Hiroshima asks us disturbing questions that touch the deepest part of our consciousness

The 6 of August will mark the 60th anniversary of the explosion of the atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The Superior General of the Claretians Missioners, Josep María Abella, was not there on that day, but he spent more than 20 years in Japan, and he knows first hand the consequences resulting from the air strike that caused 140.000 deaths. ?I have visited the city of Hiroshima many times. I didn?t simply go as a tourist. Going to Hiroshima is like making a pilgrimage; it is to enter into the mystery of human consciousness and to feel upset facing the fact that human beings have the ability to cause such a great pain and death?.

In an article in the latest issue of the magazine ?Religious Life? published by the Claretians Fathers in Madrid, Abella writes: Hiroshima places before us disturbing questions that touch the deepest part of our consciousness. He also adds it is advisable to remember the dark periods of the history of
humanity in order to be able to build a future that responds to the true aspiration of the human being and to God?s project.

For Abella who was born in Lerida in 1949, Hiroshima is a sign and a call,? and for that reason it has to find a special resonance in the lives of those who consecrate themselves entirely to the God of life. It requires of them sincerity, lucidity and audacity to commit themselves to change the course of history when it wants to wander on a path of death. And this, unfortunately, is what frequently occurs,? remarks the Superior General of the Claretians.

Abella ends his reflection pointing out that Hiroshima has known how to re-read its history and to look for ways to respond. It has not done this on a path to revenge, but by knowing how to make of its experience a denouncement of war and an invitation to work for peace.? In this sense, Hiroshima is a point of convergence of many initiatives, of single persons or groups, in favor of peace and disarmament and from where everyone feels sent to bring something to construct this new world in the peace for which we yearn. Hiroshima and what it represents should be a point of reference for all those persons who feel a true passion for humanity and for the God who loves it passionately also.