Episcopal Church spends Sunday in prayer for Haiti
'God is present,' presiding bishop tells prayer service
"Surround Haiti and her people with your loving embrace that they may be supported by the world in the work of rescue and recovery; comforted as they grieve; strengthened as they bury their dead; healed as they tend their wounds; restored in faith and the hope of things unseen; and transformed through newness of life," the congregation at National Cathedral prayed during an evening service.
His Excellency Raymond Joseph, Haitian ambassador to the U.S., told the congregation that all Haiti is "so thankful that you are standing with them right now in this hour of tragedy."
In her homily, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said "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."
Earlier in the day, Dorsainvil Joseph, 53 came to the destroyed Cathédrale Sainte Trinité (Holy Trinity Cathedral) in Port-au-Prince looking for people to pray with him. He carried a red leather Bible in one hand, his other apparently broken hand held in a slim sling and his head bandaged, according to the New York Times. The paper said nearly 1,200 Haitians were camped near the cathedral ruins, which include the Holy Trinity school complex and Couvent Sainte Marguerite of the Sisters of St. Margaret.
Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin told the Times that more than 100 Episcopal churches had collapsed. "There is almost no place for worship or prayer," he said.
The Times reported that only one cathedral wall is left standing. The cathedral was filled with famously stunning murals of Christ's life that depicted biblical characters in tropical motifs. The only mural left depicts Jesus' baptism, the Times reported.
The now-homeless Duracin, who said he had been contemplating the story of Job, told the Times that "we have to look for opportunities from the disaster."
"We have to mourn. We have to suffer," he said. "But we have to get up because life has to continue."
And, at the Haitian Congregation of the Good Samaritan in the Bronx, between 50 to 100 people gathered at what is the Diocese of New York's only primarily Haitian church.
The Rev. Canon Andrew Dietsche, the New York diocese's canon for pastoral care, preached and the Rev. Nathanael Saint-Pierre, New York Bishop Mark Sisk's vicar for the congregation, translated Dietsche's sermon and presided.
"We are very much aware that there are people throughout our [the diocese's] churches that have connections to Haiti, but no other church in which every single parishioner has been touched by the earthquake in Port-au-Prince," Dietsche said.
Dietsche spoke of the earthquake and the subsequent hardship and suffering in the context of the day's reading: Isaiah 62:1-5.
"I am struck to the words of Isaiah … you will not be forsaken," he said. "I hope that the same sentiment extended to Israel will be given to Haiti."
The earthquake in Haiti exposed the rest of the world's neglect of the poor in that nation, a second disaster, Dietsche said.
"Either of these disasters is crippling," he said. "Together they are a catastrophe like the world rarely sees."
The question for the church, Dietsche added, is how does it face this disaster and respond as people of God?
"I come here today very well aware that everyone here has ties to Haiti and that some here have lost someone they love and others rejoice at loved ones having been found," he said. "As Christians we live with joy and sorrow simultaneously … In every safe rescue we say, 'thanks be to God,' the loss, 'thy will be done.'
"The task of the Christian is to rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep."
New York Bishop Sisk also spoke to the congregation, as did New York State Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson, who said that her office would be a place for information exchange and a collection site for donations as the recovery effort in Haiti continues.
At Washington National Cathedral, Jefferts Schori said in her homily that "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."
In those images, she said, "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," the presiding bishop said. "Remember and let yourself be shaken."
Saying that there are "immense seeds of hope in the response to this disaster," she added that "hope abounds, but it must be answered."
She also said that "there is some deep solidarity in praying for Haiti on the eve of our nation's remembrance of Martin Luther King" whose message shared "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."
A multilingual copy of the National Cathedral service is available here.
Video and audio streams of the prayer service were available online on the cathedral's website in various formats here.
top