5th Sunday of Easter (Year A)

Mersey Leven Catholic Parish

OUR VISION

To be a vibrant Catholic Community 

unified in its commitment 

to growing disciples for Christ 

Parish Priest: Fr Mike Delaney 

Mob: 0417 279 437 

mike.delaney@aohtas.org.au

Priest in Residence:  Fr Phil McCormack  

Mob: 0437 521 257

pmccormack43@bigpond.com

Deacon in Residence: Rev Steven Smith

Mob: 0411 522 630

steven.smith@aohtas.org.au

Postal Address: PO Box 362, Devonport 7310

Parish Office: 90 Stewart Street, Devonport 7310 

(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)

Office Phone: 6424 2783 Fax: 6423 5160 

Email: merseyleven@aohtas.org.au

Secretary: Annie Davies

Finance Officer: Anne Fisher

Pastoral Council Chair:  Felicity Sly

Mob: 0418 301 573

fsly@internode.on.net

Mersey Leven Catholic Parish Weekly Newsletter: mlcathparish.blogspot.com.au

Parish Mass times for the Month: mlcpmasstimes.blogspot.com.au

Weekly Homily Podcast: mikedelaney.podomatic.com 

Archdiocesan Website: www.hobart.catholic.org.au for news, information and details of other Parishes.

         

PLENARY COUNCIL PRAYER

Come, Holy Spirit of Pentecost.
Come, Holy Spirit of the great South Land.
O God, bless and unite all your people in Australia 
and guide us on the pilgrim way of the Plenary Council.
Give us the grace to see your face in one another 
and to recognise Jesus, our companion on the road.
Give us the courage to tell our stories and to speak boldly of your truth.
Give us ears to listen humbly to each other 
and a discerning heart to hear what you are saying.
Lead your Church into a hope-filled future, 
that we may live the joy of the Gospel.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, bread for the journey from age to age.   
Amen.
Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for us.
St Mary MacKillop, pray for us.

Parish Prayer

Heavenly Father,

We thank you for gathering us together 
and calling us to serve as your disciples.

You have charged us through Your Son, Jesus, with the great mission

  of evangelising and witnessing your love to the world.

Send your Holy Spirit to guide us as we discern your will

 for the spiritual renewal of our parish.

Give us strength, courage, and clear vision 
as we use our gifts to serve you.

We entrust our parish family to the care of Mary, our mother,

and ask for her intercession and guidance 
as we strive to bear witness

 to the Gospel and build an amazing parish.

Amen.

Our Parish Sacramental Life

Baptism: Arrangements are made by contacting Parish Office. Parents attend a Baptismal Preparation Session organised with a Priest.

Reconciliation, Confirmation and Eucharist: Are received following a Family–centred, Parish-based, School-supported Preparation Program.

Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults: prepares adults for reception into the Catholic community.

Marriage: arrangements are made by contacting one of our priests - couples attend a Pre-marriage Program

Anointing of the Sick: please contact one of our priests

Reconciliation:  BY APPOINTMENT ONLY

THE FOLLOWING PUBLIC ACTIVITIES ARE SUSPENDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

Eucharistic Adoration Devonport, Benediction with Adoration Devonport,

 Legion of Mary,  Prayer Group.

NO PUBLIC MASSES UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE DUE TO THE COVID-19 (CORONAVIRUS) PANDEMIC

DAILY AND SUNDAY MASS ONLINE: You will need to go to the following link and register:  https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_gHY-gMZ7SZeGMDSJyTDeAQ

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. Please keep this confirmation email as that will be your entry point for all further Masses or Liturgies.

Sunday 10th May     9:00am
Monday 11th May    No Mass
Tuesday 12th May   9:00am … Sts Nereus and Achilleus
Wednesday 13th May 9:00am … Our Lady of Fatima
Thursday 14th May 9:00am … St Matthias
Friday 15th May      9:00am
Saturday 16th May  9:00am
Sunday 17th May    9:00am

Your prayers are asked for the sick:  

Ted Horton, Jane Fitzpatrick, Barry Mulcahy, Mark Aylett, & …

Let us pray for those who have died recently: 

Robert Becker, Denis Prior, Ken Bailey, Irene Blachford, Barry Quinn, Peter Phair, Vanessa Beasley, Lorna Watson, Bill Bracken

Pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 6th - 12th May, 2020

Leonard Field, Kathleen Bryan, Jean Clare, Kathleen Mack, Edward McCormack, Pim Schneiders, Lauris Pullen, Don Burrows, Felicia Periera, Karina Locket, Epie Howlett, Elaine Milic, Joan Bonner, John Nickols, Anthony Smith.

