The grassroots community as an experience of resilience: Testimony of parishioners from a Catholic parish in Lima during the COVID-19 pandemic
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Abstract
This study is based on a constructive-interpretative epistemological standpoint that integrates psychology with theological reflection. It analyzes significant experiences within a Catholic parish in a low-income neighborhood in Lima, Peru, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly focusing on the absence of God or religious communal experience. These experiences are examined through the construct of ambiguous loss, which explains situations characterized by the inability to verify the loss of what is loved. Based on a series of semi-structured interviews with a representative group from this parish and in line with the qualitative intent of this research, four moments in the experiences are identified through a hermeneutic analysis (Creswell, 2013). While the first two moments emphasize the emotional suffering caused by the pandemic at a level of desolation, uncertainties, and frustrations guided by the apparent absence of God, the latter two demonstrate a continual identification and spiritual search in non-traditional forms of God's presence. In other words, these four stages reveal a path from the painful experience of absence to the consolation brought by resurrection and new possibilities of presence. This process illustrates the resilience of the grassroots ecclesial community and the ability to reconfigure the presence of God through the redefinition of traditional religious and sacramental mediations. Simultaneously, it unveils the growth in the spiritual agency of the laity.
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