People pray the rosary during Holy Hour at St. Monica Catholic Church in Dallas, Thursday, Sept. 7, 2017. (Ron Heflin)
By Father Timothy Gollob
Special to The Texas Catholic
In the days just before the recent catastrophic hurricanes in Texas and Florida, there were many hours of warnings about what was about to happen. What so many have just lived through happened almost exactly as had been predicted.
How did the weather forecasters get their knowledge?
My good sailor father had a saying which he often repeated: “When the birds are flying high, look out for storms!”
And that is how our scientists predicted the hurricanes… by means of satellites high in the skies. The readings of pressure and of wind velocity and of water temperature, gave the predictors hints of what was to occur.
Many people took their advice and evacuated their homes and businesses. After the storms had finally passed, streams of anxious people came back to see what damage had been inflicted on their homes and vehicles.
Some were relieved by the sight of an intact neighborhood, but others found wreckage and way, way too much water in their streets and houses.
One thing was constant with the latter group. They acknowledged that they still had their lives and their losses were only material things which they could rebuild. They had prepared for their evacuation by loading up their children, their pets and their memories.
Now they were joined by a world of people who had become their brothers and sisters in the wonderful spirit of coming to their rescue by means of prayer, work and essential material aid.
Some of these from Dallas might have read the article about how Texas fire ants respond to a flood. It seems that they sense beforehand that the waters are rising. They immediately take their larvae out of the ground before the tunnels flood. The worker ants join their legs together to form a raft. They cradle the small larvae in the raft along with the queen.
Small bubbles keep the whole colony alive and moving with the water until all come to rest on higher ground and a new dwelling is dug.
We are the ones called to lock our lives for a while with our cousins who have come out of danger and now need some help in digging a new beginning of their lives. We are the bubbles that give them hope.
Father Timothy Gollob is the pastor of Holy Cross Catholic Church in Oak Cliff.