May the souls of the faithful departed,

 through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen

 PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:

As I come to pray with this Gospel text, Jesus says to me, as to the disciples, ‘Do not let your heart be troubled – trust in me’.

I notice how I am feeling. Do I, like the disciples, come with a troubled heart, anxious about current events, concerned for family and friends?

I take time to become still, at peace in God’s presence. After a time, I read the rest of the text slowly. Perhaps, like Thomas and Philip, I have questions? What do I want to say to Jesus? I look again at the text; where am I most drawn to ponder at this point in my life?

I speak to Jesus, remembering his words, ‘Trust in God now, and trust in me’. I end my prayer slowly, asking for whatever grace I need.

Mother’s Day Prayer

We pray for all mothers, who give life and tend to our every need;

May they be blessed with patience and tenderness to care for their families and themselves with great joy.

We remember mothers who are separated from their children for whatever reason.

May they feel the loving embrace of our God who wipes every tear away.

We pray for women who are not mothers but still love and shape us with motherly care and compassion.

We remember mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers who are no longer with us

 but who live forever in our memory and nourish us with their love.

Amen.

Weekly Ramblings

During my time in the Persian Gulf with the RAN in 2005 I visited several ships belonging to the Allies including the USS Antietam, a guided missile cruiser. On one particular day, I can’t remember the exact occasion, crew members of HMAS Darwin were invited on board for a cook-out (BBQ) and at the end of the gathering we were invited to join the US Sailors watching a movie – Ground Hog Day. The only problem was that all week our crew had been complaining that the particular patrol they were on at the time was so repetitious that it felt like Ground Hog Day – they couldn’t understand why no-one wanted to stay and watch the movie.

I hope I’m not jinxing anyone but I wonder why no TV Station has aired the same movie as we live through, what I’m sure many of you are feeling, a series of days when someone will almost certainly ask – what day is it? Life in a time of social distancing and isolation has a real sameness about it but … I passionately believe that we are fortunate to live in a country where drastic measures early on have meant, whilst there is pain and challenges, we are not suffering the number of incidents and deaths that are present elsewhere.

This weekend as we celebrate Mother’s Day I would like to extend my prayerful best wishes to all the mothers of our Parish as we remember their love and devotion for however many years they have cared for and nurtured their family. It is with a sense of loss that I also offer my prayers for the eternal repose of the souls of those mothers who now know the fullness of God’s love.

Next Friday, 15th May, following the 9am Mass I would like to extend an invitation to any parishioner who might like to join me in using the Prego Reflection (included in the newsletter each week) to reflect on the Gospel for the 6th Sunday of Easter. If you receive the newsletter by email you will have access to both the Gospel and Prego – all you need is the Zoom access and if you are using a Smartphone or Tablet you will be able to join in. Simply email me (mike.delaney@aohtas.org.au) and I will send you a link to the chat.
Stay safe, stay sane and, if you can, stay at home

CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER:

The contemplative world is not just in a monastery. It can equally be in our domestic settings. And how appropriate to be considering such a world in our current situation. So I am offering an introduction to two contemplative prayer forms with the view to maybe establishing an ongoing contemplative prayer group.
These are:
· Centering Prayer - a receptive method of silent prayer
· Chanting – a contemplative practice of praying the psalms which naturally draws our focus to the present and calms the dualistic mind.
If you are not familiar with these forms of prayer, I encourage you to give it a go. In this initial program over 4 weeks there will be appropriate teaching to enable you to engage and incorporate into your own prayer. When? Wednesdays at 7 pm. Please let me (John) know by email if you are interested in this initial program, and then I can send you the log in details. Email: john.leearcher@gmail.com

ONLINE GIVING: The details for online Planned Giving are: Bank Commonwealth; Account Name: Mersey Leven; BSB: 067 000; Acc No: 1031 5724. In the Description area simply add your Name or Envelope Number.

BANK DEPOSIT: If you go to a Branch of the Commonwealth Bank to make a deposit to the Parish you will need to change the Account Name to Catholic Development Fund. The BSB and Account Number remain the same. 

