A Song for Nagasaki by Paul Glynn

(San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), 267

Notes/Questions:

  • Blend of eastern and western religion/philosophy in Catholic Japan? (and including eastern books in the canon)
  • Japanese parenting: "Send the child you love away on a journey. Immaturity will be the price of parental overattachment." (23)
  • Pensées as key to his conversion.
    • Two falsehoods he identifies: overconfidence in reason, or resignation to stupidity (37)
    • "Only in Christ can the paradox of man's wretchedness and his greatness be solved." (136)
  • Urakami Christians
  • Simple living: the 10 square foot hut (71, 192, 200)
    • "You best meet the Supernatural if you make your heart like a hut that is empty of everything but the bare essentials." (202)
    • "He considered it adequately furnished when it possessed a New Testament, a crucifix, and a statue of Mary." (239)
  • "If something is true, it is eternal." (76)
  • Simplicity and truth (81)
  • Awful images from Manchurian war: "small orphans holding desperately onto the corpses of their parents" (97)
  • "God is always in charge." (111)
    • "Though the fighting was worse, he enjoyed peace and freedom in his heart." (129)
  • Work ethic and work as service (119)
    • Make your work a poem (233)
  • Almsgiving: "Assistance is authentic when it helps restore a person's dignity." (120)
  • "War brings the best out of men as well as the worst." (129)
  • "Don't just study the scriptures, pray them." (131)
    • 257
  • Science as prayer: "a laboratory could be the same as the cell of a monk" (137)
  • Augustine: Just War Theory (143)
  • Medicine: "Doctors, we have to be realists, and one day every one of us must become a patient, a terminal patient." (145, cf. Being Mortal)
    • Medicine as a vocation (234)
  • "Was not that the best way to end up, worn out in the service of your fellow men?" (146)
  • The Rosary (132, 173, 205)
  • After the bomb: "The heavens and the earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." (175, cf. Mt-24)
  • "God's Providence chose Urakami and carried the bomb right above our homes. Is there not a profound relationship between the annihilation of Nagasaki and the end of the war? Was not Nagasaki the chosen victim, the lamb without blemish, slain as a whole burnt offering on an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all the nations during World War II?...The Lord has given; the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Let us be thankful that Nagasaki was chosen for the whole burnt sacrifice! (188-189, cf. Jb-01)
    • "All that I am concerned about is what his plans are for me; the only life that interests me is one lived for him...one day at a time, supported by prayer." (238)
    • "If we have Nagai's kind of faith in the Father's Providence and in Christ's all-embracing death, we can meet anything with peace." (259)
  • "Let us declare our priorities by building a church first." (196)
  • Promoted the Sermon on the Mount as the practical charter for world peace (212)
  • "Suffering, gracefully accepted, refines the human heart, and the experience of darkness sharpens the vision of the spirit." (225)
    • "Physical suffering is an opportunity to gather treasure for heaven." (231)
  • "The Mass, like so much else in life, experienced rather than explained." (235)
  • Nagasaki vs Hiroshima response (241)
  • Fasting (245)
  • Epilogue: "If we have Nagai's kind of faith in the Father's Providence and in Christ's all-embracing death, we can meet anything with peace." (259)
  • Boeing B-29 Superfortress - Air Force Museum: "The B-29 on display, Bockscar, dropped the Fat Man atomic bomb on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, three days after the atomic attack against Hiroshima."

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Created: 2025-03-17-Mon
Updated: 2026-04-28-Tue