On the first Sunday following the earthquake, Bishop Joseph Perry presided at an evening Mass at Our Lady of Peace Parish, 7851 S. Jeffery Blvd., which is the weekly Mass for the archdiocese’s Haitian Catholic Mission. During the homily, Bishop Perry delved into where God is during times of great tragedy. The following is his reflection from Jan. 17: Many of you are still awaiting information about loved ones in Haiti. We can only guess at the anxiety and fear that plague your hearts this evening not knowing. We are here this evening to share in your suffering hope. We are here to share your pain if you have lost loved ones. We are here to share in your joy if news from Haiti for you has been good. The whole world knows. What Haiti is suffering has intruded upon all existence and is before the very eyes of the entire world. The scenes of devastation and human agony are graphic and beyond belief. Our only consolation is the assurances of help and aid in the form of food, shelter, clothing and the very basics coming into Haiti from church and secular and governmental agencies. Most importantly, we are here this evening to beseech the mercy of God for Haiti through the supreme sacrifice of his Body and Blood given to the church as gift from the ravages of one God-man’s life for the salvation of the world. Throughout Christian history we have united our pain with the pain of the Master whose pain is lifted up in every Mass as an offering to God. It is worship most supreme and through it God redeems the world. There are occasions in life that make us cry out “Why?” The earthquake in Haiti is one such. Over and above the grief that we felt there is the extra and anguished question: “Why did it have to happen in this way?” In addition to our desolation, we felt in some way betrayed by the God whom we have learned from childhood to call our Father. All down the ages believers have cried out to God: “Why have you allowed this to happen?” Or even more directly: “Why have you done this to me?” Notice, the 150 psalms in the Bible are full of cries like these. We must never hesitate or fear to speak our real feelings to God. He knows them already, but he also knows our need to express them. His own Son was forced to cry out to him: “My God, why have you abandoned me?” That cry is part of the mystery of life itself. Trust in God We believe that our beloved Haiti has experienced more than its share of misery and catastrophe. Our Father in heaven, as he listens with utmost compassion to our cry, quietly asks us to believe and trust him. He does not send such crosses that pin us to the ground. They come to us as they came to God’s own Son, from the conditions of life in this world, and they come to us unbidden and unwanted as occasions for deep and anguished faith. God does not explain why these demands are made of us and even if he did we would not be able to understand. Such answers belong to the end of time when earth and sea will have yielded up their dead, when there will be no more sorrow and pain, when God will wipe away all tears and the mysteries of life n their truth will unravel before us. In the meantime, God asks us to offer him the weight of our grief and the sacrifice of our tears and he will support us. He asks us for faith and trust at the very moment when we feel that we have none to offer him. God is never nearer than when we are drained of all feeling and incapable of seeing clearly enough to pray. It is when we feel that we have nothing else left to offer God but our emptiness and desolation that his spirit approaches us most nearly. “Even though he slay me, yet will I trust him” is an old and tested prayer. Many people have used it when they were near despair and through it have come to know more about God’s love than others who have been less tried or afflicted in lesser ways. The test of religion is this capacity to help us cope with the unfairness, even the crucifixions of life. The cross of Jesus Christ stands poised between heaven and earth, his body stretched out in all four directions, his arms reaching out to embrace all sufferers. It is a cruel reminder of the harsh reality of life from which we all try to escape in our illusions, our political systems and our fantasies. Above all, it speaks to us of the deeper, higher things — of hope and love at the heart of God’s creation. Even though the earth and its vast seas seem often violent and disturbed, this disturbance is only on the surface of the unspeakable and unconquerable power of creation. And we human beings are probably the weakest and most vulnerable part of that creation. ‘Divine helplessness’ There is a kind of divine helplessness that is really divine strength. God’s purposes are being slowly and painfully worked out in this world of ours in ways that surpass our power to understand. God does not will tragedies of one sort or another, but such happenings take place in the world he is creating and renewing. And when they do, God is there with his plea that we should trust and love him, that we should believe in his Spirit of consolation who enfolds us in his loving arms, and that, from all this grief and pain, God will draw an immense happiness and glory for us. That is why he sent his Son into our world. That is why he watched his Son die in agony of mind and body so that we might know that he knows from the inside what it means to suffer, to grieve and to experience the deepest desolation. We are all part of the mystery of God’s creation and of his purposes. Our faith tells us that in spite of the darkness we are sometimes called up on to enter on our journey through life the road will end in the triumph of light and joy and ultimate meaning.