PROJECT COMPASSION: Please support the work of Caritas/Project Compassion by making your Project Compassion offering online: Bank: CBA, Account Name: Caritas Australia. BSB: 062438 Account No: 10038330. Reference please put Agent Number 187907 then your surname. We are unable to provide receipts, please contact Caritas directly.

                                                

Letter From Rome

Cardinal Sarah Set To Retire: What If A Layman Took His Place?

The cardinal, who heads the Congregation for Divine Worship, turns 75 in mid-June

  -  Robert Mickens, Rome, May 8, 2020. 

This article is from the La-Croix International website - you can access the site here  but complete full access is via paid subscription

The coronavirus pandemic has brought to light the great contributions contemporary Catholicism is making to humanity and the world.

Unfortunately, you won't find many of them in the field of liturgy or spirituality. At least not at the instigation of many of the Church's ordained ministers.

The shining star of Catholicism in this time of crisis has been those persons and organizations that are explicitly dedicated to promoting and carrying out the Church's social teaching.

Almost universally, they have found ways to continue their ministry of service by feeding the hungry and giving material assistance to the homeless, the poor and the unemployed.

Catholics inspired by the social teaching have also been the most tenacious in advocating for and attending to the needs of minorities, prisoners, immigrants, refugees and all others who are most adversely affected by COVID-19 and the disruptive measures to stop its spread.

And, of course, those who have dedicated their lives and talents to the Church's commitment to caring for the sick are rightly seen today as society's heroes and even Christianity's martyrs.

So the Catholic Church's social teaching has weathered the storm admirably well during these strange and disturbing times.

Father saying Mass for the laypeople

But, sadly, the Church's sacramental system has not. It's hard to know where to place the blame – on our liturgical theology or on those who administer the sacraments and lead the community in prayer.

The bishops did not have much of a clue what to do after it became impossible, for health reasons, to carry on daily and Sunday Mass as usual (i.e. in the church with a congregation).

Outside of having Father continue to say Mass for the laypeople – whether irresponsibly, through "clandestine" (illegal) gatherings, or virtually, through TV or digital transmissions – almost all the bishops and a whole lot of priests seemed to be caught flat-footed.

One is tempted to think of the old joke about being "as lost as a Jesuit in Holy Week". But it's worse than that. Probably much worse.

Having little appetite or aptitude for celebrating long and ornate liturgies is nothing compared to not understanding or, worse, disdaining what celebrating Eucharistically is all about – especially according to the Christian Church's most ancient tradition.

The liturgical reform, which was already well underway in the several decades leading up to the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), recovered and re-elaborated that tradition.

And this resulted in significant modifications to the Mass, which Paul VI codified in 1972 with the promulgation of a new Roman Missal.

Essential to this reformed rite was (and remains!) the gathered assembly – physically present – and the active participation of all who are part of that assembly.

Confecting the Eucharist

But, regrettably, a number of pre-Vatican II notions about the Eucharist have remained even after the reform.

Some are based on the concepts of form and matter, which can end up making the celebration of the sacraments minimalistic and legalistic.

For example, when a validly ordained presbyter licitly confects the elements of bread and wine by using the proper formula (words of institution and invocation of the Holy Spirit), and then consumes those elements, it is considered a valid Eucharist.

The presence of the assembly may be desirable, but it's not necessary. The practice of priests celebrating "private" Masses by themselves or with the assistance of an altar boy is not a relic of the Middle Ages. It is something that continues to this very day.

This is a reductive view of the sacrament. And it is clericalist.

Despite the attempts by Pope Francis to rid the Church of clericalism, it remains alive and kicking, especially in some sectors of the Vatican.

Cardinal Sarah's decrees

The Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments may not be the worst, but its prefect – Cardinal Robert Sarah – sure has a clericalist view of ordination and the liturgy.

He issued two decrees – "In time of COVID-19" (March 19 and 25) – that instruct bishops and priests how and where to celebrate the Holy Week and Easter liturgies, what is to be included or omitted.

As Andrea Grillo, a layman who teaches liturgy at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute (Sant'Anselmo in Rome), noted:"It's as if the 'priestly community' – the term Lumen gentium [the Vatican II Constitution on the Church] uses to define the Church in its full identity as the Body of Christ – refers only to community of clerics. But the priestly community that LG speaks of is the ecclesial community of all the baptized, not the community of clerics… (The congregation) seems to consider the problem of the Easter Triduum almost exclusively as regarding the 'ritual practices that are possible (or impossible) for clerics'. The 'non-clerics' evidently are a residual category."

