More Nagasaki

So after the Western Christian Clergy came back into Japan in 1865, they of course built churches, as this is what clergy do.  Oura Cathedral was the Catholic one, I think the first Cathedral.  In 1895 they build a larger Cathedral.  It took 30 years.  Officially, it was named The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.  One year, on an August 9, the faithful had gathered to prepare for the Feast of the Assumption, on August 15.  Mary was a big deal.  And then she wasn’t, as the bomb dropped and flattened the whole place.  Everyone inside the Cathedral was killed.  Years later there was reconstruction and then remodeling.  Mary did not go away.  A blackened, damaged statue, the Madonna of Nagasaki, had survived the bombing and was placed inside the Church.  Even the bomb could not get rid of her, or of the memory of the bombing. If the Olympics had happened this year, in Tokyo, guess what day they were going to have the concluding ceremony?  You guessed it,  August 9.  Oh, and a lesser memory, today is my ordination anniversary, 43 years.  I did not go away either.