What Must I Do?

Two weeks after the tragedy of the earthquake in Haiti, and people of good will are still wondering “What more can we do for Haiti?”

Many of us realize that there will be no real change in Haiti so long as the gifts sent are merely cash or the construction of a new infrastructure. Haiti needs more. Haiti needs our hearts. Haiti needs communion with the community of the world. Haiti must not again be forsaken. We must see in Haiti’s brokenness an opportunity for togetherness.

We must do for the least of our brothers and sisters as if we were doing for Jesus Himself. For Jesus is truly among us, in the “distressing disguise of the poor.”

For many too, I think, another question is rising out of the smoke and dust of this tragedy; “Where is God in all of this?” I believe the answer is not up in the clouds… God is in Haiti. Again, since Jesus has entered our world, our world is not the same. The Author has entered his own pages. He has bound Himself to the paper and ink of our history through the Incarnation of the Son of God. So where is God in all of this unimaginable suffering? He is at its heart, for He has already suffered unimaginably.

I don’t believe God is simply looking down from Heaven. I believe He is also looking out from the rubble. God is on the Cross where He has been hanging for centuries.

“So where are we in all of this?” I think the first place to start is at the foot of this Cross, looking on Haiti who has been pierced, hands and feet and side… head crowned with thorns, and in seeing let us believe! Let us hold Haiti like the Pieta…

God is in Haiti. And He is calling out to us…

“Come, all you who pass by the way, look and see whether there is any suffering like my suffering…”

– Lamentations 1:12

Where is God? He is in our suffering, He is really in it. And so now none of it should go to waste. Not a drop of it, for it’s mixed with our blood, sweat, and tears. As the priest prays in the Mass, “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the Divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”

May this God of blood, sweat, and tears bless the blood, sweat, and tears of Haiti, and of all the generous men and women who are now lending a hand to a suffering people.

“For we are like olives, only when we are crushed do we yield what is best in us.”

– Talmud

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

A Heart for Haiti

I was in Haiti in 2002, driving through the rubble of the streets of Cite Soleil with a missionary priest named Fr. Tom Hagan (you can read an update of his experiences here). It looked as if an earthquake had already struck the land, and that was almost 8 years ago.

Why Haiti? Why so much sorrow and pain?

Something I can’t stop thinking about in my pondering of what’s happened is the thought that Haiti is the broken body of Christ. More than a thought, it’s the realization that Haiti is the broken body of Christ.

Haiti is like the youngest of Jacob’s sons, sold into bondage at the hands of jealous, greedy brothers. Haiti is the Suffering Servant in the Prophet Isaiah, whose back has been whipped in its sad history of slavery, and its beard plucked by the grasping hands of countries stripping its once fertile land of resources. Haiti is “making up for the things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ,” in the mysterious words of St. Paul. Haiti is a never-ending Passion Play.

If we believe that God came into our world out of love to take on our sorrows, than we can see God in Haiti. Mother Teresa always said that Jesus is in the distressing disguise of the poor.

God has come into our world, become one of us, become all of us. He doesn’t wear humanity over His Divinity like a robe that He casts off in the end. Jesus has married Divinity to humanity forever, world without end! Jesus is in every suffering, He has already suffered and he suffers still in everyone who suffers. Jesus is in Haiti.

At the Hands Together house in Port au Prince, where I stayed a few days with Fr. Tom, one of the most memorable sights was of the tabernacle in his little chapel. At first it caught me off guard. It looked like an old shoe box, or a pile of garbage. But a lamp burned beside it, and a Real Presence was there, in the midst of the slums of Cite Soleil.

Then Father explained, Jesus dwells with his people, and Jesus has become one of his own. So for the poor who live in cardboard homes, reinforced with sheet metal and tin, Jesus has a home of the same material. The Blessed Eucharist is there, in poverty, just as our brothers and sisters, made in God’s image, are there in the garbage and in the desolation of the poorest country in the western hemisphere.

Let us pray that Haiti, like Jesus, will return to the Land of the Living, rise from the darkness of the grave, and that we, brothers and sisters throughout the world, will continue to rise up and be present at this tomb. That we lend hearts and hands to this land of brave men and women, suffering souls who have suffered long and hard.

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To view the faces and places (and some rough video)

of my time in Haiti, click here.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org