As I write I’m half way through a two week quarantine for a possible case of the coronavirus. The symptoms are very mild and the initial novelty of the whole situation has been replaced now with a certain tedium and I find myself increasingly looking forward to the day when this pandemic is something for “remember the coronavirus pandemic of 2020?” conversations in years to come. I find myself trying not to think of the possibility of this situation dragging on, not for weeks, but for months yet, and even less to think about loved ones who may not in fact make it through to see the end of this pandemic.
We had thought that maybe there might be no point in producing Position Papers this month given everything that is happening, especially with the uncertainty that hangs over the shops and postal service. It strikes me, however, that our readers might well appreciate, now more than ever, receiving some faith inspired lights on the pandemic. To this end about half of our contributions deal with it. I would also like to use this editorial to share some personal thoughts on the crisis we are all passing through together, and also to draw on the reflections of Pope Francis in his special Urbi et Orbi homily of Friday 27 March.
In a few short weeks the season of Lent will give way to the season of Easter, and the Church will once again teach us the crucial lesson that the cross – suffering – does not have the last word. The fifty days of Easter is a particularly significant number as it is meant to symbolise eternity: it is a week of weeks, or forty-nine days, plus an additional day added to give eight Sundays – all of which symbolises going beyond this present life into a time which has no end. Nature too will take up the chorus as those fifty days bring us from April into May, providing a living icon of the beauty of eternal life. Easter is the oldest and most fundamental feast in the Church’s calendar, and it expresses the core of our Catholic Faith. It reminds us that we have been created to enjoy an eternal Easter, but that we arrive at this Easter through Lent, and through Holy Week, in other words, through the Cross.
During these difficult days of lockdown, of job losses, of illness and death, we Christians cannot lose sight of the Christian understanding of suffering. It is not to say that we have a facilely optimistic view of everything, a view which would downplay the cruel reality of suffering. No, we acknowledge that suffering is very real, and that it is mysterious; it cannot be rationalised away. And yet it is when faced with the reality of suffering that our Faith really comes into its own. Nothing else, no science or worldly wisdom, can make any sense of the cross. We know that this pandemic, like all crosses, would never be allowed by God if it were not to draw a much greater good. What that good might be is impossible for us to say with any certainty. We can perhaps surmise that it may be allowed in order to shake the modern world out of its materialistic sleep, to realise that “we do not have here a lasting city”.
Christ has also revealed to us that God is a loving Father, not a cruel and arbitrary God who is indifferent to our sufferings. I think this is particularly important to remember when some begin to present this pandemic as a divine punishment of the modern world for its sinfulness. There are two dangers in this approach. First of all, who are we to know God’s motives? We would do well to remember the words of God in Isaiah:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,
declares the Lord.
As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9).
It is at best temerarious to presume to judge God’s actions in the world. But secondly, if we are to speak in terms of punishment we must be very careful to show how this is reconcilable with God’s infinite, paternal love for each and every one of us. He loves us with a love “which surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:19) and even his “punishment” must be an expression of this love. As St Paul asks, “What man among you would not chastise his son?”. We must beware of applying the all too human motives of vengefulness, or impatience to God.
St Francis de Sales has written one of the most moving descriptions of how God approaches the task of presenting us with our cross. He shows how there is nothing arbitrary about the cross; rather it has been most lovingly and carefully considered before God gives it to us:
The everlasting God has in his wisdom foreseen from eternity the cross that He now presents to you as a gift from His inmost Heart. This cross He now sends you He has considered with His all-knowing eyes, understood with His divine mind, tested with His wise justice, warmed with loving arms and weighed with His own hands to see that it be not one inch too large and not one ounce too heavy for you. He has blessed it with His Holy Name, anointed it with His consolation, taken one last glance at you and your courage, and then sent it to you from heaven, a special greeting from God to you, an alms of the All-Merciful Love of God.
These words can be applied now to almost the whole of mankind who are experiencing in one way or another the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Each person suffers in their unique way: some with sickness, some with a job loss, some have extra pressures placed on their marriage, some experience great tedium, and some even death. But in every case God knows that this precise cross is the best blessing for that person, and besides He also gives with the cross, the grace needed to carry it.
And besides, if we are realistic, we must admit that already we have detected the silver linings on this cloud: there will have been material goods such as a much needed period of rest, or more time spent with one’s family, and spiritual goods such as a deepening in empathy with others, and so on. If we do not allow ourselves to lose sight of God’s loving providence in all this, we will not lose our peace and joy and will face these trials with an unfailing Christian optimism.
