While the strongest earthquake recorded in Colombia in the last decade shook the country, in the chapel of the Instituto del Buen Pastor in Bogotá a priest was living the moment of consecration. The lamp swung above his head. He did not move from the altar.
At 7:34 a.m. on Monday, August 10, an earthquake of magnitude 7.4 with its epicenter in San José del Palmar (Chocó)—the strongest recorded in Colombia in the last decade, according to the Colombian Geological Service—shook half the country, leaving more than 130 dead, hundreds injured, and dozens of collapsed buildings. The Government has declared a national disaster.
Almost 300 kilometers from the epicenter, in the Bogotá neighborhood of La Soledad, the Chapel of Our Lady of Perpetual Help—the oratory that the Instituto del Buen Pastor has served in the Colombian capital since 2010, where the traditional Mass is exclusively celebrated—was holding its daily early-morning Mass. When the earthquake struck, the priest was in the middle of the consecration.
The images, which have gone viral, speak for themselves. It is clearly visible how the lamp swings violently above the celebrant’s head. Anyone would have looked up, hesitated, or run toward the door. The priest does not flinch: he makes not a single gesture of looking upward. The acolyte remains kneeling in his place. The faithful, without a cry, without a stampede, continue kneeling while the church trembles.
Priest and acolyte were literally willing to die crushed rather than interrupt the consecration.
In red, like the martyrs
There is one detail that is not minor. On August 10 the Church celebrates Saint Lawrence, deacon and martyr, and therefore the celebrant wears red vestments: the color of the blood shed by Christ. In Bogotá, eighteen centuries after the martyrdom of the grill, a priest clothed in the color of the martyrs demonstrated without a word that this disposition is still alive: that there are men for whom what happens on the altar is worth more than their own life.
Witnesses of the faith
In times when one may doubt whether there are still people with faith—whether there are still priests who truly believe in what they do on the altar—these images answer for themselves. That priest believes he holds the Body of Christ in his hands. And whoever truly believes that does not let go, even if the roof comes down on him.
There is no feigned heroism or affectation in the video. There is something much rarer and much more valuable: the supernatural naturalness of one who knows he is before God and acts accordingly. The rubrics do not contemplate an earthquake, but faith does contemplate the altar as the place from which one does not flee.
The faithful are also witnesses. The chapel of the Buen Pastor in Bogotá gathers more than four hundred people every Sunday around the Mass of all time; that Monday, those who rose early for the daily Mass gave a silent catechesis on the Real Presence. None cried out. None broke the sacred silence of the canon.
While Colombia mourns its dead—and from these lines we join in prayer for the victims and their families—a church that trembled in Bogotá has left us with a certainty: faith exists and continues to have witnesses willing to die crushed.