One of our young guests asked a question about the whole incident: “Father, how do you explain what happened to all those people? Was it a punishment from God? Was there some other reason? Was it mainly a call to everyone else to show compassion and to give help to the victims? What is God saying through something like this?”

As we reflected together that afternoon, several points came forth.

First, we must be very cautious about the idea that a catastrophe like this one is a punishment from God. No doubt there are some who may see it that way for themselves, and may take it as a call to repentance for sins they have committed.

But apart from the biblical stories where God himself provides us with commentary on events, it is hard for us mere mortals to sort out the mysterious distribution of catastrophes in our world.

In fact, it often seems that the usual victims of life’s miseries—the poor, the elderly, children, the sick—are the very ones who are least able to escape the terrors of either nature or humanity.

Their voices are among those least likely to be heard when it comes to the pitiful cry for help. How can we possibly see these as more guilty than any others? They seem to share in the passion of Christ to a depth that is perhaps unimaginable to many.

Then someone noted that a catastrophic event like this one is a “wake-up call”. There is, for instance, the imperative need to respond to the cry of the suffering—with material aid, with friendship, hospitality, prayer, and self-sacrifice.

Others mentioned the practicalities to consider, the necessity to be ready for such events—a topic that has been hotly debated, with no little finger pointing, in the weeks after the hurricane.

And there is another dimension to this being alert to human suffering. At the very time when so many were being overwhelmed by the storm and all the news about it, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims died in Iraq. They had fallen off a bridge into the Euphrates River during a mass panic caused by a false alarm about a suicide bomber.

It is terrible to say it, but in our Western media we are not even surprised by such news from certain parts of the world. We almost take it in stride. Such events get duly noted at best, and then we get on with life, praying the chaos is kept at a safe distance from our homes and our lands.

What does it mean to be awake to such suffering, not only from Hurricane Katrina, but also to the constant anguish of many peoples around the world?

Many mornings I give the folks here a few news headlines, so that we can carry our brothers and sisters in prayer, as well as be a little bit more aware of the state of the world we are living in.

It is interesting how I have to go searching for news from the “forgotten” parts of the world—not forgotten to those living there or to those directly connected with them, surely, but certainly to much of the rest of the world.

A little digging, and I find stories of mass hunger, locust plagues, and drought in countries like Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali. In all such places, too, Christ is suffering in our brothers and sisters.

For a while, at the height of the crisis, attention and aid are turned their way—if they are fortunate. Then, they disappear off the screen of our news reports and perhaps of our hearts. Is this because it is all just too much to carry, too much to be aware of?

Being awake has many facets: from the living awareness of the state of the body of Christ around our globe, to a consciousness renewed daily that life itself is short. It may end abruptly, at any time.

We may have some years left, but even these are so few in the context of eternity.

And the question poses itself: what am I doing with my life? What will be the fruits of my life when I am called home to give answer to my Maker and my Lord, whether this happens through the approaching storm, through the inevitable catastrophe, or through more “ordinary” means?

This time of year, in its early winter darkness, reminds us of the sure passage of the “light” that this world has to offer.

We pray for the dead. We think with love of those who have gone before us. We remember our own mortality and perhaps give a thought or two to the last things: death, hell, purgatory, heaven.

Even now we are participating in the shaping of our eternal destiny. Having heard anew the Gospel of the Lord coming at the end of time to judge us on how well we have loved the sick, the naked, the prisoner, the stranger, the hungry, the thirsty, how we can we not be praying constantly to be “awake” to the pain of Christ in our brothers and sisters?