Finding God in Tragedy
MULLAITTIVU, SRI LANKA--The Rev. James Pathinathan does not believe he can work miracles. He preaches to a parish of about 700 families every Sunday at a picturesque church called St. Peter's, on a serene stretch of beach, and nothing too out of the ordinary has ever happened to his flock. That is, until the morning after Christmas 2004. Because of a special event, he decided to move the service that day to a chapel a mile inland. Some 1,500 parishioners, mainly fishermen and their families from communities by the sea, showed up. When the deadly tsunami struck, they were at mass--and were saved. Those who didn't go, who overslept, or didn't have a bicycle, or simply had other things to do, were not as lucky.
The sheer randomness of who lived and died in the disaster has caused many to either thank or blame the Almighty; the vagaries of chance seem an insufficient explanation. A woman decides to walk this way to her aunt's house and lives; if she had walked that way, she would have died. A boy who climbs one palm tree survives; the one in the next gets swept away. But the story of St. Peter's church stands out as an unusual example, in which the decision of whether or not to go to mass meant the difference between life and death. "We know God loves us," says Pathinathan, who insists his decision was not a miracle. "There are things that happen that are earth-shattering, but you just accept that you don't understand why."
Blessing. That day was the Feast of the Holy Family, so Pathinathan thought it would be a good idea to hold mass at a roadside shrine to St. Joseph, the head of the holy family. It started late, at 7:20, because the public-address system was not working. Then, because one guest preacher went on and on, and because the parishioners had a procession that they normally don't, and because Pathinathan took the time to bless each family one by one, the service went late--until just before 9 a.m.
"Just as Father James was blessing the statue of Joseph, at the last moments of the mass, we heard people shouting, 'The sea is coming! The water is as tall as the palm trees!' " says Ulakanathan, a 46-year-old who used to be a fisherman. "It was very calm, with no wind, so we were all confused. But people said all of Mullaittivu had been swept away, so we all started running. It wasn't until that evening that we went back. There were bodies everywhere, and we could not recognize where our house used to be."
When he returned with his wife and two grown sons, they found that 11 people in their family had been killed. "In my village, 26 men lost their wives," he says. "It was our faith that saved us."
If mass had ended even 10 minutes earlier, the parishioners would still have gotten home in time to fall victim to the deadly wave. "All I know is that 1,500 more people would have died, and that would have been the end of the Christian community in Mullaittivu," says Pathinathan, an unassuming man with mild eyes. Of the seven churches he is in charge of in Mullaittivu, four were destroyed; St. Peter's now looks like an ancient ruin on the rubble-strewn beach.
But there are others in Pathinathan's congregation who feel abandoned by God. One man who lost his son screamed at the pastor, "Your God is blind!" It turned out that he had had two sons--one was a healthy boy, and one was handicapped. The one killed was the healthy son.
The Rev. Paul Satkunanayagam, a U.S.-trained psychologist and Jesuit priest, is one of the founders of a center for war-traumatized children in Batticaloa. He believes that tragedy spawns the same helplessness felt during wartime: "Always, the human mind creates an enemy. Here, you can't blame a human, so people blame God."
It could also be a simple case of running out of alternatives. At the Jesuit university where Satkunanayagam works, over 1,000 refugees are camped out. One group of refugees approached the priest, saying they were interested in converting from Hinduism to Christianity. "Our God has failed us," they said. "Maybe yours will do better?" -Bay Fang
This story appears in the January 24, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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