One Life to Give

Let’s start with a prayer: Lord Jesus, help us to find true free­dom and hap­pi­ness in lay­ing down our lives for oth­ers. Amen.
When the news broke last month that the cap­tain of an Amer­i­can cargo ship had been cap­tured by pirates, it is likely that many peo­ple didn’t real­ize how dan­ger­ous and ter­ri­fy­ing that really was.

Arrr… Dan­ger ahoy!

From Peter Pan to the Pirates of the Caribbean, every­one loves a good pirate story. But real pirates aren’t silly swash­buck­lers like the roman­ti­cized trea­sure hunters we know from movies and books.
On Wednes­day, April 8, 2009, four ordinary-​​looking Somali fish­er­man, all less than 20 years old, used grap­pling hooks and rope lad­ders to board the mer­chant ves­sel ship Maersk Alabama. Armed with AK-​​47 assault rifles, they were seek­ing to take con­trol of the ship and its crew at gun­point.
The ship was off the coast of Soma­lia, car­ry­ing med­ical sup­plies and food des­tined for refugee camps. Some of these things belonged to Catholic Relief Services.

Vio­lence breeds violence

Soma­lia is prob­a­bly best remem­bered from the movie Black Hawk Down. Recently, how­ever, this north-​​east African coun­try has been in the news for many of these types of pirate attacks.
Years of civil war and unrest have left the coun­try very poor, and so many peo­ple there turn to vio­lent means of pro­vid­ing for them­selves and their families.

Soma­lia has hun­dreds of miles of coast­line along very busy ship­ping lanes in the Indian Ocean. Ships here are an easy tar­get for these pirates. Some­times the pirates are inter­ested in steal­ing the cargo on the ships. How­ever, most of the time they are look­ing to get ran­som money.

Walk­ing the plank

When they learned that there were pirates on board, the crew went below deck and locked them­selves in safe rooms. They had man­aged to cap­ture one pirate. Only the cap­tain and one other crew mem­ber stayed on deck to nego­ti­ate with the pirates. What hap­pened next is what makes this par­tic­u­lar story very dif­fer­ent from the other cases of piracy in the news lately.
The cap­tain of this ship, Cap­tain Richard Phillips, was so con­cerned about the safety of his crew that he did some­thing unthink­able… He asked the pirates to take him as their pris­oner, and in return let his crew take the ship and go free. Once the ship and crew were at a safe dis­tance, they would exchange Cap­tain Phillips for the cap­tured pirate.

Tide turns against him

The three armed pirates liked the idea. Capt. Phillips led them to one of the ships small lifeboats, climbed in it, and had it low­ered into the water. Cap­tain Phillips was in close quar­ters with the men who could eas­ily have killed him at any moment. He showed them how to oper­ate the boat. And then the plan went hor­ri­bly wrong. The crew of the Alabama, as they had agreed, brought out the injured pirate for the trade. But now that the pirates had their friend, they didn’t release their pris­oner. They kept Capt. Phillips as a hostage, and were hold­ing him for ran­som.

For five days these ban­dits held him under con­stant guard. There was water and food, but there were no bath­rooms or show­ers. It was unbear­ably hot in the enclosed lifeboat; so much so that Capt. Phillips said he dreaded the sun com­ing up in the morn­ing. The cap­tain and his cap­tors sat, wait­ing. The pirates weren’t sleep­ing and were becom­ing agitated.

At one point, Capt. Phillips even tried to escape. He pushed one of the pirates guard­ing him over­board, and dove in the water and swam away. He swam towards a US Navy ship, the USS Bain­bridge, that was fol­low­ing them. But it was nearly a half mile away. Before long, he was caught again; only now the pirates were very angry with him.

Is Davey Jones comin’?

By this point, the out­come didn’t look too bright for Cap­tain Phillips. “It was just set­tling every­thing. Get­ting ready to die and just set­tling every­thing. You know, say­ing my last thoughts. Andrea, the kids.” He no longer believed he would leave that boat alive. He won­dered why the pirates were drag­ging things out when he was cer­tain they would kill him in the end anyway.

He had known when he went with them that there was a chance he would die. But he had been will­ing to take that chance freely, to spare his crew. Now, faced with what seemed cer­tain death, he was at peace with his decision.

Watch­ing and waiting

Thou­sands of miles away, in a tiny town in Ver­mont, the Phillips fam­ily was expe­ri­enc­ing the tur­moil of won­der­ing what was hap­pen­ing to their hus­band and father. “We did not know what Richard was endur­ing while being held hostage on the lifeboat, and that was really the hard­est part… the won­der­ing,” said Mrs. Andrea Phillips.

Mariah, the captain’s 19 year old daugh­ter, expressed the shock of learn­ing that this had actu­ally hap­pened to her fam­ily: “This is some­thing that hap­pens to other peo­ple. Obvi­ously, I am other people.”