A similar sort of pre-Vatican II clericalist logic is now being used once again as bishops in places where lockdown measures are being relaxed try to decide how to resume public liturgies.

Liturgical distancing

There are strict government-decreed protocols that must be followed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Principally these were concerned with ensuring social distancing and good hygiene.

Here in Italy, as in many other places, that means only a limited number of people will be allowed at one time inside churches. They will have to wear facemasks and use hand sanitizer upon entering the building.

Then the COVID-19 temple guards will make sure worshippers are spaced far enough apart to comply with government regulations. People will not be provided with any books, missalettes or hymn sheets.

Apparently there will be no singing at all. That propels germs, and after all, germs are contagious.

Nonetheless, many of the bishops and the clericalists – many lay folks, too – seem to be pleased as punch to get back to Mass, whatever the cost or inconveniences.

But Grillo is not.

Just because you can doesn't always mean you should

He argues that celebrating the liturgy, especially the Eucharist, is not just an exercise of the freedom of religion, but an expression of ecclesial faith. And at least three dimensions of that should be more carefully considered as we re-open churches for worship.

First of all, "the Mass is of its nature contagious" in that it involves physical contact and physically gathering together.

"Distances are shortened, hands are shaken, the one bread and one chalice are shared, hymns are sung…" he notes.

In essence, in the true sense of Catholic liturgy, worshipers gather together, they do not stand apart or at a distance.

Secondly, "the Mass is purely gratuitous".

What does this mean if people will have to reserve a place or be assigned a particular Mass to attend, perhaps even as a lottery, as some are proposing?

"A Mass 'by reservation' is a contradiction in terms," says Grillo.

"The gratuitousness of the Eucharistic act does not permit 'reserving places' or multiplying 'courses' to add more passengers. It's not a metro that passes every three minutes," he says, precisely because you don't form a community on the metro.

And, finally, "the Mass is rooted locally".

That means protocols must recognize that some places that are free of the virus should not be forced to follow the identical measures necessarily imposed on those that still have many infections.

Grillo is one of the brightest and most sensible post-Vatican II liturgists in the Catholic Church today. He is also one of the few courageous enough to denounce the neo-Tridentine tendencies displayed by priests, bishops and even popes.

Cardinal Sarah turns 75 on June 15 and will have been head of the Congregation for Divine Worship for nearly six years. It should be time for him to retire.

It's not going to happen, but in a moment of post-lockdown delirium it's nice to dream of Pope Francis appointing a non-cleric – Andrea Grillo – as the new prefect.

                                  

The Prayer of Quiet

This article is taken from the Daily Email sent by Fr Richard Rohr OFM from the Center for Action and Contemplation. You can subscribe to receive the email by clicking here 

The Desert Fathers and Mothers withdrew from cities to the desert to live freely, apart from the economic, cultural, and political structure of the Roman Empire. At first, the empire persecuted the church, but in 313 CE, Constantine gave Christianity a privileged status, not out of enlightenment or goodwill but in service of uniformity and control. The Desert Fathers and Mothers knew, as we should today, that empire would be an unreliable partner. They recognized that they had to find inner freedom from the system before they could return to it with true love, wisdom, and helpfulness. This is a useful dynamic for all of us who want to act on behalf of the world. If we stay immersed in culturally acceptable ways of thinking and doing, Christianity’s deep, transformative power is largely lost. 

So how do we find inner freedom? We can begin by noticing that whenever we suffer pain, the mind is always quick to identify with the negative aspects of things and replay them over and over again, wounding us deeply. This pattern must be recognized early and definitively. Peace of mind is actually an oxymoron. When you’re in your mind, you’re hardly ever at peace, and when you’re at peace, you’re never only in your mind. The early Christian abbas and ammas knew this and first insisted on finding the inner silence necessary to tame the obsessive mind. Their method was originally called the prayer of quiet and eventually referred to as contemplation. It is the core teaching in the early Christian period, but it has been emphasized much more in the Eastern Church than in the West.

