The God of all seasons

Feb 10, 2024

Word in Progress - Karen-Michaela Tan
A Catholic friend who had had a tumultuous 2023, messaged me in the early days of the new year, saying though she had hoped that 2024 would bode better, she had found herself swamped by more bad news already. “Do you have any mantras to help me?” she texted.

As my head went through numerous portions of comforting Scripture, I also made a mental note to speak to her when she was not as distraught.

Often, well-meaning Catholics, in their bumbling attempts to evangelise or bring a ‘lost one’ back to the fold, approach requests for comfort in pedantic, didactic ways. Not knowing the Bible as well as other Christians, and being even less schooled in dogma and apologetics, we shoot from the hip and target the one thing we think we understand. For my part, the trigger was the word ‘mantra’.

A mantra ? in its purest word use ? is a sacred utterance from Buddhist or Hindu scripture; a numinous sound, a syllable, word or phonemes, or group of words believed by practitioners to have religious, magical or spiritual powers. While the word is now used colloquially as an affirmation or slogan, when used in her context and current challenges, my friend desired something to take her to God.

If I did not know better, I would have jumped to the conclusion that my friend was seeking a spell to make her feel better, or to change her life circumstances. I would have possibly told her not to look for quick fixes, and to remind her that we Catholics are famed for our tight-lipped, dogged bearing of suffering. Not for us the Gospel of prosperity! And while we aren’t Bible-belt Christian fire-and-brimstone-and-smiting- God, we definitely are not in the business of mantras. Or are we?

The short answer is yes, we are. In fact, in Australia, in the Archdiocese of Brisbane, kids in Year Five Catholic education classes are already taught about the practice of praying with mantras. Christians who want to use a mantra to pray can repeat a short prayer, a short passage from Scripture, a religious word or name for God.

But I digress. The true need of my friend was communion with God. She wanted His blessing on her new year, she craved for His assurance of His presence, especially in the storms she was going to go through. She wanted proximity to a sheltering Lord who could be counted on to never let her hand go.

Sometimes though, when a person has not walked with the Lord for some time, they forget the familiarity they used to share, and the value of that relationship. It is here that those who have walked more consistently with God, and for perhaps longer, need to step up to be a sort of intermediary.

We should deem it an honour when someone asks us to pray for them. For a long time, I winced when I received this request, thinking, “Friend, I can’t even pray for myself, what makes you think God will listen to me on your behalf?” Then I remember the paralytic who was lowered down through the roof by his friends (Mark 2:4) because the crowds who had thronged to Jesus for healing had blocked every conventional entrance to the place where He ministered. The paralysed man was not an important personage, or he would have ordered his coterie to clear the way by force. He may have had just enough money to hire men to carry his stretcher, but I doubt four paid men would have agreed to clamber up a roof with a dead-weight body, also bearing in mind roofs of those days were thatched with straw and scaffolded mostly with tree branches or planks of very little weight-bearing capability. The only thing that could have motivated his friends to brave the roof was care and concern – love – for their friend.

When I explained to my friend that Catholic meditation was a process (see https://catholicworldmission.org/catholicguide- to-meditation/), not just a word or phrase, she told me that her mental challenges did not allow this kind of long quietude and inactivity. What she required was something she could immediately say to stop impulsive, potentially self-harming tendencies (as an aside, the person is on medication, in the care of a trained mental health professional, and it was the practitioner who suggested Christian meditation).

Immediately I knew then that whatever I suggested needed to be short and powerful. A recitation of Psalm 23 was out of the question for a mind wired for violent action. After dismissing conventional Scripture verses and prayers, we settled on “Jesus is bigger than this!” as her battle cry. Not biblical, not profound, but quick, effective, and to the point. I engraved a metal disc with these words, and gave it to her on a leather cord long enough that she can seize the piece in her hand without strangling herself. Like a fidget toy, she soothed herself with it, turning the small piece of stainless steel over and over when anxious, fingers twisting the hardy cord when she felt stressed.

It has been a month since that gift. My friend sent me a text a few days ago which read, “Remember how you told me that our God was a God of all seasons, times and phases? I get it, but I understand it better when I think of God like the seasonings salt and pepper. Salt purifies, protects and preserves. Pepper adds life, vitality and warmth. I don’t cook, but you are the chef that brought those two ingredients out of the spice cupboard for me.” May we all be salt and pepper to the lives which need us. 

(Karen-Michaela Tan is a poet, writer and editor who seeks out God’s presence in the human condition and looks for ways to put the Word of God into real action.)