For the past two months we all have seen the tragic images of children living amidst the rubble that used to be their homes. Many of them had little of the material things of life, but the little they had was swept away by the fearsome power of an earthquake. When you look into their eyes, you see a sadness and a searching for the childhood that was fractured like the very ground around them.
As I walked amidst the poverty and pain that is the real damage of the Haitian earthquake, I was comforted to know that you, people of the Archdiocese of San Antonio, had donated more than $676,000 to bring healing and hope to these children and all those suffering in this broken land. I can’t begin to describe how grateful I am to you, and how much I want you to know that your gifts were true gifts of hope and will do much to express the love we are all called to share in profound ways.
Before I left for Haiti I was asked many times how I felt about making this trip. I said I was a bit apprehensive, knowing I was going to see devastation of people and property like I had never seen before. I truly wasn’t prepared for all that I would see, a golf course turned into a tent city, and children with no homes, some with no families. Many of the children have no time to mourn the loss of what little they had, because survival consumes most of their energy and strength.
However, I also saw a glimpse of God’s love in the dedication of the many men and women who continue to labor long and hard because they understand the truth in the words of St. Paul, “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” (1 Cor 15:58)
Through this human tragedy, we have been given the opportunity to stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We, of course, are united by the common bond of our humanity, a bond that is strengthened by the fact that we share our Catholic faith with 80 percent of the Haitian people. Our delegation from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee on Latin America made the pilgrimage to Haiti in order to assess the depth and breadth of the damage to the church, its leadership, its churches, schools, hospitals and ministries. We discovered, however, that while the buildings may be in ruin, the faith of the people is intact and their trust in a merciful and loving God is not diminished. There is much work to do, but I firmly believe that education of the children is an important ingredient to restoring the very life of this nation. It is my hope that we will be able to build Catholic schools for the children to have a place to begin.
We must do all that we can to restore the church in Haiti. I am confident that it will rise from the dust and continue to be a source of light and life as their nation and their lives are rebuilt. In his encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict reminded us of our responsibility to respond to the needs of those who have suffered so much when he wrote, “Love of neighbor, grounded in the love of God, is first and foremost a responsibility for each individual member of the faithful, but it is also a responsibility for the entire ecclesial community at every level: from the local community to the particular church and to the church universal in its entirety.”
As I stood among the ruins at Port-au-Prince, I was reminded that 3,000 miles from here the people of Chile are suffering after the earthquake there. As the world watched the forces of nature rock Chile a couple of weeks ago, holding its breath to see if Hawaii would be engulfed by a tsunami, I have been hearing a term, “giving fatigue.” As followers of Jesus, we must never tire of loving our neighbors. We must never tire of binding their wounds, satisfying their hunger and quenching their thirst for the love and peace of God.
During Lent, as you offer your sacrifices and prepare for Easter, I pray that you will be made mindful of the suffering and pain being felt by the people of Haiti and Chile, remembering the words of Mother Theresa, “Whoever the poorest of the poor are, they are Christ for us … Christ under the guise of human suffering.”