To the Band of Brothers: September 28, 2022

I know you guys will probably still be snug-like-a-bug-in-a-rug when you receive this email in your inbox, but at least it will be there for you when you finally get out of bed for lunch. I don’t blame you this morning if you sleep in. From what we can tell, the morning will be dark, dreary, and rainy. In other words, perfect sleeping weather. While we are very fortunate that Hurricane Ian will not hit us, it is better to be abundantly cautious and keep everyone off the streets after a full day and night of rain.

Unfortunately, from what we can tell, it seems that Ian has his sights set on Tampa (or thereabouts). I reached out to Fr. Richard Hermes, S.J., president of our brother school Jesuit Tampa and a close friend, yesterday to offer our prayers and support. Man, I don’t wish a hurricane on anyone. I mean, the only good thing about this particular kind of natural disaster is you can see it coming, prepare, and brace yourself. But, it’s a natural disaster nonetheless. I remember when I was a kid, I used to pray for hurricanes so they would give us the day off from school. 

Then came Andrew.

I will never forget South Florida in August of 1992. I had just finished my novitiate (the first two years of my Jesuit formation) in New Orleans and had moved back down to Miami to spend the summer and begin working at Belen for a year before heading up to New York and studying philosophy at Fordham University. We received news that a hurricane was heading our way, but I wasn’t worried because my experience had always been that hurricanes either fizzled out or made a sudden turn at the last minute before getting dangerously close. 

The night Hurricane Andrew hit (because, for some reason, hurricanes always hit at night), I was sleeping in my bed at the Jesuit community house. The day before, Fr. Eddy Alvarez, S.J. ‘63, insisted we tape up our windows to keep them from shattering. This was an old hurricane prep exercise that went out the window (pun intended) the moment the building code in South Florida demanded hurricane-proof windows. None of us at the house paid any attention to him and left him to his window taping. Needless to say, his was the only window in the house that shattered that night. I confess I didn’t even feel the hurricane, didn’t wake up once, didn’t even hear the wind, or at any point look out the bedroom window to see the cows and chickens and Auntie M flying by.

But man, what a disaster! That morning I walked through the neighborhood and even down 8th street and saw devastation similar to what you see in a movie after an atomic bomb is dropped. Fortunately, because Belen is built like a bunker, there was no damage to the building, allowing us to later open our doors before any other school in Miami. But all over the place, there was disaster. The farther south you went, the worse it got. Those images will be forever etched in my mind. As I drove down the streets of Miami, I wondered how the city would ever recover. 

But it did. Thanks to the determination of its residents and the incredible solidarity and generosity experienced locally, and from all over the country. The Magic City recovered and moved on. It’s amazing how resilient we can be when our backs are up against the wall. The fact is, sometimes you need a crisis to really test the true mettle of a person or persons. We see it all the time. Adversity can really unlock the extraordinary potential found in each and every one of us. Whether it’s a hurricane, earthquake, pandemic, unexpected death, cancer… whatever, adversity means opportunity. And opportunity is all we need.