“God Won”

I watched the rescue of the Chilean miners last week with a fair amount of interest. It is unusual that we see a mine cave-in at that depth where there were not only no fatalities, but no serious injuries – and where all the miners are rescued.

At some level, it all seemed fairly surreal for some reason I could never quite put my finger on. I ran across a couple of articles that gave me a minor epiphany. If you look at the videos and pictures of the miners and their families before, during, and immediately following the successful rescue, what do you see? You see family members praying, wives and mothers holding their Rosaries, you see one of the miners emerge from the rescue device and drop to his knees in thanksgiving.

We sit here in our living rooms and offices, sipping coffee and checking e-mails, and hour after hour, another one emerges, up a long dark hole, to a shaft of daylight, and there are cheers and tears — and then something more. Something that moves even the most hardened heart. The world is blinking back tears as we see it, again and again. One man, breathing his first fresh air in months, falls to his knees and prays. Another makes the sign of the cross. And in the media-saturated aftermath, one of the miners is interviewed on camera, still wearing his dark glasses, still numbed by it all, and he puts it in terms we can all understand. It sounds so simple — to some, I’m sure, simplistic — but it all makes perfect sense.

You hear an interview with Mario Sepulveda, who said “I was with God. I was with the Devil. God and the devil were fighting over me, and God won. I always knew they would get me out. I always had faith in the professionals here in Chile and in the Great Creator.”

One of the first things the miners asked to be sent down the supply tubes was a crucifix. Later they asked for statues of the Holy Mother of God and other saints.

“Although a crucifix has already been sent down, the miners are continuing to request more statues of Mary and the saints… to construct a makeshift chapel. ‘The miners want to set up a section of the chamber they are in as a shrine,’ Chilean’s Minister of Health, Jaime Manalich, told CNN.

We see those kinds of things here, but not to the degree we saw around the mine. We see a few people praying in public for intercession for one thing or another, but we never see it to the degree that was exhibited in Chile. Another item of note is that Chileans are close to universally Catholic. When have you seen Catholics praying openly in public in the US to the same degree as the Chileans were? The only time I can recall would be in front of an abortatorium.

I’ve asked myself what I might have done. I’m sure I would have prayed. A. Whole. Lot. But once rescued, would I have dropped to my knees out in the open like so many of the miners did? I’m not so sure about that one.