The Day Before Disaster – The Catholic Thing

“We know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good” (Romans 8:28).

Disasters must come in this fallen world, and maybe they will come to us.  There are relatively few sayings of Jesus which the Holy Spirit saw fit to preserve.  But one of these addresses the fact of disasters.  About those Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices, or the 18 victims of what we might call “the Tower of Siloam disaster”: “. . . think you, that they also were debtors above all the men that dwelt in Jerusalem? No, I say to you; but except you do penance, you shall all likewise perish.” (Luke 13:4-5)

As is his wont, Our Lord here uses visible realities as signs of the invisible. He knows human nature, that disasters invite us to feel, to our shame, that we the living are somehow “better” than those who died. This reaction is telling, because it shows that we inevitably interpret disasters as moral events.  No matter what some may say intellectually, we cannot succeed in interpreting them as meaningless chance events.

And this propensity is fundamentally correct. Our Lord teaches us its meaning: visible disasters are not meant to winnow out, the way the Last Judgment does. They are mere images of the only true disaster, damnation. And should stimulate us to repent.

We soften Leon Bloy’s saying, that the only tragedy in human life is not to be a saint, if we neglect to consider that there is only one eternal alternative to sainthood.

Many of us alive in the days following the 9/11 attacks watched videos of the planes going into the towers again and again, not yet believing it.  We liked to shock ourselves repeatedly, first, by provoking the feeling that “if only” this or that had not happened, we could have avoided it. “If only” the flight school had reported them; “if only” that suspicious airline official in Portland had not let them on). And then, second, with the feeling that “but it really did happen,” which is the same as “it really was permitted by God.”  And this is shocking.

But did you and I repent?  Was each episode of such self-inflicted shock followed by a commensurate, passionate cry for mercy?   Did Catholics adopt new mortifications in atonement?   People did return to church, it was noticed, but such good impulses were soon swallowed up by vengeance and warfare.

St. Paul speaks to the difference between the “permissive” and the “perfect” will of God.  How do we know whether a disaster is the one or the other for us?  You might look at the day before disaster.

Twenty-five years ago, September 10, 2001, Todd Beamer returned from a five-day trip to Rome with his wife, Lisa, who was pregnant with their third child.  He was sent there by Oracle with a group of 500 other employees and guests, as a reward for his excellence in sales.

Todd was an Evangelical Christian.  When in Rome, did he and his wife go to hear the man widely reputed to be a saint, John Paul II, who gave a General Audience in St. Peter’s Square on Psalm 47?   Even if not, surely the saint’s words spoken then articulated God’s meaning for their lives:

Until the coming of the Messiah, hope of the nations, the Gentiles did not adore God and did not know who he is. Until the Messiah redeemed them, God did not reign over the nations through their obedience and their worship. Now instead, with his Word and his Spirit, God reigns over them because he saved them from deception and made them his friends.

Once they got home, Todd needed to travel to San Francisco to do a favor for a friend by being present at a meeting with Sony.  To spend more time at home with his wife and young children before leaving again, however, he decided not to take an evening flight, which was his usual practice, to get there the night before, but to take a morning flight, September 11.  Was this choice a fatal mistake?

To summarize:  He was a believing Christian.  He did his work well.  He and his wife were generous in welcoming children.  He was a good friend to a colleague.  He made sacrifices to spend time with his family.  For a young Christian man, one can hardly think of a span of days better lived.

Because he was doing just what God wanted (“to them that love God”), it follows, I think, that his being on that plane was in accordance with God’s perfect will.  The evil hijackers did what they did only in accordance with God’s permissive will. But Todd was following God’s perfect will, and, when it became clear to him, as with the other heroes on Flight 93, that he must die, he could affirm that God put him on that flight for a reason.

Most probably he saw this himself, because he asked a dispatcher over an Airfone to recite with him the Lord’s Prayer, with its petition, “Thy will be done.”   All things worked together for the good, for him, not because he avoided disasters, clearly, but because he was granted the gift of imitating Christ.

On the day before the 25^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, if we are looking for lessons, follow the example of Todd Beamer.   A critic might say we spent twenty-five years expressing anger rather than repenting. We built a security state and fought two wars and seem no readier to sacrifice our lives for others than we were on September 10, 2001. Todd Beamer was ready, not because he foresaw terrors and took precautions, but because his ordinary days already belonged to God.

Let’s commemorate the ordinariness of September 10^th also and ask:  If today were our day before, would our life bear the same witness the next day that his did?