Disaster

It has been almost a week since the hurricane disaster and I have yet to wrap my mind around it. Unlike many people with cable television, however, I haven't been able to consume as much reportage on this event as I might have wished. This leaves me in the perhaps unusual situation of, rather than being numbed, remaining shocked and disbelieving about all the things I have heard (especially the horror stories). It's just as well. I would simply drive myself crazy (in my pregnant and hormonal state, moreover) and render myself unable to think at all. I really doubt my ability to blog on this topic, and nobody is really reading it yet, but if I looked back over my archives at some point in the future and found nothing about the biggest disaster to hit the U. S. in 100 years, I would regret that I didn't even try. That said, I can't hope to add much to the commentary but the housewife angle; however, that's what I'm here for.

My first reaction is helplessness. I can't put any nervous energy toward work, or drown my awareness in the hum of traffic, or saturate my optical nerves with images from CNN. I look out my window and the plants are still growing. I go get gas and the prices are still (fairly) low. I open cupboards full of groceries and go to the bathroom a dozen times a day. My well-fed baby laughs and claps his hands. He is learning to put things into containers. There is nothing in my situation that is analogous to that of the evacuees. On the other hand, I feel a heightened level of anxiety over little things. I got upset with my husband for not spending enough time with our son, who appeared today to eat a little rock, that I am afraid will get all knotted up in his guts and need surgery. My husband feels a twinge in his tooth and I envision a $3000 dental bill. Meanwhile, I saw a stray bug in the kitchen and assumed the house was infested. In other words--you name it, I'm nervous about it. Is this all fallout from the disaster, or just housewife neurosis? We gave to the relief effort today and will probably give again, but it doesn't seem like enough.

A woman in my situation called into the Catholic Answers Live radio show and put the what-do-I-do question to the guest, Rosalind Moss, who comes on regularly to speak to people about their personal struggles. Rosalind told the caller an insightful thing. She told the woman, whom she knows, to offer her sufferings to Jesus on behalf of those souls who are suffering and who have died in the disaster. This predominantly Catholic concept is known popularly as "offering it up." This is a concept that took me a long time to grasp as I was going through the conversion process. I'll do my best to put it in a nutshell, but don't hare off and quote me as if I were a theologian. This is a layperson's understanding.

The human race is united in the sense that we all have the spiritual capacity to pray for one another. I wouldn't scorn prayers from a Muslim or Hindu. Even an atheist can wish another well, even though that one would probably deny that he or she was doing anything spiritual. But the Body of Christ, in particular those who are united to his Church through baptism (yes, this includes many Protestants as well), possess a special awareness of the power of prayer and are especially effective intercessors for one another and for any human soul. Included within the Body of Christ are also those who are suffering in purgatory (the Church Suffering), and those united with Christ in the beatific vision (the Church Triumphant, in heaven). There are degrees of effectiveness in prayer in the sense that the closer one comes to denying the things of the world and focusing on the promise of heaven--in effect, the closer one comes to Christ--the more efficacious those prayers are, the closest and most potent prayers being those of the saints that are with Christ in heaven, with the Blessed Virgin at the forefront. This is the basic idea of the communion of saints in the Catholic Church.

Time for a Bad Analogy of earthly to heavenly things. Imagine that every person in the world has a cell phone, but they are cell phones from all different eras of cell phone technology. Somebody in Harvard has a clunky old Eriksson, Mexicans in Guadalupe have the latest whiz-bang circuitry and cut their own movies, and people like me have their trusty old Qualcomms and Nokias. Now imagine that at the top of every Catholic church in the world is a massive cell phone signal transmitter, that transmits every call it receives straight to Heaven. Now imagine that in heaven there are no cell phones because nobody needs them anymore. Jesus is right there in the room and the saints can simply tell him their prayers, whereas the souls in purgatory down the hall have to sort of shout, but they can still be heard. Still closer is the Blessed Mother whispering in Jesus' ear. Over the loudspeakers you can hear the prayers coming in from all the cell phones on the earth. Naturally some have more static than others, depending on how clear that person's connection is with Jesus and His Church. This is all bunk, but you get the general idea (Jesus isn't hard of hearing--it's our fault if we mumble or remain stubbornly silent). We all possess the capacity to communicate and pray to God in various degrees. Obviously a Harvard scientist who denies all form of religion is going to have a heck of a lot of static on his line, but it doesn't mean God doesn't hear him. It just means his spiritual equipment isn't up to date, or isn't working well, or that he's too far from the Church to get any signal through. On the other hand, Jesus hears every word Mary says, clear as a bell.

Now, if I haven't muddied the waters intolerably, let me add suffering to the mix. Suffering is something that seems to affect us negatively, but has the remarkable ability to clear up our statick-y line to God in a hurry. Christ hears the prayers of the suffering in a special way, because he himself suffered as one of us, for our redemption. Now if we consciously enhance our prayers with the special intention of offering our sufferings as a sacrifice for the sake of others, it's as if we've tripped an amplifier and our signals go way up. St. Paul spoke of "adding" his sufferings to those of Christ on the cross, to "fill up what was lacking" in those sufferings. Now does that mean that Christ's suffering was somehow inadequate? Of course not. On the cross, as Tim Staples says so eloquently, Christ won enough graces to save a billion worlds (infinite graces beyond our comprehension). Far from being inadequate, Christ's suffering opened the floodgates of grace and enabled us to access his one great sacrifice by offering him our many limited and finite sacrifices. Through those offerings, grace is released by the power of God to fulfill those intentions of ours that are the will of Christ. Thus, said Rosalind to the distraught caller, your sacrifice WILL have far reaching consequences for the souls on whose behalf you have offered your suffering. Who knows the good that may be done?

Now if you aren't impressed by the Church's theory of offering our suffering to Christ as expressed by a housewife in Vancouver, Washington, I recommend consulting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, or searching keywords like suffering, sacrifice, purgatory, and communion of saints on Catholic.com. They will express it far better than I will. In the meantime, I think I will go to bed and continue to meditate on the Glorious Mysteries, asking Christ to accept the sacrifice of my suffering on behalf of those souls who are suffering and who have died in this disaster (and try to find a better metaphor for prayer than cell phones).