Responding to suffering gives us the possibility of creating a more just world, writes Archbishop Seán Brady.
Why did God allow the terrible events in the Indian Ocean to happen? Why did God not intervene to save those thousands of innocent children, vulnerable elderly people, struggling parents and other good people from the forces of His own creation?
These are the difficult questions which face those who believe in a loving and all powerful God in these days of tragedy for so many millions of our brothers and sisters around the Indian rim. They are age-old questions, and not adequately answered by soundbites, pious phrases or short articles. They are part of the struggle of faith, perhaps the most difficult part, and in the light of the suddenness and scale of the Asian disaster, they are questions which leave the believer and non-believer alike humbled by our common vulnerability and our inability to control our own lives or the world's affairs, as we often imagine we can.
The world in which we find ourselves is certainly not a perfect world. It is overwhelmingly good and beautiful, but it is also "fallen", limited and conditioned by physical laws and natural processes. What reveals the face of a good and loving God, however, is that the human person, the human family is not limited to or defined by these natural laws and processes.
We have a freedom and an immense capacity for intelligence and for love which sets us apart from the rest of creation. That intelligence allows us to shape and develop the created world, to understand it and to co-operate with it, even to protect ourselves more effectively from the dangers of its physical structures and processes. What if, for example, we had had better systems in place to detect and warn people about the impending danger of those deadly waves? Surely to that extent we are partly culpable for what has happened.
Just as with the many moral "tsunamis" which afflict our world - the death, each year, of 2.2 million children from lack of immunisation, the pillaging of ocean stocks and rainforests, the pollution of air and water, the unjust distribution of the goods of our planet - we must accept that we had the knowledge, we had the resources to minimise the consequences of this tragic event, but we chose not to apply them to this danger and we continue to choose not to apply resources where they are needed and worse still, to mis-apply them to divisive and wasteful endeavours.
A loving God wants humanity to use its intelligence and love to address these needs, to co-operate intelligently and lovingly with the created order and to make the world a better place. CS Lewis once suggested suffering was God's megaphone in a deaf world. While I don't believe that God wishes to draw attention to himself by the death of children or the destruction of beautiful places, it is certainly true that the present disaster has moved us beyond the limited horizons of our daily preoccupations to consider some of the bigger and more important questions of life, that it has awoken in us an incredible generosity and a glimpse of what humanity, at its best, can be.
This is what I think St Paul meant when he said that, "in everything God works for good with those who love Him" (Rom 8.23). It is what the paschal mystery, the death and resurrection of Jesus offers us in the context of tragic events, the belief that in spite of even the greatest suffering, God still acts on our behalf to bring good out of evil. We have certainly observed that goodness in the incredible response of people and governments around the world to the current disaster.
So perhaps the more important question is not why are things the way that they are, but rather, how should we respond to these situations of disaster and suffering in order to bring about a more just and perfect and united world?
It was to reflect on these and similar questions that the Irish bishops have called for a Day of Solidarity to be held today, a day of reflection and prayer, a day of fasting and self-sacrifice, a day of solidarity and generosity towards those who have suffered so much.
One of the most helpful things any of us can have in the midst of suffering is the solidarity and loving support of those around us, even the silent support of those who wish they could say or do more. There is also a particular comfort in the presence and solidarity of those who have suffered themselves and who will have a particular ability to understand. It is this solidarity that God has offered us in the feast of Christmas and the Epiphany, the consoling truth that in the midst of all our uncertainties, God is with us.
In the Incarnation God entered completely into the fear and vulnerability of our human condition. In the gift of myrrh, used in burial preparation, the wise men anticipated the innocent and brutal death of God's own Son, a death which defies the language of reason and science, and offers us instead the language of trust and love. In the resurrection, that trust and love are vindicated and the limitations of this world are opened up to a world where, in spite of death and suffering, life, love and beauty do not come to an end.
This may not be part of the language of science and reason, but it is part of the logic of a loving and omnipotent God. It is a logic which, in the vulnerability of my own existence, convinces me.
Perhaps part of the difficulty is the presumption of our modern world that we can answer the questions of life by reason alone. Yet the most profound experiences of human life, whether pain or joy, tragedy or love, belong to the realms and the language of intuition, trust and faith.
There is sometimes a fine line between belief and doubt, and nothing can determine which side of that line we are on more quickly than our experience of suffering and loss. I continue to find inspiration in those many people who bear the full weight of the loss and the pain in Asia itself, and yet turn to God and prayer in the midst of their confusion and despair. They bear witness to the capacity of the human heart to answer questions and to respond to events in a way that the human mind cannot comprehend.
In uniting in solidarity with them today, in prayer, in fasting, in sacrifice, I hope that people throughout Ireland, believer and non-believer alike, will be moved once again to offer them their generous support and, like the wise men of the Epiphany, from afar bring gifts to the vulnerable, and in doing so, glimpse at least the possibility of a more just and united world.
Dr Seán Brady is Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland
Donations for the Asian disaster can be made to Trócaire, the development agency of the Irish Bishops' Conference on (RoI) 1850 408 408 or (NI) 0800 912 1200; or on www.trocaire.org - or at any AIB bank.