God, Prayer and Covid-19

being: without God, nothing we expect – if it really is become engraved in hearts that now is could be. How God we are trying to think and worn smooth by the could God be responsible and talk about and pray lips of women and men like to someone or something to? And, as far as I am us, real people who actually that only exists through concerned, there’s no point existed. Do not reprove me God? So it seems we have at all in praying or trying to in your anger, LORD, nor to say both that God, being pray to anyone or anything punish me in your wrath. responsible for everything, less than God. How then Have pity on me, LORD, is responsible for COVID-19 should we pray in a time of for I am weak; heal me, and, at the same time, that COVID-19? LORD, for my bones are God cannot be responsible When we pray to shuddering. My soul too for anything in the way God, we stand entirely is shuddering greatly – and we understand ‘being naked before someone you, LORD, how long…? responsible’. You might say much, much greater and Turn back, LORD, rescue that whoever makes a thing more loving than we can my soul; save me because is responsible for it; so God know or understand. This of your mercy. For in death must be responsible in the is not some demi-god there is no remembrance same way. The trouble whom we could flatter of you. Who praises you is that God doesn’t make with our praise, or bargain in Sheol? (Ps.6) Using the things: God creates things, with our promises. We psalms we can join our which is very different. can and we must express voices with theirs in prayer Someone who makes our longing for God, for to the same God in whom something, a table, for peace, for healing, for we too believe. example, is not responsible safety, for salvation. The Like them, we try for keeping the table in psalms are a good model sometimes to flatter or existence, preventing it for our prayer in these days bargain with God (“who from ceasing to exist. But of COVID’. Many of them praises you in Sheol?”). that is exactly what God as arise out of desperate fear But we shouldn’t imagine Creator does. and suffering and even our prayers will work by All this is hard to get despair: over thousands ‘bringing God around to one’s head around. But, of years, through wars and our side’ or causing God then, what else should plagues, these words have to ‘relent’. We shouldn’t First Communicants participate in the procession at St John Baptist, Matacuane, Beira, Mozambique

