The tsunami, the fear of God, & inspired compassion

This is a video of the tsunami which struck Japan a month ago.

Warning: The last couple minutes are hard to watch. Patrick Madrid calls it "by far the most chilling, the most horrifying video I have yet seen of the devastation ..." The more so if you understand everything they're saying.


This was called to my attention by a Patrick Madrid post via Fr. Z's post "We do not know the day or the hour," which had this to say:

Life is not CGI, friends. Bad things happen to nice people who are going about life just like you.

As this Lent continues, ask yourself the questions:

• Are you ready now to go before the Lord your Maker and your Judge?
• Have you helped those for whom you are responsible to be ready?
• When was the last time you made a good and complete confession of your sins and received valid absolution?

“But Father! But Father!”, some of you may be saying now. “Are you trying to scare us? Shouldn’t we go to confession out of love and not fear?”

Yes, I am trying to scare you. I want to scare the hell out of you.

Going to confession for the higher purpose of expressing sorrow for violating God’s love is laudable. But going to confession because you are afraid of hell and because you know your life could end at any moment is enough. If I can get you out of your complacence and into a confessional even out of fear, fine. I take that.

I’ll take the fear now for a confession. We can work on the love part brick by brick.

Priests… bishops… this includes you. Your judgment … our judgment… is going to be exacting, for so much more has been given. “I don’t have time” isn’t a good plan. Just go. Die in the state of mortal sin and you’ll go to hell.

In related news, I would like to share part of a newsletter I received from a Baptist missionary relief worker in Japan among the earthquake/tsunami victims. The story is quite moving. There may be Catholic stories of a similar sort, and if anybody is aware of these, I should like very much to hear them. My own Catholic sources in Japan are limited, since my 20-odd years there preceded my conversion to the Catholic Faith nearly nearly 2 decades ago. Here's the excerpt:

I would like to share one of the stories that was shared during one of my debriefings. The team went to meet with the church members from Fukushima and evacuated together as a church. They went to Yamagata to another church that invited them to come stay at their church. When the team got there the evacuees welcomed them in and actually encouraged them. The team commented that being with other Christians had made a big difference in the attitude of the evacuees at the church and those that they had visited at evacuee centers. But the real miracle came as the people shared with them some of their stories. Since the church evacuated together some of the women who were Christians had brought their families, included their non christian husbands. Since the earthquake several of their husbands had watch the love of Christ displayed in the church and had just accepted Christ as their Savior. These new baby Christians decided that they had to leave their families and go back to work because they needed to tell their fellow workers about Christ and the new peace that they had just found. These men are workers at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, and they have left their families to go back to the Power Plant to be witnesses for Christ. They want to share with their fellow employees at the Plant what Christ had done for them. What a powerful witness to the love of Christ and how he can change lives.

Not a bad start.

[Hat tip to Barbie Webber]