooves us to mark, learn and inwardly digest the hard and telling lessons of this Asian tsunami disaster. Perhaps, that’s just the ticket to save mankind from paying the devil and biting the dust.
The real and lasting solution, however, lies not in high-tech tsunami warning and earthquake monitoring devices but rather in sincere repentance, true conversion and amendment of life as the Mother of God had asked the world in Fatima 88 years ago. Lest we forget, the God of Mercy is ALSO the God of Justice!
A Double Whammy of A Tsunami
Several days into the aftermath of the tsunami that hit several southern Asian countries the day after Christmas, the world comes to grips with the shocking reality of the enormous devastation it has wrought. The deplorable death toll continues to rise daily and to date lists at nearly 150, 000 dead - truly a figure of apocalyptic proportions. Experts now fear that the number could double due to the outbreak and spread of disease.
Undeniably the biggest calamity of the century thus far, it rapidly translates into the largest relief effort the world has ever seen. US State Secretary Colin Powell has announced that America is committed to bankroll $350 million dollars in aid. (And yes, it’s the same Bush-led America vilified in the media for its stance on the war in Iraq.) Emergency funds and pledges contributed by the international community are now pegged at close to over 2 billion dollars.
Familiar international news networks like CNN and BBC (and certainly the Big Three in the US) quickly dispatched their crews and cameras in the mad dash for gripping survivor stories and gut-wrenching footages of the massive destruction and tragedy visited upon those hapless countries affected.
Quite recently, a volley of three consecutive typhoons battered several Philippine provinces that set off massive landslides and floods causing considerable loss of life and limb. One cannot fail but recall the painful and poignant appeals for help by desperate victims who lost their possessions and loved ones. Ironically, this soul-stirring picture now pales in comparison to the magnitude of the horrifying Yuletide catastrophe that caught hundreds of thousands of people literally napping.
But still, thankful Filipinos clasp their hands and heave a huge sigh of relief at the thought of their narrow escape from the jaws of yet another potentially crippling and ominous debacle.
Sadly, amid the high profile global media attention, the supernatural import and ramifications of the Asian tsunami disaster are lost in the equation. True to their secular moorings and orientation, the mainstream media cautiously toe the line and avoid crossing the Rubicon to keep the individual’s perception of this “wrath of nature” away from a profound religious and supernatural perspective.
But one cannot fail to see through the grief-stricken survivors’ moving accounts of their horrifying ordeal. Amidst pain and suffering, these victims voice out their harrowing experiences in anguished and at times faltering tone - some in defiance and despair, others in resignation and still many others in relief and gratitude. Nonetheless, all of them could not help but sense the unmistakable hand of God in their ghastly and tragic misfortune.
Can God be merely an innocent by-stander to all this and watch everything with cold indifference? Or is this terrible calamity a prelude to an even greater and worse CHASTISEMENT to come? Is it mankind’s death rattle?
Nothing on this earth ever happens without God willing it and the Asian tsunami disaster is no exception. In just a few fleeting moments, towns and villages were decimated and reduced to rubble while countless of lives lost in the ensuing devastation and chaos.
Imagine, on that calm Sunday morning after Christmas: a vacationing Western tourist lazing away and sipping his or her ice-cold piña colada on a cozy beach chair in Phuket, Thailand or in the paradisiacal environs of the Maldives; a cheerful throng of carefree and wide-eyed children prancing in frolic along a coconut tree-dotted seashore somewhere in Sri Lanka; sturdy sun-drenched fishermen tending their rickety wooden fishing boats on the Indian coastline; or perhaps just plain rural folk doing menial household chores in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Then suddenly at the snap of a finger and one sweeping instant, disaster strikes and everything is lost.
Man’s highly vaunted progress and modern technological advances failed miserably in averting a fateful catastrophe that snuck like a thief in the night. No one foresaw what was to come and nothing could have saved those who perished from the element of surprise. Such is the awesome power of God.
In face of this heart-rending tragedy, the Fatima message becomes ever more relevant during our times. In 1917, Our Lady appeared to three children in Fatima, Portugal where she spoke of terrible chastisements if mankind would not amend its errant ways. She warned the world how much her Son was offended and that she could no longer prevent Him from unleashing His avenging hand.
During the entire month of December 2004, several Philippine parishes enjoyed the singular privilege of hosting the international pilgrim statue of Our Lady of Fatima that miraculously shed tears in New Orleans in 1972. The visit couldn’t have come at a more propitious time. On that fateful day after Christmas, unsuspecting Filipinos oblivious to the catastrophe being unleashed upon fellow Asians knelt in deep prayer and paid homage to Our Lady in a church somewhere in the diocese of Tarlac.
Would it be too far-fetched to believe that the Mother of God spared this long-suffering Catholic Filipino nation from the hellish nightmare of this most recent Asian calamity?
In this day and age, how many seriously heed the Fatima message? Let alone, how many KNOW of the message? Lamentably, man remains indifferent and obstinate to the maternal warnings of Mary Most Holy in 1917. Same-sex unions, euthanasia, contraception and abortion, divorce and the decline of the family, cloning and embryonic stem cell research, wars and terrorism, etc., etc. – all these serve as living testimonies to mankind’s continuing descent on the slippery slopes of mediocrity, impiety and moral depravity.
Man ought to shape up or ship out. Surely, this double whammy of an Asian tsunami came in with a big bang. But hardly what one expects to usher in the New Year. Could the Americas or Europe be next?
