Pope Benedict XVI, at the close of his General Audience on 13 January, delivered an impassioned appeal for the victims and their families afflicted by the recent catastrophe in Haiti, caused by an earthquake of monstrous power. The Holy Father implored the Lord to console and relieve these victims, and he appealed to the generosity of people everywhere in behalf of "our brothers and sisters" in desperate need.
The people of Haiti are no strangers to severe suffering. For many years now, owing to a host of problems from various sources – political, economic, environmental, sociological, military – the general population has endured trampling, impoverishment, governmental neglect, and starvation. An earthquake of almost incredible magnitude must seem almost intolerable. Moreover, Haiti was struck by a second earthquake just a week later.
At such a time, prayer can strengthen us all in our anxieties lest we falter in addressing the tragedy, as well as help the victims in the very midst of pain, confusion and death.
Nor should we as Americans forget that we are in debt to Haiti for having given us a hero of faith like Pierre Toussaint, the black hairdresser of old New York, who worked tirelessly to help the sick and poor of our greatest city over so many decades in the early nineteenth century.
Of course the magnitude and intensity of Haiti’s sufferings are such as to occasion Job-like complaints about such an+ incomprehensible tragedy as the recent earthquake. "Often," wrote Pope Benedict in his Encyclical God is Love (2006), "we cannot understand why God refrains from intervening. Yet he does not prevent us from crying out, like Jesus on the Cross: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’" (Mt 27:46)
Here the Holy Father insists that we should reaffirm the importance of prayer in the midst of travail. For one thing, the Christian who keeps praying will refrain from "presuming to judge God, accusing him of allowing poverty, and failing to have compassion for his creatures." Besides, argues Pope Benedict, when men dare to formulate a claim against God in defense of man, on whom "can they depend when human activity proves powerless?"
Even when bewildered and overcome by a sense of failure, Benedict adds, Christians continue to believe in the "goodness and loving kindness of God" (Titus 3:4), and remain unshakably certain that God is our Father and loves us ... " and can even write straight with crooked lines, as the poet put it.
