(As we mark the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima)

On the Feast of the Transfiguration, 6 August 1945, while homilies around the world carried a message of hope for the future of humanity and spoke of divine fire descending from heaven, the A-bomb was dropped on the unsuspecting city of Hiroshima. It fell to earth with a blinding flash, a crashing thunder, a devastating blast and a deceptively beautiful mushroom cloud. And it changed the history of humankind.

Pedro and his men felt helpless: they knelt and prayed, then decided to make their house into a field hospital…They squeezed 150 wounded into their small house, and using his medical skills Pedro sorted out the patients into various groups. Many had been burnt by flames, others developed huge blisters. No one at that moment knew what caused these; only later they realised they were the after-effect of infrared radiation.

For Reflection
A bomb can fall under many forms: an unexpected death or illness, a tragedy afflicting someone else, an unjust situation…can you identify such events in your own life?

Excerpted from Pedro Arrupe: Mystic with Open Eyes by Brian Grogan SJ
(pp17-20)