Checking on Family Around the Fourth

With the Fourth of July tomorrow, many are planning gatherings that will involve family. Well count me in on that, but I'm seeing family - yours and mine - in Asia.

As you read this, I'm on a flight headed to Asia, where I'll visit our mission family in Sri Lanka. My last visit there was in February 2006 where I visited many places that had been devastated by tsunami of December 2004.

I remember spending time with Father Charles at his parish. The first wave of the tsunami hit his church during the distribution of Communion. His first thought, he told me then, was, "This is the end of the world." Immediately water engulfed all of the church, and he started to literally fish out bodies and take the injured up a flight of stairs to a second story. Just 15 minutes later, a second wave hit. In all 24 people died in that parish church.

After Father Charles told me that story, the very next thing we did together was to celebrate Mass in that same church. We prayed for all who had lost their lives that day, and we prayed as well for the families who were then, and probably still are today, grieving.

Another visual site for me from that early 2006 visit was to be in the exact area in Galle that had been shown on television hundreds of times, where buses were floating and being impelled against buildings almost like toy vehicles. I stood there in that place, now once again bustling with activity, and tried to imagine the power of that tsunami; in some ways it was unfathomable for me.

If the tsunami wave was powerful, even more powerful was the loving response of the Church through priests, Religious Sisters and Brothers, and lay catechists immediately after it. All sprung into action, reaching out to the suffering, helping with those who were injured, comforting the grieving.



No more was this loving care expressed than to the orphans of this natural disaster. I visited a number of orphanages on my 2006 visit, and I'll be visiting these sites again on this mission trip. At each stop, I witnessed the loving care given to these little ones by the Sisters - care supported by the contributions of our young people to the Holy Childhood Association. I was most struck as well by the great joy of the children themselves. Ripped from their families by the giant wave of the tsunami they had found a new family, here among the Sisters at the orphanage.

I'm looking forward to seeing the little ones in the family - your mission family, too. As you celebrate the Fourth of July here at home with family and friends, know that there are many in your family not with you in presence but always with you in prayer - grateful prayer for your loving prayers and support through the Pontifical Mission Societies. Stay tuned next week for more on my "family reunion" in Asia.