Newspaper Page Text
In tile Warsaw Ghetto
uprising in 1943, Jew
ish men, women and
children are led away
by Nazi soldiers as
black smoke from burn
* ing buildings rises in
the background,
(UPI ptioto}
By Father David K. O’Rourke, OP
NC News Service
Does God act in our lives? Does
he really intervene in human
affairs?
I hear these questions and think
of a talk with a man whose name
I do not even know. Our conver
sation illustrates one answer.
□ □ □
After Easter I often take a few
days off My favorite springtime
excursion is the train ride from
San Francisco to Santa Barbara. It
shows California at its best: from
rolling fields of flowers to miles of
white beaches and pounding surf.
On one such trip I was reading
the autobiography of a Polish
poet, Czeslaw Milosz, a professor
at Berkeley, a member of my
parish and recent Nobel Prize win
ner. I was reading his account of
life in Poland during World War
II and a most grim life it was. The
terrible realities of invasion, oc
cupation, arrests, bombings and
terror were the mark of life every
day.
“You are reading Czeslaw
Milosz?” a voice asked from over
my shoulder. An older man, dress
ed like a college teacher, had been
walking up and down the aisle of
the nearly empty car and had ob-
I - viously stopped to see what I was
reading. By his accent he was a
Slav. He was a Catholic, he said,
and was intrigued to find an
American priest reading a Polish
poet.
He too had experienced the war
years and fled Poland after the
communist takeover. “The war
was terrible,” he said, and then
looked out the window. “You
can’t know. And it is good you
cannot know. No one should have
to experience such things.”
“I’ve seen the pictures of
Poland being invaded and Warsaw
systematically leveled,” I said.
“But I’ve never read such a com
pelling account of what it was like
to live through it.”
The news accounts of President
Reagan’s trip to Germany in the
spring and the anniversary of
World War II’s end had renewed
the images in my memory. But
this first-hand account of year
after year of war and occupation
was very unsettling.
“Milosz talks about a lot of peo
ple,” I said, “and by the end of
the war it seems as though he
majority of them had been blown
up, executed, committed suicide
or just disappeared.”
“Yes,” the man said quietly, as
though thinking of his own lost
people.
Then, after a pause, “It is still
so hard to have faith, so hard to
believe in God, because it was so
insane. So many gone, for no
reason and to no purpose.”
And yet, he continued, it was
the world that had gone berserk,
not God. Why the world should
be crazy he had no idea. He did
not pretend to understand God.
But whatever happened God was
still God.
□ □ □
People often talk about the
presence of God in their lives,
seeing God as one who brings
order and rationality to human af
fairs. Critics say the talk sounds
simplistic: A plane lands safely
and God was guiding the pilot; a
child gets through college and
God was writing the exam papers.
Such statements, the critics say,
make God sound like a good luck
charm. But what about bad luck?
Was God somehow absent from
the world of those millions who
were so mindlessly destroyed in
World War II? How was he pre
sent to them?
I think that the man on the
train gives us the answer. God
was present to them in their faith,
the same way he is to us.
I know that that way can seem
so ordinary and commonplace.
But it lies at the heart of our
religious life.
□ □ □
We can look at our world and,
like the man on the train, find it
hard to have faith.
But we believe anyway. We ask
ourselves, “Does it make sense?”
And we answer, “It doesn’t
have to — God is still God.”
That simple act of faith is as
much the result of God’s presence
as the most extraordinary and eye
catching miracle.
That act of faith, which we
make so commonly, is truly a sign
that God is intervening in our
lives.
(Father O Rourke is associate
director of the Family Life Office
in the Diocese of Oakland, Calif )
On o train ride down the scenic California
coast, Father David K. O'Rourke is confronted
with memories of a horrible and inhuman age.
He asks — and suggests an answer — to the
question: Where is the divine when evil flares?
Supplement to The Southern Cross, September 12, 1985
□ Faith Today
A supplement to Catholic newspapers,
published with grant assistance from Cath
olic Church Extension Society, by the Na
tional Catholic News Service, 1312 Massa
chusetts Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C.
20005. All contents copyright © 1985 by
NC News Service.