Today marks 80 years since the monstrous nuclear blast that indiscriminately wreaked and poisoned the city and the civilian population of Nagasaki in Japan. This was the second city that the USA afflicted with its new, horrible weapon of massive explosive power and unprecedented release of huge levels of deadly radiation. The blast killed tens of thousands in agony, and the radiation continued to kill and kill and sicken and wound and disfigure innocent civilians beyond anyone’s calculation.
The choice was made to drop these bombs without any idea what kind of damage they would do, how long it would last, and how many people would suffer. We still don’t know the whole awful story, much less the potential consequences of the various nuclear weapons we now hold, along with too many other nations, still pointing them at one another, still counting on a system of mutual threats to unleash unimaginable catastrophe on the world and presuming that everyone will be too scared to use them. This is what we call “peace” in the modern world.
Pope Saint John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, and now Pope Leo XIV didn’t (and don’t) regard this as a “peace” worthy of an interconnected world of human persons created in the image of God.
These words of John Paul II, and the prayer that accompanies them, are direct and powerful. Let’s ponder these words and pray this prayer. Let’s also pray the Rosary for peace, for conversion, for God’s mercy to empower us to live as brothers and sisters, and to reject the gluttony of consumerism and the sloth of indifference. May the Lord’s merciful love change our hearts and move us to embark on the arduous path of dialogue, willingness to forgive, to listen, to be patient, to be clear about our principles while distinguishing them from our prejudices, and to be willing to learn and grow from real encounters with other people. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a warning to all of us that the only reasonable path is to work together to build real foundations for peace.
If we feel that this is impossible; if we feel powerless in relation to the massive technological powers that we have unleashed and that are developing even now in new and incalculable ways, then we can still begin. We can pray. We can give our powerlessness to God, and allow Him to shape us anew according to His will, to learn the ways of His love and compassion.
August 9th is also the feast of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) who was martyred in Auschwitz-Birkenau on August 9, 1942. She was a profound philosopher, born into Jewish heritage, then passing through atheism and arriving — by the grace of God — at faith in Jesus, conversion to His Catholic Church, and the vocation to give herself totally to God as a Carmelite nun. The Nazis still came for her, but all their power couldn’t rob from her the love of her heart.
Her words here are a constant inspiration to me: “Become like a child and lay your life, with all the searching and ruminating, into the Father’s hand” (Edith Stein).