In The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Benedicta Ward relates this story, one of the briefest but most popular of all the desert sayings: “A brother came to Scetis to visit Abba Moses and asked him for a word. The old man said to him, ‘Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.’” [1] But you don’t have to have a cell, and you don’t have to run away from the responsibilities of an active life, to experience solitude and silence. In another story, Amma Syncletica said, “There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the town, and they are wasting their time. It is possible to be a solitary in one’s mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is a solitary to live in the crowd of his own thoughts.” [2]  

By solitude, the desert mystics didn’t mean mere privacy or protected space, although there is a need for that too. The desert mystics saw solitude, in Henri Nouwen’s words, as a “place of conversion, the place where the old self dies and the new self is born, the place where the emergence of the [person] occurs.” [3] Solitude is a courageous encounter with our naked, most raw and real self, in the presence of pure Love. This level of contemplation cannot help but bring about action. 

[1] The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, trans. Benedicta Ward, rev. ed. (Cistercian Publications: 1984, ©1975), 139.
[2] Ibid., 234.
[3] Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart (Harper Collins Publishers: 2009), 27.

                                             

Fever

This article is taken from the archive of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find this article and many others by clicking here  

John Updike, after recovering from a serious illness, wrote a poem he called, Fever. It ends this way: But it is a truth long known that some secrets are hidden from health.

Deep down we already know this, but as a personal truth this is not something we appropriate in a classroom, from parents or mentors, or even from religious teaching. These just tell us that this is true, but knowing it does not itself impart wisdom. Wisdom is acquired, as Updike says, through a personal experience of serious illness, serious loss, or serious humiliation.

The late James Hillman, writing as an agnostic, came to the same conclusion. I remember hearing him at a large conference where, at point in his talk, he challenged his audience with words to this effect: Think back, honestly and with courage, and ask yourself: What are the experiences in your life that have made you deep, that have given you character? In almost every case, you will have to admit that it was some humiliation or abuse you had to endure, some experience of powerlessness, helplessness, frustration, illness, or exclusion. It is not the things that brought glory or adulation into your life that gave you depth and character, the time you were the valedictorian for your class or the time you were the star athlete. These did not bring you depth. Rather the experience of powerlessness, inferiority, is what made you wise.

I recall too as a graduate student sitting in on a series of lectures by the renowned Polish psychiatrist, Kasmir Dabrowski who had written a number of books around a concept he termed, “positive disintegration”. His essential thesis was that it is only by falling apart that we ever grow to higher levels of maturity and wisdom. Once, during a lecture, he was asked: “Why do we grow through the disintegrating experiences such as falling ill, falling apart, or being humiliated? Would it not be more logical to grow through the positive experiences of being loved, being affirmed, being successful, being healthy, and being admired? Shouldn’t that fire gratitude inside us and, acting out of that gratitude, we should become more generous and wise?”

He gave this response: Ideally, maturity and wisdom should grow out of experiences of strength and success; and maybe in some instances they do. However, as a psychiatrist, all I can say is that in forty years of clinical practice I have never seen it. I have only seen people transformed to higher levels of maturity through the experience of breaking down.

Jesus, it would seem, agrees. Take, for example, the incident in the Gospels where James and John come and ask whether they might be given the seats at his right hand and left hand when he comes into his glory. It is significant that he takes their question seriously. He does not (in this instance) chide them for seeking their own glory; what he does instead is redefine glory and the route to it. He asks them: “Can you drink the cup?” They, naïve as to what is being asked of them, responded: “Yes, we can!” Jesus then tells them something to which they are even more naïve. He assures them that they will drink the cup, since eventually everyone will, but tells them that they still might not receive the glory because being seated in glory is still contingent upon something else.

What? What is “the cup”? How is drinking it the route to glory? And why might we not receive the glory even if we do drink the cup?

The cup, as is revealed later, is the cup of suffering and humiliation, the one Jesus has to drink during his passion and dying, the cup he asks his Father to spare him from when in Gethsemane he prays in agony: “Let this cup pass from me!”

In essence, what Jesus is telling James and John is this: There is no route to Easter Sunday except through Good Friday. There is no route to depth and wisdom except through suffering and humiliation. The connection is intrinsic, like the pain and groans of a woman are necessary to her when giving birth to a child. Further still, Jesus is also saying that deep suffering will not automatically bring wisdom. Why not? Because, while there is an intrinsic connection between deep suffering and greater depth in our lives, the catch is that bitter suffering can make us deep in bitterness, anger, envy, and hatred just as easily as it can make us deep in compassion, forgiveness, empathy, and wisdom. We can have the pain, and not get the wisdom.

