Haiti, Hope, Lent

A month after the earthquake in Haiti, it is still overwhelming. The current official estimate is 230,000 people dead, hundreds of thousands more injured, and millions left homeless. Those numbers are mind-numbing, beyond comprehension.

What has personalized Haiti for me was the death of Daniel Ryan Kloos (called “Ryan” by the family) and the injury to his sister, Erin Kloos. They are the nephew and niece of Bob Kloos, who was in the seminary with me. Many people at St. Malachi know Bob Kloos, either as the founder of Beacon Street or from the Faith and Sharing retreats.

Erin Kloos was in Haiti, serving (a second tour) as an international volunteer for Friends of the Orphans. Ryan was visiting his sister. Erin was evacuated to Florida and will have a full recovery. Ryan’s body was recovered; his ashes have been returned to his family.

There was a memorial Mass for Ryan in Cleveland, at which Bob, his uncle, spoke. Part of what he shared was this:
Vaclav Havel (b.1936) wrote a word or two about Hope. He was, for a time, President of Czechoslovakia. He wrote this:
“Hope is not the same as joy when things are going well,
or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success. But rather, (hope is) an ability to work for something to succeed.
Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism.
It’s not the conviction that something will turn out well,
but the certainty that something makes sense,
regardless of how it turns out.
It is this hope, above all,
that gives us strength to live and to continually try new things,
even in conditions that seem hopeless.
Life is too precious to permit devaluation by living pointlessly, emptily,
without meaning, without love and, finally, without hope.”

Hope is the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. (n.b. underlining & italics as received, not necessarily in the original)

People all over the world have been trying to make sense of the earthquake in Haiti. Some commentators have suggested that if there is a sustained effort not only to rebuild Haiti but to build a better Haiti, then all those who were killed did not die in vain. It fits Vaclav Havel’s comment that “(hope is) an ability to work for something to succeed.”

Yet hope challenges us to even more. If we need “a better Haiti” (which is years away) to make sense of the earthquake, then our hope depends on how it turns out, not “regardless of how it turns out.” St. Paul reminds us that “hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance.” (Romans 8: 24-25)

The “certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out” is a hope rooted in the paschal mystery of Christ’s dying and rising. Jesus went to the cross without certainty about how it would all turn out, but trusting the Father and believing that his passion and death made sense. This is the central mystery of our faith. It is the focus of Lent.

Perhaps one gift this Lent offers is the opportunity to use what has happened in Haiti as material for  us to reflect more deeply on the kind of “sense” that the Gospel offers and so to increase our hope.