Pastoral Letters
grace church
joondalup
DIOCESE
OF
PERTH
ANGLICAN
CHURCH
OF
AUSTRALIA
Ninth Sunday after
Pentecost
25 July 2010
Our Lady of Nagasaki
Haunting … that’s
the only word I can
find to describe it.
Last week I welcomed
the Archbishop of
Nagasaki, the Most
Reverend Joseph
Mitsuaki. He pleaded
at the United
Nations for an end
to all nuclear
weapons. Lord knows
he has immense
credibility: he is
now the pastor of
the tiny Catholic
flock of a Japanese
city where 75,000
people were reduced
to ash by a single
atomic blast on 9
August 1945. On that
day, Joseph was
still a baby in his
mother’s womb, and
only survived
because she was far
enough away from
ground-zero. And
something else
survived: the head
of the statue of
Mary Immaculate in
the parish church in
Urakami, a village
right beside
Nagasaki. It was
this head of Mary
that the archbishop
brought with him to
the UN and to St
Patrick’s Cathedral.
And it is this head
that is haunting:
she is scarred,
singed badly, and
her crystal eyes
were melted by the
hellish blast. So,
all that remains are
two empty, blackened
sockets. I’ve knelt
before many images
of the Mother of
Jesus before: our
Mother of Perpetual
Help, the Pieta, the
Virgin of Guadalupe,
Our Lady of Lourdes,
just to name a few.
But I’ve never
experienced the
dread and revulsion
I did when the
archbishop showed us
the head of Our Lady
of Nagasaki. She
absorbs our sorrows,
our worries, our
sickness, our fears,
like any good mother
would. She brings
them — and us — to
the only one who can
do anything about
them: Jesus. At
Nagasaki, she
absorbed the
radiation,
incinerating heat,
the suffering of her
children. ‘To thee
do we send up our
sighs, mourning and
weeping in this vale
of tears.’
+ Timothy Dolan
Roman Catholic
Archbishop of New
York
Read on from the
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