Fever! The primary symptom of being infected with the coronavirus, Covid-19, is a high fever. Fever has now beset our world. The hope is that, after it so dangerously raises both our bodily and psychic temperatures, it will also reveal to us some of the secrets that are hidden from health. What are they? We don’t know yet. They will only be revealed inside the fever.

                                                            

The Breath of God: Coronavirus and Theodicy

The question of how a loving, all-powerful God could have created a world in which so many people suffer is one with which people at all stages of belief have wrestled, and during the current pandemic it is being put into even sharper focus for many. ‘These questions have their place, even if they are condemned ultimately to fall short,’ says Mark Dowd as he surveys the different responses that he has encountered.

Mark Dowd is a freelance writer and broadcaster. He is the author of Queer & Catholic: A life of contradiction (Darton, Longman & Todd, 2017).

This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here

‘I tend to think of an innocent little child sitting on the bank of a river in Africa, who’s got a worm boring through his eye that can render him blind.’ These words of Sir David Attenborough in an interview with The Times in 2008 have been especially uppermost in my mind these past weeks. ‘Now, presumably you think this Lord created this worm, just as he created the hummingbird. I find that rather tricky.’

Tricky? Just a tad. The moral evil of mass murder, rape and torture by freedom-loving humans at least has a free will defence when we are asked to account for the presence of suffering in the world of a loving creator. But tsunamis, tornadoes and diseases such as Covid-19? Where is God is the activity of the spike protein of the coronavirus that penetrates cells in the human body and can lead to death by acute respiratory failure?

In a feat of great publication haste, Oxford University mathematician Dr John Lennox got Where is God in a Coronavirus World? into print by the second week of April. Dr Lennox has taken on the likes of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens in public on many an occasion and is an individual who rides the twin horses of scientific enquiry and religious faith impressively. Lennox cites Genesis 3 and human rebellion as a key factor. He asserts that original sin is an adequate explanation for the existence of disease and death, as the moral corruption of our forebears ‘meant that God’s very good creation became flawed and fractured.’ Not being a creationist who believes in a literal interpretation of the first book of the Old Testament, I don’t find this altogether persuasive. A study of complex evolutionary processes tells us that the thorns and thistles of the natural world existed long before the advent of Homo sapiens. Indeed, disease and death, according to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, are integral parts of a development through which genetic information is eliminated, passed on and refined throughout creation. Modern humanity, as we know it, is the product of this very aspect of nature. And it’s not just an insight from the biological sciences. ‘Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground, it remains only a seed but if it dies it bears much fruit,’ we are told in John’s Gospel (12:24). Life and death are two sides of an inseparable coin. When the light of creation is shone, it always casts an inevitable shadow.

This was an insight I came across first-hand many years ago after the horrendous Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, which accounted for more than 225,000 deaths (about the current global fatality rate of Covid-19). Presenting a documentary for Channel 4, I visited Thailand, India and western Sumatra in Indonesia and heard from people who had lost dozens of family members. In my state of emotional upset I had railed against God and pondered how a loving creator could have fashioned something as destructive as tectonic plates. On a subsequent journey to Lisbon to discuss the 1755 earthquake that occurred on All Saints Day and resulted in a huge loss of life, I pondered the question with Dr John Polkinghorne, Anglican minister and accomplished theoretical physicist. ‘Without those plates, land could not have been forced above the oceans. The surface of our planet would have been, perhaps, a green swamp, impossible for human life’, he told me. He added that the movement of the earth’s crust had, historically, probably been essential for human endeavours in agriculture, as key minerals and ores from beneath the surface had most probably enriched the soil and made cultivation of crops easier. What is beneficial for the systemic whole has some very rough edges for individuals caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is nothing to do with divine punishment, or karma. It is the price to be paid for living in a complex natural world, which features both beauty and occasional barbed wire. This inescapable intermingling of positives and negatives isn’t just reflected in closer studies of the natural world, it’s also reflected in some of humanity’s oldest religious cultural heritages. Take the god Shiva in Hinduism. He is both a deity of creation and destruction, and both these elements of eternal energy are contained in the classic dance, the tandava. Or take this beautiful poem from the eleventh century Muslim theologian, Al-Ghazali:

