Reflection - Spare a thought!
01.07.2008
China has been in our thoughts and prayers for a couple of reasons of late. Pope Benedict XVI made the recent feast of Our Lady Help of Christians (May 24) a day of special prayer for China. People were already praying for that vast country because of the devastating earthquake that hit there recently.
News of major earthquakes elsewhere creates a heightened awareness about preparedness in earthquake prone places like New Zealand. The Columban house sits directly on the Wellington fault line here in the Hutt Valley. Fault lines are those areas where the tectonic plates that make up the earth crust meet and brush against each other.
Right under Wellington city the Australian plate is pushing down on the Pacific plate. If the pressure that this creates is not released in small amounts, the risk of a major quake increases. The last really big quake here was in 1855 (8.2). Strange as it might first seem, it is good news to have a regular supply of smaller shakes to ease the pressure.
Thinking about all this I also find myself pondering the fault lines in society along which things tend to fracture when pressure builds. The major ones that have been identified are ethnicity, race, social status (class), ideology, religion and gender. It does not take too much of an analysis to see that most of the major conflicts we see now and have seen in our world tend to happen across one or other of these lines.
With earthquakes there is not much we can do by way of prevention. We can only hope to get better at predicting them and be better prepared to deal with the consequences when they happen. But with the fault lines in society we can work to prevent the build up of pressure that leads to major conflict.
Here is one area where reading the signs of the times is critical. If we are aware of where the pressure is building we can do something to release it. So developing under-standing and good communication across these various lines can make a difference. If mission is about being on the edge then these fault lines indicate where the Church needs to be present and active and it is.
For example the work of dialogue between the great religions and specifically between Islam and Christianity, which some people suggest represents one of the most critical fault lines in our world, is vital if there is to be a peaceful future.
China too continues to grow as a major power and the response of the Western world to this new reality represents another major fault line. We can only hope and pray that the Pope’s letter to the Chinese Church and the way it has been received as well as the outpouring of good will and help to the victims of the earth quake will help to move things in a positive direction.
Columban Fr Patrick O’Shea lives in Lower Hutt, Wellington, New Zealand.