They received vis­its from Fr. Daniel­son, their parish priest, who prayed with them and told them not to lose hope.  Cap­tain Phillips was unaware that there were other forces at work in his story. There was prayer power gath­er­ing and there was plan­ning by the US Navy.

Liv­ing the mystery

These events came about at a very appro­pri­ate time of year. The day Capt. Phillips was cap­tured was the Wednes­day of Holy Week. The time he made his escape attempt was prob­a­bly around the time we remem­ber Jesus’ agony in the garden.

On Easter Sun­day morn­ing, Fr. Daniel­son told the Phillips’ friends and neigh­bors that they should pray more intensely for Capt. Phillips. Father said he believed Capt. Phillips’ story would serve as an exam­ple; just like Christ Jesus’ suf­fer­ing led to His Res­ur­rec­tion, once again God and His good­ness would tri­umph over evil in the end.

A Storm breaks loose

Later in the evening on Easter Sun­day, things became extremely tense on the lit­tle life boat. One of the pirates had gone aboard the USS Bain­bridge for med­ical treat­ment, and to try and arrange the ran­som pay­ment. When the other three pirates hadn’t heard from him in a while, they got rest­less. They climbed out of the hatch of the life boat in plain view, and began fir­ing warn­ing shots in the air. The Bain­bridge and the lifeboat were both mov­ing, and the waves were bounc­ing them up and down in the darkness.

Capt. Phillips had no idea what was going on. As he heard the shots, he dove to the deck and got as low as he could. He thought per­haps the pirates were fight­ing against each other. Or per­haps they were get­ting ready to kill him.

Sal­va­tion is from the SEAL’s

US Navy SEAL snipers took advan­tage of the oppor­tu­nity, fir­ing one per­fect shot at each pirate. After what felt like a long time, but was only a few sec­onds later, Capt. Phillips heard the beau­ti­ful sound of a US Navy SEAL’s voice, ask­ing him if he was alright. He was saved.

“Hi, Honey…”

A short time later, back at home, Mrs. Phillips, their daugh­ter Mariah, their son Daniel, and their whole fam­ily were relieved and elated to hear Cap­tain Phillips him­self, on the phone, telling them he was safe.
Mariah said, “You never know how strong your fam­ily can be when some­thing like this hap­pens.”
In a state­ment about how they sur­vived the emo­tional tor­ture of the five day ordeal, Mrs. Phillips said, “My fam­ily and clos­est friends held onto our faith know­ing that Richard would come home.”

“I need a hero…”

What makes Cap­tain Phillips a hero? Is it in con­quer­ing or strength? No. Like Jesus, his will­ing­ness to sur­ren­der him­self as a pris­oner, to suf­fer, and accept even death is where we find his true hero­ism.
Cap­tain Richard Phillips is an exam­ple of love and respect for life. The lives of his ship­mates meant so much to him, that he would offer up his own to save them. This is the ulti­mate sign of love and sac­ri­fice. Whether he real­ized it at the time or not, Capt. Phillips was imi­tat­ing Jesus Christ, at the very time when Jesus made the sac­ri­fice that saves us all. He will­ingly offered him­self to save oth­ers. He spent a few days in a lit­tle “tomb-​​like” cap­sule, and on Easter Sun­day he got to taste a lit­tle bit of Jesus’ Easter victory.

Just doing his job

Cap­tain Phillips does not con­sider him­self a hero. For him, what he did was just part of his job. He had accepted the job as a cap­tain, and that meant putting the safety of his crew above his own. Yet there is some­thing we admire about this atti­tude. When we see his exam­ple, we know we have met a real man, a man who puts oth­ers first.
True man­hood is about ser­vice and sac­ri­fice. These are qual­i­ties we also admire in so many women, espe­cially our own moms (Happy Mother’s Day to all our moms!), but there is some­thing we typ­i­cally think of as par­tic­u­larly mas­cu­line about the will­ing­ness to face dan­ger and take a huge risk for oth­ers. Men were designed by God to be pro­tec­tors. They are called to pro­tect their fam­ily and pro­tect their com­mu­ni­ties. They are designed by God to over­come the fear of dan­ger, because some­times real life is dan­ger­ous. Some­times risk is nec­es­sary for really impor­tant things.

Imi­tat­ing Christ

Jesus Christ was a real man. He over­came his fear of dan­ger. He put our safety above his own. Christ, by his life and death, helps men dis­cover what it means to be a man. Let’s ask Christ to raise up more real men today.
For those of us who are guys, we can make a res­o­lu­tion to learn to love oth­ers so much that we are will­ing to sac­ri­fice for them.
For girls, let’s start thank­ing some of the real men in our lives for what they do for us, start­ing with our own dads, or those other men who help keep us safe. And let’s show the guys that we also know how to sac­ri­fice with courage, putting our hearts and lives at the ser­vice of good­ness and love. The world will be a bet­ter, safer place.
Christ wants us to help him do this. It’s part of the call to love that he makes to each of us.