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Good morning. Like many others I have followed the unfolding COVID crisis in India with a feeling of helpless horror. As the numbered dead grow, with thousands dying in a single day, it becomes more and more difficult to wrap my head round the loss – to see each number as representing a family member, a friend, a human life. While the vaccine roll-out offers hope here in the UK, uneven access means other countries still face devastating death tolls. Instinctively we shrink from attending too closely to disasters of this kind. They feel overwhelming, provoking feelings of powerlessness in the face of so much suffering. But perhaps it is precisely our attention that is required.

This week I attended a prayer vigil for India after being particularly struck by the invitation given by one of the organisers, Revd Dr Raj Bharath Patta. He described prayer as ‘solidarity’. The idea of offering thoughts and prayers can feel like a cheap alternative for genuine action – and it has often been used that way. But as over 200 of us gathered online, our calls for God’s mercy were mingled with donation links, offers of pastoral support, and letters written to government officials demanding aid.

In praying I am compelled to pay attention to suffering which I might otherwise be tempted to ignore. The philosopher Simone Weil described the act of unmixed attention as prayer. She proposed that in the act of prayerful attention our behaviours are changed; some courses of action become impossible for us. When I attend fully to the suffering of another, I find myself shaped by the priorities of divine compassion rather than by my own preferences or desires.
And the human instinct to turn to prayer in the face of death is a shared one: following the tragic deaths of dozens of people at the Lag B’Omer festival in Israel on Thursday, rabbis have also called for prayers in support of those bereaved and injured. One of the pilgrims at the festival described it as rejoicing turning into mourning, light becoming deep darkness.

The call to prayer requires a willingness to stay in the darkness. The Apostle Paul instructed the early church to ‘mourn with those who mourn’. Helpless though I might feel, I am invited into solidarity. So I turn my attention again to overwhelmed cremation sites, exhausted health workers, grieving families, breathless patients. I ask God to have mercy. And I ask that I might be made more merciful too.

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