Haiti is a horrible place on a normal day with ghastly poverty, corruption and voodoo-- the real kind, not the stuff college girls play with but now, oh now it must indescribable. The Anchoress blog has a good round up of charities to give to. I picked Mercy Corps. They do good work and are prudent with their money.
Our Lady of Prompt Succour, pray for Haiti.
I read a comment on another blog, someone, a young person I hope, asked how this earthquake could happen and said he'd question God about it when they meet. I sighed at the arrogance and almost wrote in to say that when this person meets God at the Judgement seat he won't be asking for anything but mercy.
Christians so often make the mistake of thinking that nothing bad should ever happen. Maybe it's the influence of the Protestant proseperity gospel. Jesus never said life in this world would be peachy keen for believers. In fact, He said quite the contrary. We live in a fallen world. There is disease, there are earthquakes, fires, floods, and blizzards and Christians are not immune. The difference between us and pagans is how we deal with this world.
St. Therese had TB-- one of the cruelest deaths known to mankind. St. Bernadette suffered horribly. St. Pio was in pain for 50 years. St. Alphonsus had arthritis so bad that his back was bent and his chin rested on his chest. St. Josephine was tortured by slave owners. St. Damian was a leper. St. Lyndwine had a condition so ghastly that I got shivers just reading her story. And let's not forget the Roman martrys-- some were ripped to pieces by animals, some were covered in tar and set afire, some were hacked to death, some were beheaded, some were disembowled. This life is not one of ease and never has been.
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