Using Claude Romano’s ‘evential phenomenology’ to reflect on moments of grace and hope during the pandemic

Drawn from a wider study investigating the way people in Christian faith communities in Melbourne Australia experienced hope, grace and resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper utilises Claude Romano's notion of evential phenomenology to explore the lived experiences of three focus group participants in 2022. The phenomenological interpretation found that grace and hope were experienced as events, the significance of which were understood only after they had occurred. These events offered possibilities and opened up new worlds for these participants that provided grace, and which gave them hope for the future. Some tentative recommendations are offered in light of the interpretation.