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 Comic Relief sends much needed money; the Churches and other groups provide nursing care and safe and loving homes for so many children, not only those left orphaned through AIDS, but also those suffering with HIV and full blown AIDS themselves. Education seems to be the bottom line in helping stem the tide of this illness. Not just education around the issues of sexual practice, but issues around love, relationships and responsibility. But what spiritual encouragement can we find in all this pain and awfulness? The cross of AIDS, like any cross has no thought for the one to whom it comes.We all carry in different ways the burden of what it means to be human. I wonder if this Christ of ours looks out on us sometimes and wonders at his Church which often sees sinfulness in relationships that are not quite up to the mark. Perhaps he smiles and invites us to get up of our knees and go on loving as best we can. God so loved the world and still does not only love it but likes it. I honestly feel that sometimes we can be hindered in our pastoral practice in the area of HIV and AIDS by putting too heavy a burden on peoples' lives who cannot for whatever reason attain the high ideal of sexual practice. Often the divinity in our lives is eclipsed by our feet of clay and our broken humanity. The God amongst us in Christ I feel is meant to destabilize and challenge us. 'Who do you say I am?' is the question of everyone who suffers and it confronts us to recognise and love, or reject or worse still, not risk anything in the costly and sometimes dangerous call of the Gospel. Whatever deep pain and suffering that goes with HIV, which none of us can guess, there is a God who reaches out and invites us to do the same.We must open our eyes on this painful world and not cushion ourselves with rather dubious certainties, or images of 'God' who is nothing other than full of compassion and love, slow to anger and rich in mercy.. The shadow of the best cross is a winter yet warm and the sinners of history run in and out of its dark shadows and are not confounded. |
