The Tribune

Last week, the Rev Dr Colin Archer offered a grace-filled sermon entitled, “A Christian Scientific Approach to the COVID-19 Pandemic”, capturing the attention of the nation in a video that expressed the essence of his spirituality.

Rev Archer, like the gracious Rev Angela Palacious, are deeply committed to their respective communities of faith as Methodist and Anglican ministers. They also possesses a Catholic or universal spirit, salted and leavened by other faith traditions, including Roman Catholicism.

More specifically, they are both inspired by the charisma and traditions of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) and the spiritual journey and the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola after whom Loyola Hall on Gladstone Road is named.

Approaching octogenarian status next year after turning 79 last week, Rev Archer’s mystical spirit and journey are imbued with various spiritualIties, including the Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in 516. Dr Archer likely knows the Rule better than most graduates of St Augustine’s College.

Having shared a lifelong friendship with the late and beloved Monsignor Preston Moss, Rev Archer also shared with the former priest a singular spiritual vision that is at the heart of Ignatian spirituality: finding God in all things.

The spiritual heart of the Jesuits “is grounded in the conviction that God is active in our world.” In contrast to fundamentalist religiosity, the Roman Catholic and Ignatian spirits see the world as, in the words of the Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1884 – 1889)“charged with the grandeur of God”.

In this spirit, the faithful are called to be contemplatives in action, engaged in the world and the struggle for justice, while rooted in Christ. This vision has energised Rev Archer in his quest for social justice and human development.

Religious cultism and doomsday theologies are anathema to this spirituality, which believes that people of faith must be actively engaged in the promotion of the common good.

A world charged with God’s grandeur embraces the arts, science, education, technology and other features of human life, while recognizing sinfulness and our myriad of vanities. But there is no retreat or abandonment of the world, while waiting for the world to come.

For those inspired by Ignatius of Loyola: “The spiritual path laid out by Ignatius helps us discern God’s presence, to find Godin all things, reaching out to a diverse, grace-filled yet imperfect world, [bringing] this spirituality into the wider human context as we strive for social justice, peace and dialogue.”

Made in the image and likeness of God, our human creativity and talents are gifts which may be used in every field of human endeavour from scientific reasoning to the discovery and creation of medicine, technology and other tools to improve humanity and to preserve creation.

In his sermon on COVID-19, Rev Archer invites and advises: “Every day of our lives you and I trust and rely, practically unknowingly, on the artificial intelligence of trillions of micro-chips and related soft-ware, sometimes undergirded by quantum computing, which bolster and improve every facet of our lives, from the automobiles that we drive to the complex calculations that produce the things that we unreservedly depend upon, from the food we ingest to the everyday tools we use.

“We ought no less to trust the thousands of scientists, microbiologists, ethicists and others, who have continued over many years to meticulously develop the vaccines that are compassionately intended to benefit us and profoundly improve our overall quality of life.”

The dualism that affects fundamentalist thinking is typically world-denying, often at dis-ease with physicality and sexuality. Creation is God’s banquet for humanity. Sadly, tragically many fundamentalists only choose bland dishes or eat only a few dishes such as white rice from a table that includes varied and seasoned offerings.

Whereas Roman Catholicism embraces and promotes the arts and cultural expression as gifts from God, many religionists are uneasy or dismissive of artistic and musical expression within church worship, life and architecture.

In 1521, while helping defend the Pamplona fortress in his native Spain, Iñigo Lopez de Oñaz y Loyola’s (St Ignatius) leg was shattered in battle. During a long, painful convalescence, he read about the lives of Jesus Christ and the saints in books found in his wealthy noble Basque family’s library in their home.

Ignatius was moved by the lives of Sts Francis and Dominic among other holy men and women, contemplatives in actions, whose faiths were amphibious, anchored in this world and the world to come, which are not the bifurcated disconnected realms.

SOLDIER AND SOULS

A soldier in war, Ignatius took to the battlefield of souls in service of Christ and God’s people. His interior transformation led to priestly ordination and eventually to the founding of the Society of Jesus.

Over the centuries the Jesuits have founded secondary schools, universities such as Georgetown University, peace and justice institutes and other institutions of human development. Jesuits serve as medical doctors, artists, teachers, scientists and in myriad field of human endeavour.

A number of Jesuits have had careers as astronomers and cosmologists, working in the Vatican Observatory and other observatories devoted to astronomy.

In their life vocations they find God everywhere. In the Spiritual Exercises and in their spiritual practices they invite others to discern spirits and to find God in human joy, suffering, depression, creativity and every facet of life.

A former mentor who passed away in his 80s, taught Caribbean literature and the classics of the Western canon, both in which he delighted.

A master and teacher of the English language, he quipped in one of his Christmas newsletters after the removal of a section of his colon, that he was now mastering the semi-colon.

Nearing his nonagenarian years, this Jesuit father mused toward the end of his life that he was finding more solace in the classics than in Scripture, in both of which he discovered abundant life. His God was not found only in Scripture.

For him, God was also found in the test of the world and in history, God’s presence not static or hidebound or proof-texted or limited to our human conceit and judgmentalism. His was not a God made in the image and likeness of those who place the Creator in a straitjacket.

The journey to novel coronavirus vaccines took decades, with prior breakthroughs and ingenuity leading to the rapid development of vaccines to prevent and to limit the effects of the COVID-19.

As Rev Dr Archer wrote: “As already mentioned, there is a plethora of conspiracy theories and misinformation about and around us. ‘Rev, trust me, I’ve heard so many bad things about these vaccines, I’m not taking any medicine I don’t know anything about!’

“Well, you and I don’t know anything much about how penicillin actually works, and, unless you’ve been tested for a severe allergic reaction, you’ve probably taken that drug, orally or intravenously, many times.”

Rather than saying, “Thank you God”, many fundamentalist and others are spurning vaccines, which are saving potentially millions of human lives, lives made in God’s image and likeness. How can one suggest they are pro-life while dismissing vaccines which will save millions?

We are not only individually and uniquely and masterfully and beautifully made in this image. Because God is Trinitarian and a community of love, for many Christians this means that we are collectively created in this image.

Relatedly, moral choices like being vaccinated affect those around us. We will be saved beyond this pandemic together. There is a common good materially and spiritually. Fr Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, (1881 – 1955) was a mystic. He served as a theologian and philosopher, priest, paleontologist, teacher and scientist, embracing God’s creation in all of it kaleidoscopic complexity and grandeur.

He found God in Scripture and in science, in faith and reason, and in all of the subtleties, texts, lights and shadows through which God permeates creation. A beloved mentor and friend wisely muses: “Humans, with divine inspiration, wrote the Scriptures; but God himself wrote the universe.”

De Chardin charged: “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

GOD’S GIFTS

How extraordinary that God bequeathed to humanity the ability to harness nature and the goods of the world for our sustenance and joy, while also harnessing the gift of love.

From the moment human beings encountered fire, we have employed earth, wind and this fire. But we are called to do so responsibly. When we fail to do so we despoil the earth. We have created the existential threats of climate change and nuclear weapons.

When we act responsibly and lovingly we create social and economic equity, we build schools, hospitals and theatres, we create art, music and poetry, we search the stars for meaning and explore the ocean depths – and we create vaccines, medicine and therapy to heal God’s people. It is an insult to the Creator to spurn the gifts and imagination we are granted to heal and bind the world and to promote justice and equity for all regardless of circumstance of birth.

Rev Archer says he never prayed for a long life. But he is grateful for longevity. In gratitude has sought to serve the people of God, while affirming the beauty and wonder of creation. Might we pray in unison with him, “Amen”!