Floods and Climate Change: Where is God in the storm?

The 37th prayer listed “for special occasions” in the Catholic Sacramentary, the official Catholic worship book, is the prayer “to avert storms.”

The text reads:

Father, all the elements of
nature obey your command.
Calm the storm that threatens us
And turn our fear of your power
Into praise of your goodness.

Rapport Press/Cedar Rapids Gazette/Cliff Jette: Part of St. Patrick Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is submerged in floodwaters from the Cedar River June 13.As floodwaters converged on Iowa City in early June, Fr. Jeff Belger, director of the Catholic Student Center, said he started to say the prayer at daily Masses. “It was the first time in five years as a priest that I’ve had to use that prayer,” he said in a story in the Davenport Catholic Messenger.

Tornadoes, thunderstorms and flooding hit Iowa hard, taking lives and destroying homes, farmlands and damaging a few churches. Complicating the human need to make sense out of catastrophe is the growing evidence that human activity is one cause for recent weather extremes around the planet.

NCR spoke with two people who know both prayer and storms well, asking: Just what do we expect to happen when we ask God to protect us from weather events?

From 1994 to 2006, Sr. Betty Condon of the Adrian Dominicans lived and served at Sea of Peace House of Prayer on Edisto Island off the coast of South Carolina. She has had 11 hurricane seasons to consider God’s role in the weather.

“God always answers our prayers, but not always in the way we want. Good often comes out of disaster, and our faith, even as we feel anger and desperation, can be turned to good,” said Condon, now living in Adrian, Mich. “Often we know this in hindsight, but the grace does come.

“I believe God’s people who live in poor situations have this faith. We who have ‘everything’ find it harder to come to this place of grace … but it is always there for us for the receiving. God initiates all of this in us and in our world. We can always count on his grace,” she said.

Fr. Edward Hays, author of more than 25 books on prayer and spirituality, lives and writes from the eye of the storm in tornado-prone Kansas. He offered these observations:

Weather-related prayers -- for rain in time of drought or protection from violent storms -- are based on a concept of God as the one who controls nature, he said.

“In medieval times, it was the function of the priest to intercede with God for favorable weather, a good harvest, and that the creek didn’t rise. When disaster struck, people beat the priest with rods.

“This kind of plea for help in times of terror comes from the child within us, and it is spontaneous, unconscious and primitive. But the child within must mature into an adult who says, ‘What is going to happen is going to happen. I need to be accepting of the reality of life’s difficulties, disasters and diseases, but respond with as much serenity and creativity as possible,’ ” Hays said.

“Prayer doesn’t change God, whose love is constant. It changes us, enables us to adapt with courage in times of trouble and to trust that, whatever happens, we are always in God’s hands.”

Patrick Marrin is editor of Celebration, a liturgical resource published by National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company.

National Catholic Reporter July 11, 2008