Reflect! The order of life

Is a subtle, marvellous unique order

For nothing but death endears life

And only the fear of the tomb adorns it

Were it not for the misery of painful life

People would not grasp the meaning of happiness

Whomever the scowling of the dark does not terrify

Does not feel the bliss of the new morning…

There remains a central question. Could not a loving, omnipotent creator have just twiddled the settings to keep all the sunsets and leave out the droughts, pestilence and disease? By sheer grace and good fortune, as that Channel 4 tsunami film reached its climax, I got the chance to pursue this very question in the most unlikely of locations. Some sixteen miles south east of the centre of Rome lies the papal summer palace at Castel Gandolfo. It is home to the Vatican Observatory run by a small community of Jesuits, and they were convening a week-long seminar on ‘God and Suffering’, to be attended by some of the most gifted Christian scientists and philosophers on the planet. We spent days on the terrace overlooking Lake Albano and I unleashed question after question upon those gathered in this idyllic setting. Why didn’t God just do a better job of it and leave out all the thistles? A consensual reply came forth. It is not to limit God and reduce his omnipotence if God cannot perform the logically impossible, for example, make two and two equal five. Might it well be that the intrinsic nature of a material world is simply that upsides and downsides are inevitably the price you have to pay for having anything at all? ‘Well,’ I suggested, ‘what would happen if we discovered another planet in which the laws of nature were different and suffering had been eliminated for sentient creatures?’ I was told that there was a fairly solid consensus that the laws of science would be applicable across the universe and, anyhow, in the absence of being able to single out such a suffering-free entity in the solar system and beyond, my question was merely hypothetical. I questioned more and more, until it came down to the crunch.

‘Well, if God cannot create a material world with us in it, without suffering and death, then why create at all?’ It is essentially the same dilemma facing any young couple as they ponder bringing new life into the world. They know their offspring will experience highs and lows, and they will, like all of us, eventually die. But it is exceptionally rare for anyone to suggest they should desist from becoming parents. But of course, God is eternal, and loving and omnipotent. Why, but why, did God then create? I put this to Professor Philip Clayton from the Claremont School of Theology in California and his answer is worth repeating in full.

Anyone who sees the depth of suffering in our world and answers that question simply, doesn’t get it. I would love to imagine a God, who stood and wept and somehow at the last minute felt it was better to have us than to have the divine in eternal emptiness. You and I would probably not push the button on creation. And that God pushed that button and made creation hints at a mystery we do not understand. It hints at a resolution that we can only hope for. God will only be God if the outcome is something so far better than what we see around us that would make it all right. But I can only say that as a wish and a hope and not as an item of knowledge.

It seems we are back to the final parts of the Book of Job, when the haplessly virtuous but tormented figure asks God to make sense of all his trials and misfortunes. ‘Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?’ God responds. ‘Tell me if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions?’ (38:4-5) St Paul continues this theme in Romans: ‘Who are you O man to talk back to God? Shall the pot say to the potter: “Why have you made me like this?”’ (9:20)

Abstract discussions on theodicy are, of course, the last thing on the minds of grieving families and friends during this appalling pandemic. It was the Welsh theologian D.Z. Phillips who said that ‘it is easy for us, as intellectuals, to add to the evil in the world by the ways in which we discuss it.’ There are those among troubled believers, who, faced with such questions, simply shrug their shoulders and plead for a respectful silence. I honour that position. But I would also argue for a differentiated response, as this area is surely the greatest bar to the leap of faithful assent for many agnostics and indeed, atheists. We are creatures of reason. Aquinas always maintained that humanity could come to faith through natural law, via intellectual enquiry as well as through biblical revelation. So these questions have their place, even if they are condemned ultimately to fall short.

These last weeks, reading every day about patients fighting for breath, oxygen levels, ventilators and the like, I have been thrown back on the importance of breath in so many religious narratives. It is the Ruach Elohim, the breath or spirit of God, that hovers above the waters at the dawn of creation. In the far eastern traditions of Buddhism, the anapatasati, the system of breathful meditation, is a key element on the path to enlightenment. And finally, there is the image of a crucified and suffering God on the cross who breathes his last and gives up His spirit. How very apt that, in these Covid-19 anxious times, we vouch faith in a God who does not ridicule us or abandon us in our suffering, but in a God who sends his son to die through asphyxiation on a cross. A God who says, this is not the final chapter of the tale. Put your hand in mine. Walk through the darkness of the tomb and prepare for the unexpected – the new life of resurrection.

We look through a glass darkly.

I believe, Lord. Help my unbelief.