MEMORIAL FOR TSUNAMI VICTIMS

The Rev Canon J. Francis Xavier, is an Honourary Associate Pastor of the Parish of St. Columba & All Hallows, (Anglican Church of Canada), Psychotherapist/Counsellor, (volunteer) Tamil Eelam Society of Canada and Case Coordinator, Family Service Association of Toronto. He was invited by the Markham Town Centre to the Inter-Faith Memorial Service for Tsunami Victims to conduct reflections and prayer and to St. Michael's Roman Catholic Cathedral, Toronto on Sunday, January 2, 2005.

We give here his reflections which he did in both places and which was much appreciated and commented upon as very moving and challenging. His philosophy about prayer-reflection is "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable"! He was known to challenge his audience by speaking the truth even if it hurts.

We are collectively in grief and agony and as we watch the pictures rolling before our eyes and hear heartrending commentaries. We watch with deep sorrow and fear bodies of men, women, children and even babies floating in sea before us. We see faces of anguish, despair, and horror in Indonesia, Thailand, India, and Sri Lanka, the islands around India, Tanzania, Kenya, and Somalia. The frightening, dreadful and deadly tsunami that was triggered by the earthquake miles under the sea of Southeast Asia has shocked and stunned our senses.

We are gathered together in the name of so many religions with representative of the respective religions. We are in solidarity with one another and above all with the 150,000 dead and one third of them children! We are solidarity with the tens of thousands who are desperately grieving for their dear ones snatched away by the ruthless giant waves.

I invite you to join with me in singing just five acclamations to an oriental tune as I call upon the Spirits of dead ones in this cosmic tragedy. I will intone and call upon the Spirits of the infants and children torn away from their mothers and fathers; the Spirits of the mothers who struggled to save their children and were sucked by the angry ways; the fathers struggled to save their wives and children and lost their hold and taken away by the monster waves; the Spirits of entire families taken away by the frightful waves and Spirits of groups of villagers crushed by the giant waves and mercilessly pulled away. Your responsorial singing to the same tune I would sing shall be: "Our dear ones, come stand beside us". I thank you for cooperating in this ritual.

At this moment I wish to remind you of the tsunamis my Tamil community suffered. In the Mulaithivu region in the northeast of Sri Lanka, I heard that tsunamis after tsunamis, 27 tsunamis, came one after another each higher than the previous one and swallowed up the entire beach area where thousands were killed. This is symbolic to us the Tamil people of Sri Lanka. For the last several years series of oppressive governments triggered tsunamis after tsunamis that killed more than 60,000 Tamils and we lost more than 17,000 of our Tamil freedom fighters. It was interesting to note that many mothers who heard the thunderous roaring of the sea shouted to their children to run and hide as Kfir bombers of the Sri Lanka Air Force were coming to bomb us. CNN heard these comments from the mothers who escaped and related this fact.

I must tell you that even today, we are hit by another awful tsunami, and some of you would have already heard that thunder. The UN Secretary General Koffie Annan who wanted to visit all the Tamil areas heavily affected by Tsunami was blocked by president of Sri Lanka. Can you imagine that he was prevented from visiting the worst hit areas, to see our funerals and hear our lamentations? Have you heard of such inhumanity any where in the world? This is an outrage against our spirits, minds and hearts!!. We are profoundly hurt that such a tsunami was triggered deliberately by the government against us and this disdainful act is worse than the angry waves!!!.

My last but one point for our prayerful reflection is that two thousand years ago a Jewish young man claiming to be the Son of God was hit by the worst of tsunamis. God's love was manifested in him. But the tsunami of sins triggered by the bad will of humans crashed him to ignominious death of the cross. We have seen that tsunami in the Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson. We saw the horror of it all done by the Roman imperialism. But the tsunami of our sins could not succeed in the end for Jesus on the third day overcame death and gave us hope through the mystery of his resurrection.

In spite of our sorrow and mourning we have hope and no tsunami can drown the spirit of freedom for the Tamils or for any one of us. We believe that even those swallowed by ocean are in God's hands. But we have to act on our hope that God gave us. And that is the last point of my prayerful reflection.

Our action in hope is our responsibility for all peoples. How could there be Tsunami Warning Signals for rich countries? There are such signals in Hawaii, in California, in Vancouver, in British Isles and Japan. We have money to make smart bombs but no money to install Tsunami Warning Signals in the Indian Ocean? This is a shame and we should as society take up the responsibility. Further more, yesterday I was at another memorial service in Mississauga and the venerable and wise elderly lady, the Mayor of Mississauga said that the victims of tsunami is now 150,000 and still rising but THIRTY TIMES that number of people are dying every year in the world because of aides, malnutrition, preventable diseases, poverty and many other social ills and she said we, all of us have to take responsibility to prevent such a horrendous killings!.

Please stand as I intone a lamentation in Tamil. I will also play the cymbal to keep time. This is sung on Good Friday in certain Roman Catholic Tamil Churches during the Passion play when the statue of the body of Jesus is taken from the cross, laid on his Mother's lap and later laid in the tomb. The lamentation is as if it were the words of Mary, His Mother. I transliterate it to suit the tsunami event. Please bear with me for the tune itself will be painfully sharp to the emotions and deeply moving. Please close your eyes and imagine you are in solidarity with those affected by the tsunamis. Let us for these few moments share in their agony and poignancy.

Oh! My Son what have they done to you?
Why has this horrible sin of tsunami devastated you and me?
I did not believe when you friends in anguish told me
That they will hang you on the cross!
My Son, My life, why all this to you and to me, why?
Are you now sleeping in the tomb? Speak to me, My Son?
They told me that you would vanquish death and rise again?
My Son, then why are sleeping in this tomb as I weep over you?

Let us rise learning many lessons from this Act of God on December 26th knowing how vulnerable we are and how much hopeful and responsible we have to be for one another.

[At Markham Town Centre some of the Sinhalese who were present met Fr. Xavier and accosted him that it was a shame on him for using prayer time for politicizing. He turned the question back on them and said that we all Sri Lankans should be ashamed of our Government that for years hid from the world the horrible tsunamis it unleashed on the Tamil Nation and today even blocked Koffie Annan from visiting the worst affected area because it is in the Tamil region! Shame indeed!]

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