By Fr. Abraham S.J.
Sometime ago, I tried to imagine how I would feel if, as a little boy, I saw my mother and father killed before my eyes. There are millions of orphans in Africa for whom that is not an imagination, but a reality.
I doubt if I could ever erase that vision of horror from my mind.
More tragically, I doubt if I could suppress from welling up in my heart, feelings of hatred against those who snatched away the life of those who gave me life, whose presence and love gave me joy, security and hope.
Gone with a few heartless strokes of a machete! Willy-nilly my horrified eyes are riveted on them, lying there, their lives oozing away in streams of red, red blood.
And standing over them and gloating, proud of himself and wiping clean his machete warm with my parents’ blood, stands their butcher.
Remember, this for me, an imagination; for millions of African children, a reality seared into their psyches for a lifetime!
Should I have indulged in this imagination? What good, if any, will come from it? Is it not a senseless, depressing act of morbidity? How can exercising my imagination in this painful way help them – or me?
Ignatius of Loyola would answer: “It will help a great deal both them and you to change the way you think and feel, to change the way you love and live.”
In the long history of the Catholic Church, Ignatius was one of the great teachers, if not greatest teacher, of how to pray.
His famous Spiritual Exercises, practised by millions of people seeking God for over four centuries, have only one purpose: to bring about in our minds and heart a conversion that will reconcile us to God so we can ‘love Him with our whole heart, with our whole mind and with all our strength’.
One of the keys to Ignatian prayer is the constant use of our imaginations to enter into the reality of Christ’s life, suffering and death.
And we must remember Jesus who said: “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat”, surely says today: “I was the mother and father slaughtered in cold blood; I am their orphaned children scarred for life by an act of senseless cruelty. Imagine me suffering in them!”
We can no more be indifferent to the millions of children whose hearts will hunger until death for their lost parents’ love than we can be indifferent to the Sacred Heart of Jesus pierced and pouring out His life’s Blood to give us life.
But why do I speak mostly of the children of Africa? For two reasons: first, they are the future of Africa. If they grow up resentful, revengeful, unloved and unloving, then more Rwanda-type massacres are in Africa’s future.
Secondly, the quickest way to soften the hard and bitter hearts of millions of adults, who also experienced terrible sufferings, is to pray that they will take into their homes and hearts these innocent children who have been robbed of love.
No one should ever underestimate the power of little children to educate the hearts of us grown-ups! I know.
For 30 years, I have lived with children from very poor families that have suffered greatly, hunger, joblessness, homelessness, many kinds of abuse and injustice.
Given just enough to eat and a generous dose of tender loving care, these poor children become what they were meant to be, the master pieces of God, full of joy, trust, love and forgiveness. “The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these!”
Over the years, scores of rich young people from the affluent world, from Canada, America, England, France, Italy and Australia, have come to live and work with our children for weeks or months.
It always amazes me how the affection and joy of our children take by storm the hearts of these overindulged young people.
Our poor children truly ‘convert’ them so that never again can they be cold or indifferent to the sufferings of God’s people and children all over the world.
Let us pray this month that those who have suffered the greatest wrong in the conflicts on the African continent, its millions of little children, will be God’s instruments in setting things right.
May Isaiah’s prophecy about reconciliation be fulfilled once again through them: “The wolf will live with the lamb, The leopard will lie down with the goat, The calf And the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them.”
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