Father Dominic Emmanuel

Each athlete and player in the recently-concluded XIX Commonwealth Games (CWG) was hoping against hope that s/he would improve her/his previous best performance and add just one more medal to the country’s tally. And while all did their country proud, the Indian contingent undoubtedly came out with flying colours. One central building block in all of them attempting to do their best was an element of hope and that is why even as ace shuttler Saina Nehwal struggled in her second game

against the Malaysian — Mew Choo Wong — after having lost the first, and not giving up her hopes, she bounced back to take home the gold. One of the great things about sportspersons is that they never give up hope. And while different Commonwealth countries were cheerfully counting their medal haul in New Delhi, around the same time, 13th October to be precise, another country in another part of the world, having nothing to do with CWG, was on the threshold of winning another unique gold medal in — if there ever was an accolade for — a competition in hope.
Chile had certainly won the supreme and best possible medal at the end of the meticulously planned rescue operation of the 33 miners from the collapsed San Jose mine on that victorious day when India and England were desperately vying to hold on to the second place at the CWG. If in sports terms, the feat in Chile could make a claim to the highest honour, in terms of faith and hope, it was nothing short of “miracle”. The rationalists and atheists, as expected, would rubbish it saying that it was just a victory of advanced technology and human brain and that faith and hope had nothing to do with it.
Mario Sepulveda, one of the survivors after bounding from captivity said: “I was with God and the devil, and I reached out for God. I held onto him and never did I lose the belief that I was going to get out”. The first miner to come out of the mine fell straight on his knees and thanked God for being alive and well after 69 days of confinement.
Even before professional services were available to the men in the mine, they had organised themselves and rationed what food they had in the hope that they would be found and help would come. For 17 days they subsisted on a starvation diet, but when a probe from the outside world finally reached them, the message they sent up was a simple but positive one: “We are fine in the shelter, the 33 of us”.
With their hopes raised and supplies reaching them through three narrow tubes, the miners refined their routines. The oldest of the lot, Mario Gomez, lost no time in asking for religious statues and set up a shrine where the men could pray. Another request saw 33 tiny Bibles descend. The men were buoyed up by the presence of family members waiting and praying above.
We don’t know what exactly they read from the Bibles but one miner later said, “I never used to pray but now I have learnt to pray”. The population of Chile is nearly 100 per cent Christian. But if it happened in another country and another culture, they would have got either the Quran or the Bhagvad Gita or the Ramayana or the Torah or Tripitaka or Mahayana Sutras or anything that would have helped those in despair to remain sane with the hope that God was at their side. That is the tremendous thing about the human spirit that lives and survives on hope. The drive to stay alive and have hope is a spiritual force.
The Seventh-day Adventists, a Christian organisation, who sent mini-Bibles down to the crew, highlighted Psalm 40: “I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined to me, and heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit... and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps”.
Though Chile is not a theocratic state, yet President Sebastian Pinera, a man of faith, too joined in praying with relatives at the rescue operation site called “Camp Hope”. Reflecting on the meaning of the moment he said, “When the first miner emerges safe and sound, I hope all the bells of all the churches of Chile ring out forcefully, with joy and hope. Faith has moved mountains”.
Whatever bells rang, they proclaimed to the world the gratitude felt by all those who did not waver in their hope that God would bring out the miners alive. Technology certainly brought them out of the pit but it was their faith and hope that kept them from going insane or wild. In the next column we shall see what the Bible says about hope.

— Father Dominic Emmanuel, a founder-member of Parliament of Religions, is currently the director of communication of the Delhi Catholic Church. He was awarded the National Communal Harmony Award 2008 by the Government of India. He can be contacted at frdominic@gmail.com