Madhu

(August 23, Jaffna, Sri Lanka Guardian) We are shocked to hear that various and urgent moves are being made to have the celebration of the August feast of Madhu held there almost a fortnight hence.

The entire neighbourhood of the shrine comprising many villages is blood stained and deserted and is still fresh with the stench of death and desolation.

There was a claymore detonated, almost within the shrine area killing 17 persons and injuring many more, victims including school children, teachers and elders.

Rev. Fr. Packiaranjith was killed by another claymore when taking urgently needed provisions to those displaced from the Madhu area.

Many more died of claymores in the same Madhu area.

We lost Fr. Karunaratnam (Kili) too in yet another claymore murder.

Thousands have been displaced from the sanctuary of their homes and are yet living under trees at the mercy of the elements for no fault of theirs, looking for some merciful hand to even feed their children with the next meal. They have faced deaths in their families and are yet sobbing, are yet suffering from the injuries received and are still experiencing mental stress not knowing when they will be hit by aerial bombing or by a claymore prevalent there.

In all civilized areas, even a wedding, fixed and already prepared for, is postponed if a death takes place in the neighbourhood, as an expression of sympathy with the bereaved.

Are we, Christians, going to ‘celebrate’ in a selfish and arrogant manner and ignore the feelings of all those people?

When the real and immediate ‘celebrants’ of the festival are in such turmoil, are we justified in celebrating the ‘feast’ there?

Aren’t our faith and the feast, its expression, expected to respect the feelings of theirs? Would such a celebration be meaningful or would it be devoid of the humaneness which Jesus was so full of?

Shouldn’t our faith and devotions be closely associated with the lives of the people around and the tempo of social milieu?

Are we going to behave like Nero with the fiddle? Or corporate with those wanting to celebrate a war victory there?

Is the feast so very important? Taking this opportunity, can’t the people of the country be awakened to the grim reality around them and in the country at this juncture.

Shouldn’t we support the Bishop of Mannar in his request to have the shrine area publicly and legally declared and observed as a war free and arms free zone by the combatants?

Where is the guarantee that it will not be attacked again? Haven’t we experienced war reversals several times in the past? Hasn’t Madhu itself changed hands several times?

(Commission for Justice and Peace of the Catholic Diocese, Jaffna)
- Sri Lanka Guardian