To date one of the most striking thing about the coronavirus pandemic has been the incredible outpouring of heroic charity that it has evinced; we see all round the world how health care workers have rallied around to assist the sick, sometimes putting their own lives at risk in the process; we have seen how dozens of Italian priests have died, and in some cases they have literally given their lives for others; or initiatives to care and shop for the elderly have been put in action. While at the same time there has been less than edifying behaviour: panic buying, price gouging, and the like, the sheer numbers and heroism at the other end of the scale is impressive. And that is what we see reported; there are of course countless daily acts of care for the elderly and infirm which go unreported. In all of this of course, we are witnessing at least one of the blessings that God has wanted to give the world at this time.
Surely for all of us this trial provides us with an opportunity to live the Communion of Saints in a particularly intense way: we can join in the Holy Father’s petitions for an end to the pandemic, a cure of those who are sick, and for the repose of the souls of those whose lives have been taken by it.
For many people one of the great challenges of these days is to live charitably with those with whom they are sharing confinement. Spending day after day in close quarters with the same people in times of trial can be particularly demanding – we can think especially of parents now forced by the circumstances into home-schooling on top of all their other responsibilities. I personally have been quite inspired by the example of St Josemaría Escrivá during his months of semi-imprisonment from April to September 1937. (In his article below, Jason Osborne also mentions the timeliness of the example set by St Josemaria during his months of captivity). He and several of the young vocations to Opus Dei took refuge in the Honduran Legation to Spain, based in Madrid, in order to escape certain death at the hands of Marxist death squads roaming Madrid at the time. During those months the group of them were holed up in a tiny basement room, described by his biographer:
Until the middle of May the Father and his companions did not have a room of their own. Then they were given one at the end of the corridor, next to the service stairs. In earlier times it had probably been a storeroom for coal. It was so small that at night its tile floor disappeared under the thin mattresses and the blankets. Rolled up and rested against the wall, the mattresses served as seats during the day. A narrow window looked out on an enclosed patio. The room was so dark that even in the daytime they had to turn on the bare electric light bulb that hung from the ceiling. In this tiny, dismal room the Father organized life for himself and his companions.
There were dozens of others holed up in similar circumstances throughout the building. Some found the whole experience so trying that it lead to their becoming mentally unhinged as a result. But the experience of the fellows in the company of St Josemaría was completely different. Amazingly they later spoke of months of captivity as a time of intense joy, on account of the kindly presence of the saint. The manner in which he spoke to them filled them with consolation and calm. One of the fellows there, Eduardo, later recalled: “Sometimes we thought, if only this could last forever! Had we ever known anything better than the light and warmth of that little room? As absurd as it was in those circumstances, that was our reaction, and from our way of seeing things it made perfect sense. It brought us peace and happiness day after day.”
We could do well these days to attempt to imitate in our own confined milieu the wonderful example set by St Josemaria, seeing how much the warmth of charity can do to ameliorate the harshness of adverse material conditions.
Finally, I would like to draw on the words of the Holy Father from his Urbi et Orbi homily of March 27. Those of you who watched must have, as I did, felt we were watching something both deeply historic and at the same time somehow beyond the confines of this world. I have to confess I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. We were watching Christ’s vicar on earth going face to face with God on our behalf. As the ceremony closed I felt, as many must have done, what a great gift of God it is to the Church, and to the world at large, to have the Roman Pontiff.
His “analysis” of the crisis is especially valuable, as he shows us that more than a “punishment” it is rather an unmasking of false premises on which our secularised, materialistic culture has been built:
The storm exposes our vulnerability and uncovers those false and superfluous certainties around which we have constructed our daily schedules, our projects, our habits and priorities.
It shows us how we have allowed to become dull and feeble the very things that nourish, sustain and strengthen our lives and our communities. The tempest lays bare all our pre-packaged ideas and forgetfulness of what nourishes our people’s souls; all those attempts that anaesthetize us with ways of thinking and acting that supposedly “save” us, but instead prove incapable of putting us in touch with our roots and keeping alive the memory of those who have gone before us. We deprive ourselves of the antibodies we need to confront adversity.
Our Golden Calves have been shown wanting by this virus: our frenetic system for acquiring wealth and comfort has ground to a halt and its frailty has been revealed. It is almost emblematic that the response of many to the impending disaster was panic buying, as if to underline the fact that we believe that we will be safe if our freezer is full, and our storerooms packed i.e we will be safe from all adversity. In this way we are only rehearsing the actions of the rich fool of Jesus’ parable:
Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God” (Luke 12: 18-21).
But at the same time, the Pope has reminded us of the words of Jesus to the apostles in their sinking boat: “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith”? The answer now is a complete faith in Christ:
Let us hand over our fears to him so that he can conquer them. Like the disciples, we will experience that with him on board there will be no shipwreck. Because this is God’s strength: turning to the good everything that happens to us, even the bad things. He brings serenity into our storms, because with God life never dies.