Lent in the Time of Corona-Fear: “We Will Heal the Sick”
Masses banned in Seattle? Sacrifices creating a new demand?
Church has always been a place of refuge from a crazy world. After 9/11, people poured into churches for peace. Corona-Fear is different.
Travel to Europe, including Rome cut off for 30 Days for 30 days — through the end of Lent?
Quoting Matthew 10: “We will heal the sick,” President Trump said in his second prime time Oval Office address to the nation. Some Catholics will have to do so without receiving the Eucharist, which Catholics believe to be the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.
The Archdiocese of Seattle just indefinitely suspended public Masses. Something similar just happened in Italy. The NBA suspended its season after tonight and other public events including the major Divine Mercy Sunday Mass in Stockbridge, Mass. have also been suspended. March Madness will be played without fans.
“I want to just encourage you, in a very deeply spiritual way, to pray with confidence, to pray with faith, to pray with hope, that the Lord accompany us during this, and that the Lord protect us as well,” Archbishop Paul Etienne said.
While suspending “public’’ Masses beacause of coronavirus distease (COVID-19), he added: “every priest has an obligation to celebrate the Eucharist, and I want our priests to continue to do that.”
In Kentucky, the Archbishop of Louisville declined a request from the governor of that state to suspend masses. The Eucharist is considered the “source and summit’’ of Catholicism.
When Pope Francis got a cold, markets tumbled. When the Church canceled Masses in Italy and deleted portions of the Mass elsewhere — the parts where people touch — many (myself included) were saddened. A few were mad. Bishops in Poland added more Masses saying we need more prayer.
“Under Your protection we seek refuge, Holy Mother of God,’’ the pope prayed March 11, invoking Blessed Virgin Mary as Salus Populi Romani. “Do not despise the entreaties of us who are in trial, and free us from every danger, glorious and blessed Virgin.’’
All of this happening at Lent — a time of sacrifice…
Was this panic spreading around the world, in the midst of Lent, when we are called to make sacrifices, to give up things to become close to God, something fits well into a greater Divine Plan?
Community — common unity — is suddenly far less common. As I write this, my alma mater and many other institutions have announced an end to “live classes’’ until after Easter. The end of Lent. Coincidence?
God is like electricity — always there and invisible until…
Like electricity, we take God for granted: until there is a power outage. The minute we lose power, we act as if electricity is air: we panic without it. We become desperate to get our electricity back.
Finally, when we least expect it, the power returns, we rejoice and are full of gratitude. Then, we quickly go on with our lives and quit thinking about all the things electricity makes posssible.
We never seem to think of electricity (or God) until we need them
During World War II, General George Patton told a chaplain he believed armies “get what they want’’ by planning, by working, and by praying:
“Between the plan and the operation there is always an unknown. That unknown spells defeat or victory, success or failure. It is the reaction of the actors to the ordeal when it actually comes. Some people call that getting the breaks; I call it God… God has His part, or margin, in everything. That’s where prayer comes in.’’
Patton had the chaplain work with the 486 chaplains in the Third Army at that time, representing 32 religious denominations, preparing (at Patton’s urging) a training letter on the importance of prayer. Patton told the chaplain: “it will be like plugging in on a current whose source is in Heaven. I believe that prayer completes that circuit. It is power.”
Picture yourself as a Refrigerator — and God as the Electricity…
Father Bryan Patterson, one of my seminary professors at Orchard Lake, Michigan, taught me his own parable connecting the light and power of God with the work we do as God’s Children.
How we’re like refrigerators: A refrigerator is the main appliance in nearly every dwelling, the only home appliance that needs to be “turned on and left running’’ 24 hours a day, seven days a week to work properly.
The main job of the refrigerator is to protect and preserve its contents from the degradations and dangers of the outside world…
Every time we lose power, we are reminded that electricity is “everything’’ in our modern age just as we realize we are lost when it dawns on us that we have somehow managed to lose our essential connection with God.
The refrigerator, like humans, must be connected to its energy supply to work properly (electricity for a refrigerator or God through the Holy Spirit for humans).
If you shut off the power to your house, the refrigerator will immediately stop working but the food will remain safe for a certain period of time (often many days) because the work of the electricity lingers.
But slowly, the lack of fresh power causes conditions to degrade. Ultimately the food will go bad and be no safer in the refrigerator than it would be sitting out on the counter.
Similarly, every time we allow our connection (our lifeline, our line of connection) to God to be cut off, we invite all the unhealthy forces of the outside world into our life.
Ultimately, our job (to protect the contents of our home and family) becomes harder and harder and subject to decay because our connection to the light of God has been cut off. We can restore that connection by calling to Him but we must maintain it to function as we were designed to function.
When we are continually connected to God, every part of His plan can make sense.
We can live up to our full, healthiest potential: we are, in fact, designed to do many things as we see fit because God gave us complete freedom and free will as well as unique missions and callings and specific gifts we alone possess.
But to function as we were designed, as Children of God and ultimately as saints, we must maintain, preserve and protect our connection to the power and light and Voice of God.
Is 2020 Rome becoming more like Ancient Rome?
Masses were private for the first 300 years of the Church, held in secret, held in homes and caves. And the more Empires outlawed, restricted or punished the faith, the more the demand for it grew.
When we now celebrate Mass without “peace be with you…’’
We long for what is missing. That is precisely why we “give up’’ habits during Lent. The gift of this sacrifice is everything that has been banished will now have greater value. Could this all be part of God’s Plan?
