Quarterly Bulletin

Over 20 years since HIV and AIDS started wrecking people’s lives with no real cure, people have sought different reasons for the pandemic. Some have simply regarded themselves as unfortunate when they are infected but some have gone further to see their status as punishment from God. Fr. Bernard Mallia gives some theological reflections on our inter-action with the HIV and AIDS infected. Fr. Mallia, a Jesuit priest from Sudan, spent a few months working part-time with JCTR on CST issues.

We all know about the plagues apparently sent by God in his anger because of the waywardness of his people, as when they complained against Moses for bringing them out to die of hunger and thirst in an empty desert while it could have been better for them had they remained in Egypt with plenty of onions and pots of meat to eat.  But we also know that God’s anger never lasted long and that he was slow to get angry and even   when   his anger flared it was never to destroy his people but that they may repent of their wrong-doings and return to him in faithfulness.  We also know about the seven plagues he “sent” to the Egyptians so as to let his people go in freedom.

a wrathful God?

But can we look at the HIV and AIDS pandemic in this light?  When God came to reveal himself fully in his only Son Jesus, we no longer see him as a wrathful God who acted according to the old principle of righteousness, rewarding the good and punishing the wicked right here on earth.

Of course, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ was already being understood by the prophets no longer as a vengeful God but rather as one not only always ready to relent but also and especially as one who was eternally in love with his people whose weaknesses he knew only too well. He was therefore one who was always seeking to woo them back to him, not by wielding a heavy stick but by the strings of love.

A DEEP SENSE OF GUILT

It is possible that often the HIV and AIDS infected would see God as taking vengeance because by their actions they had strayed from him.  Thus they come to be oppressed not only by the disease itself but, even worse, by a deep sense of guilt and of having been punished and abandoned by him. 

This attitude is often taken also by some of their closest relatives and their neighbours who start seeing them as untouchables and ostracized as was the case with lepers according to the Mosaic Law. 

What then is the attitude of anybody having to do with the AIDS victims, of those who live with them and of those who serve them in one way or another, especially counsellors and pastoral workers?  They all need to show them the face of God shining in the face of Jesus in his attitude to all those who were looked down upon as sinners and who were therefore no better than rejects of society. 

The Jesus-attitude we need to have would make us work with them not only to lift away from them the heaviness of guilt-feeling but also to help them see that they are fully accepted in their full human dignity as beloved children of God. We thus arouse in them new hope both in the present and in the future.

HIV And AIDS
patients and Job

We may look at the example of Job who felt he was being punished unjustly when God seemed to have turned against him who had been acknowledged by God himself to be his friend. Now he was totally being abandoned by him to a most wretched state and – worse still – to the taunts of his own “beloved” wife and of his so called “dear” friends. 

Job, as a truly upright man and a friend of God, could not accept this terrible face of God. So he was determined to bring God to book, because how can the true God be so unjust, so self-contradictory?  Such angry turmoil may easily fill the hearts of many HIV patients even if they are not as righteous as Job.  Like Job, they would rebel against such a tyrannically useless God. They and maybe also their relatives would cry out: “Why have you done this to us?” 

However, it is also possible that some patients could also bow down before such a wrong picture of God in a spirit of fatalistic piety and allow themselves to be simply crushed without any hope of help.  What would we say to them and to their dear ones who also would need comforting and counselling so that they could handle the situation in a positive way?

attitudeS

It is always very important to stress that any action on behalf of HIV patients and their communities is not simply something that needs to be done. It is above all the way that that something is done.  This means that we have always to be careful how to go about what we do to, for and with them.  It is a question of our fundamental attitude which can be nothing other than that of Jesus himself. 

We see that attitude of Jesus in the way he always dealt with the poor of any sort that he encountered as he went around the towns preaching the Good News and doing good. We see this attitude in all the Gospels. 

It was an attitude that clashed head on with that of those who ruled over them, condemned them, and who never even lifted a finger to alleviate their burden.  This attitude of Jesus is summed up in his cry: “Come to me all you who are overburdened and I will give you rest … for I am meek and humble of heart.” 

Jesus indeed made himself poor with those who were poor. Because the meek and the poor in spirit who are declared to be blessed are exactly the poor who are left powerless, are rejected and despised, in short all those who sought Jesus’ healing power.  It is an attitude of loving respect, of affirming and enhancing the severely wounded dignity of HIV and AIDS patients. 

It is here especially that we need to  do what   Paul   asks   his Christians to do, that is, to put on the mind and heart of Jesus who humbled himself and became like us in all things except sin. 

If we who are concerned for and with them were merely to adopt a cold clinical attitude or even a superior attitude, we only end up demeaning them and lowering even further their seriously shaken dignity.

Jesus never helped those in need in an up-to-down attitude or without engaging in the process of healing all those he healed.  He recognized their willingness to be healed as they turned hopefully to him even with just a grain of faith. He just took them up from there. 

WOUNDED HEALERS

Henri Nouwen wrote a book about the “wounded healers.” That is what we AIDS “activists” must recognize ourselves to be as we work for and with HIV and AIDS patients. This truth about us, that is, our own “woundedness”, is an added incentive for us to feel for and deeply empathize with them as Jesus did.  It is only this way that the power came out of him to touch and heal those with whom he was being com-passionate, sharing as far as possible their own passion. 

These are just a few theological reflections on our inter-action with the HIV and AIDS infected. All the points mentioned turn around the true face of God that needs to shine on our face as we encounter our brothers and sisters, our fathers and mothers, and our neighbours who are in need of our healing companionship. Thus we try to give a better life to those infected and in our campaigning and educating for the elimination of this humanly debilitating disease.

Fr. Bernard Mallia, S.J
Sudan