How can we pray in a time of COVID-19? In times when we push up against our limits, we are tempted to take the path of denial and numbness, with our heads in the sand and our eyes closed. But prayers that come from that space will be hollow and meaningless. Or we may want to turn to prayer as a kind of magic, to find the incantations that will make God do something or change the world. But that makes both God and prayer too small; it denies God’s freedom and it refuses the gift that God is offering us in this strange space. However, when we recognise that our prayer is itself a part of the journey, when we accept the invitation of these psalms to bring our deepest fears, angers and doubts into prayer, we open ourselves to the God who can lead us through this strange terrain. With the Spirit’s help, we learn to sing God’s song in a foreign land.

Excerpted from Maynooth College Reflects on COVID-19: New Realities in Uncertain Times , edited by Jeremy Corley, Neil Xavier O’Donoghue and Salvador Ryan, with a Foreword by Archbishop Eamon Martin
(p.100)