The Episcopal Church
Office of Public Affairs
Episcopal Presiding Bishop
Jefferts Schori
at Haiti
Prayer Service: Our Hearts Are Broken
[January 17, 2010] “Our hearts are
broken,” The Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine
Jefferts Schori said in a homily at a prayer service for Haiti
on January 17.
The Presiding Bishop joined Bishop
of Washington John Bryson Chane, Cathedral Dean Samuel T. Lloyd III, The
Honorable Susan E. Rice, US Ambassador to the United Nations, His Excellency
Raymond Alcide Joseph, Ambassador of Haiti, and others at “Strength through
Unity -- L'Union fait la Force: A Service of Prayer for Haiti” at Washington
National Cathedral.
The following is Presiding Bishop
Jefferts Schori’s homily.
Prayer Service for Haiti
– Strength through Unity
Washington
National Cathedral
January 17, 2010
Our hearts are broken, as we sit transfixed
before images of devastation and ruin, the bodies of children and elders piled
in the streets, buildings crushed to dust, pleading arms and voices raised to
heaven. We respond in lament and grief
and sorrow, we push back against the senseless mystery of life’s pain. We yield to those ancient questions: Why?
What sort of a God permits destruction like this? What can I do, how can I help? Those questions can’t ever be fully answered
fully, yet they are most important in times like these. The reality is that life is not safe or
predictable, but what we do with our lives gives them meaning. God does not cause suffering or punish people
with it, but God is present and known more intimately in the midst of
suffering. Above all, we become more
human through our broken hearts.
That ability to suffer
with, to feel compassion, is one of the gifts of being fully human. We may only be able to be respond through
being with, by standing alongside, even at a distance. We can pray with the grieving, and we can
reach out.
Compassion
is pouring out across this nation and across the globe, as the world feels the
suffering in Haiti. Suddenly strangers have become hungry
brothers and thirsty and sisters, people in pain, without a place to lay their
heads, mourning the death of loved ones.
Compassion
is a gift that changes the world. We
have discovered and remembered our sisters and brothers in a land many of us
will never see – our common humanity is staring us in the face, and we have
chosen to meet the gaze of Haiti. We are changed forever, if we will only
remember the terror of that gaze.
Remember
and let yourself be shaken. Feel
something of the terror in Haiti. Terror, the word, comes from shaking; this
terror started in the shaking of the earth.
It has a parallel in the fear that periodically consumes this
nation. May this terror shake us out of
complacency and willful ignorance.
Remember the people of Haiti. Reach out to those who have lost loved ones,
to those who still wait for news of the missing, to Haitian-Americans in the
neighborhoods around us.
The
answer to terror is solidarity. The
shaking stops when we stand together, when we remember that sisters and brothers,
linked across the world, are stronger than fear.
Haiti
is filled with resilient and persevering people, but much of the nation’s
resources and systems are lost and broken.
Many nations are already moving to stand alongside. We can give thanks for the rapid and deep
response from these United
States.
There are immense seeds of hope in the response to this disaster, seeds
that must continue to be watered and nurtured for the future. We’ve seen some of the hopeful seeds in Haitians
gathering in broken streets to sing and pray, even children playing with empty
boxes in which food arrived. Hope
abounds, but it must be answered.
Our
remembering has to be long-term, it must endure, if it is going to beat back
the terror of this disaster. The longer
and harder task is to remember the ancient hope of humanity, that vision Isaiah
proclaims as repairing the ruined cities and building up ancient ruins and
devastations. The long arm of
remembering will give the strength to see that the hungry and thirsty and ill
and homeless are cared for. Rebuilding
the infrastructure of Haiti
will take years, just as it has in the aftermath of Katrina. We cannot forget.
The
disaster of this earthquake is the most recent and the most devastating of a
long series of terrors – hurricanes, political coups and instability, the
centuries-long struggle of former slaves to make a home in a foreign land. There is some deep solidarity in praying for Haiti
on the eve of our nation’s remembrance of Martin Luther King. His message was filled with the biblical
vision of the prophets, that heaven on earth comes when the poor are cared for
and all God’s children are treated with justice. That vision applies to the poorest here and
equally to those a few hundred miles south of our borders, to all who live in
abject poverty, hungry for the world’s justice.
The words of prophets
also come with challenge. It’s easy to
miss Isaiah’s caution – the prophet proclaims that eternal dream of a restored
world, but also the day of God’s vengeance.
Matthew’s version comes in the verses we didn’t read, that those who
don’t feed and care for the poor will be consigned to what we usually call hell
– it’s not the poor who end up there, but those who ignore them and their
suffering. The ancient vision of a
healed world demands that all people have decent and dignified life
possibilities – clean water, adequate food, shelter, medical care, education
for their children, stable government, the possibility of meaningful
employment. Here in this nation we
shelter that vision under the banner of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.” That vision will never be
possible in any nation while some live in want and fear.
Terror is not limited to Haiti. The prophets remind us that the kind of
terror that leaves us shaking in our boots comes from poverty ignored and
justice denied. That shaking is calmed
and healed in remembering, in compassionate solidarity with the suffering of
the world.
We are seeing immense
generosity in the compassionate response to this earthquake. Our challenge will be to remember that
suffering through the years to come, when the desperation is no longer on our
screens 24 hours a day. The shaking and
the terror will stop as the ruined city is rebuilt and the devastation of
generations is healed. May today’s
compassion be transformed into a steely will to continue caring for the least,
the lost, and the left out until not one is left. May Haiti’s
poor be our poor until that day dawns.
May the suffering in Haiti
be felt here and around the world until the oil of gladness blesses every brow,
and every tear is dried, and every cry of grief is turned to joy.
The Most Rev. Katharine
Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop
The Episcopal Church
Films are made up of a series of individual images called frames. When these images are shown rapidly in succession, a viewer has the illusion that motion is occurring. The viewer cannot see the flickering between frames due to an effect known as persistence of vision,
Posted by: Buy Viagra | April 15, 2010 at 02:17 PM
I love when I have the opportunity to read blogs as interesting as this. really thanks and congratulations.
Posted by: lots in Costa rica | July 19, 2010 at 11:31 AM
Thanks for the read. I agree with the points you made. http://www.rapidmediafire.com also has peoples thoughts on the matter.
Posted by: Cecil | July 20, 2010 at 12:31 AM