Vigils Reading – Transfiguration of the Lord

THE BOMBING OF HIROSHIMA AUGUST 6th, 1945

From the recorded account of Fr. Pedro Arrupe 1

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It was 8:15 when a magnesium flash ripped across the blue sky. I was in my office with another Jesuit… The whole house shook, the windows shattered, the doors twisted, and the fragile walls of mud and cane broke like cards crushed by a giant hand. That terrible force, which we thought would rip the building from its foundation, threw us to the ground… When that initial earthquake finished, we stood up… I saw that not a single one was wounded… Immediately afterward, a gigantic mountain of clouds swept up into the sky. In the very center of the explosion, there appeared a horrific thunderhead and, with it, a fierce five hundred-mile an hour wind that swept away everything within a six-kilometer radius…

Everywhere there was death and destruction, and we were reduced to impotence. And he was there, knowing everything, contemplating everything, and waiting for our offering to take part in the work of rebuilding everything. I left the chapel, and my decision was immediate. We would turn the house into a hospital… But there were more than two hundred thousand victims. Where to begin?… Within a few minutes the wounded people began to appear, like walking ghosts, with their skin torn and their bodies covered with boils and red and violet spots… All of them had expressions of horror on their faces, as if they had just escaped from hell… It was an uninterrupted flow of half-burned bodies stumbling forward…

After taking care of the most urgent medical problems, <I> prepared to celebrate Mass… The half-destroyed chapel was full of shuddering sick people who were lying next to one another on the ground; they were suffering terribly and writhing in pain. I began the Mass as best I could in the midst of that human mass that had not the slightest idea of what was happening on the altar. I will never forget the horrible impression I had when I turned toward them at the Dominus vobiscum and contemplated that spectacle from the altar. I could not utter a word. I was as if paralyzed, with my arms stretched open, beholding that human tragedy… They looked at me with anguish-filled eyes, with desperation, as if they were hoping that some consolation would reach them from the altar. What a terrible scene that was! A few minutes later, the One of whom John the Baptist said, “In the midst of you is one whom you do not know” came down on the altar.

I have never felt again as I felt then the sadness of the unbelievers’ incomprehension regarding Jesus Christ. Their Savior was there among them, the one who had given his life for them… but they did not know that he was in the midst of them. I was the only one who knew it. From my lips came spontaneously a prayer for those who had had the savage cruelty to drop the atomic bomb: “Lord, forgive them for they know not what they do,” and for those who were lying near me, twisting in pain: “Lord, grant them faith […], so that they see; give them the strength to put up with the pain.” When I raised the host’ before those wounded, destroyed bodies, a cry rose from my heart: “My Lord and my God, have pity on this flock that has no Shepherd.” “So that I may believe in you, Lord, remember that they also have to come to know you.”

Torrents of grace no doubt flowed from that host and from that altar. Six months later, when all the patients had recovered and left our house (only two persons died in our care), many of them had been baptized, and all had had the experience of a Christian charity that knows how to understand, help, and console in ways that surpass all human expectation. Such charity had communicated to them a serenity that helped them to smile despite the pain and to pardon even those who had caused their suffering