imagine this and – most importantly – we don’t need to. For God, remember, is Love, and cannot possibly be other than loving. God doesn’t just have love for us, like a parent, a sibling, a spouse, a friend has love for us. What’s hard to grasp is that God simply is Love for us. There is nothing in God, no part of God, as it were, that is not love for us. When we pray we must ask for what we need for our neighbours and friends, for those in need and in danger, for the Church, for the world itself, for ourselves. But the truth is that there cannot really be anything that could come between us and God. How could there? We were created by GodWho-Is-Love for us, but so was anything that might be thought to come between us and God. God would be frustrating his own will, and that’s just impossible: it’s a contradiction. No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature (not even SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19) will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rm.8:37-9). The COVID-19 pandemic is frightening, and it has already done huge damage to our lives and the economies of our countries and communities. The world, and especially the poor, will suffer its effects for generations to come. But still we profess: neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities…nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (except ourselves, of course). All these things were created by the GodWho-Is-Love – including even the coronavirus and, yes, death itself – and can actually be what unites us with that God rather than what tears us apart. How, then, should we pray in these dark days of COVID-19? The disciples asked Jesus that question in Matthew’s Gospel and he replied saying. This is how you are to pray: Our Father who art in heaven (our Father, you, the One and Only God, Creator of All, who is Love), hallowed be thy name (may you be praised, revered and loved by all, throughout the universe), Thy kingdom come (may your power of life and love rule over all), Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven (may the desires and longings of your heart come to pass so that everything may be exactly here on our earth as it is in your heaven, and may earth and heaven become one place). Give us this day our daily bread (give to us today and every day all and only what we need to continue living and praising you), forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us (forgive us the wrongs we have done to others as much we ourselves forgive those who have wronged us). And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil (lead us away from whatever tempts us to fall away from you, keep us safe from whatever may draw us away from you). This “Lord’s prayer” is how Jesus himself prayed (see e.g. Mt.11:25-7, 26:39- 42). The whole first half of it is not about ourselves at all. And the second asks nothing for ourselves except, firstly, daily bread, meaning whatever it is that we need to continue loving, serving and praising God, and secondly, continued union with God through the forgiveness of our sins and protection from whatever would keep us from God. God knows what we need even before we realise that we need it. The point of asking is not to inform God. It is to express our faith – our trust that God loves us and cannot be less than Love Itself – and our readiness to receive whatever God sends us, for not even this pandemic can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Zimbabwe has been grappling with the effects of Cyclone Idai of 2019, the effects of drought, and an attempt to rebuild a decadent economy while Mozambique is equally still struggling with the same cyclone’s effects as well as a humanitarian crisis caused by Islamic militants in the Province of Cabo Delgado in the north (cf. S. Bullivant 2020, 3). Added to these challenges the Covid-19 pandemic set in wreaking terror throughout the world. In the midst of the deep crisis, isolation, anxiety, financial hardship, disruption of life, shortage of essentials, the blame game on who is responsible for the outbreak particularly between USA and China, political arrogance and fault finding we are bound to ask ourselves why God would permit this. Is there hope at all? Hope is in Jesus Christ, the visible face of the invisible and merciful God. Through the Paschal Mystery, Jesus acquits human beings and leads them to safety, wholeness and integrity from the state of danger (cf. J. A Fitzmeyer 1981, 162). God is deeply concerned with human life. In the Old Testament (OT), mercy means receiving the manifestation of God’s kindness and deliverance. J. McKenzie (1972) asserts that the Psalmist who trusts in the mercy of YHWH rejoices in the salvation and deliverance of YHWH. His acts, for instance, deliverance from Egypt (Ex 15:13) are characteristic of His mercy, which is “an act of strength, of victory or salvation, of justice and redemption” (Zobel 57). We need spiritual eyes to recognise mercy within the crisis and a discerning heart to respond to the Lord of Mercy. In the Hebraic thought, a name is filled with mysterious power and significance, it represents the innermost self or identity of a person (B. W. Anderson 1968, 38). The name YHWH, indicates that God “will be present”, he is actively present with his people to save them. He is salvation and mercy itself. Thus, he who finds God finds mercy which “is associated with the quality which makes another person (God) dependable and worthy of faith.” (Zobel 1986, 45). God does something which he is not obliged to do except for his generosity. God’s elos, captured in the Magnificat, is concretized in Jesus. He is the New Testament (NT) model of hesed. He forgives sinners, transforms sinners, reconciles, heals and consoles. The NT eleos of God is his will to save, echoing the OT use of hesed. Human beings can participate in this mercy for ‘sanitisation’ in this time of suffering characterised by Covid-19.

Nyasha B Nyawaramba Mutare Diocese

Huge quantities of alcohol based sanitisers are being manufactured, distributed, donated and or sold. But God’s mercy is the spiritual ‘sanitiser’ because it is the ultimate and supreme act by which God comes to meet us (Misericordia Vultus 2). It is not an abstract concept. It is practical. Mercy is a rich concept and it is actional in nature (Zobel 1986, 45). In the history of Israel, God intervenes to free his oppressed people, “I have seen the affliction of my people… and I have heard their cry…I know their sufferings, and have come down to deliver them (Ex 3:7-8). Hence, “God is not aloof from the human scene of travail and oppression. He takes part in human affairs to work out his purpose. He makes himself known by his deeds, which are historical events” (B. W. Anderson 1968, 37). His mercy connotes a willingness to alleviate suffering.

This understanding of God’s mercy transforms and inspires hope within this Covid-19 situation. God is mighty to save. The blame game among nations on the origins of Covid-19 is a factor of sin; the sins of pride, selfrighteousness, lack of trust and hatred. The consequences of sin are heinous and farreaching. God’s mercy expressed in the paschal