Easter Sunday 2020
Before COVID-19 appeared, cancer was the frightening “c”-word. To hear that diagnosis felt, to many, like a death sentence, even if the prognosis wasn’t that at all. Hundreds of thousands of people in the United States die of cancer every year. Many more survive. Many of you have been directly touched by cancer, either in yourself or in your loved ones.
With cancer, it isn’t the disease alone that makes people sick. The treatment can add to a patient’s miseries, if only for a time. Chemotherapy is one example of this. When a patient is given chemotherapy, doctors are introducing a poison into the patient’s body in such a way that, it is hoped, the poison will stop the cancer before it kills the patient. As we know, chemo often makes patients feel even sicker than they did with the cancer alone. Doctors monitor the patient’s progress to determine if the chemo needs to be adjusted, changed or ended. There are a variety of chemotherapy treatments available, as well as radiation and others.
Looking at our nation’s dealings with COVID-19 reminds me of a cancer patient being given chemotherapy. We, as a nation, have contracted the coronavirus. Experts have recommended a kind of treatment for us that is very much like chemotherapy. As a result, we are seeing challenges from two sources: the physical illnesses caused by the virus itself, and the social and economic illnesses caused by the ‘chemotherapy’ – i.e. the social distancing, the distinguishing between “essential” and “non-essential” workers, and so on. It’s important to remember that the virus itself hasn’t thrown millions of people out of work; it’s the treatment for the virus that the experts have prescribed. The hope and the goal is that the spread of COVID-19 is reduced and halted before significant harm happens to our nation’s social fabric. Already, many people are discussing what the signs might be that would indicate that our social ‘chemotherapy’ can be adjusted, reduced and gradually ended.
We can ask a number of questions here. Is our solution the only national chemotherapy available? Or the best one for us? Even the medical experts cannot answer such questions with certitude, as they are dealing with a new strain of virus. They can only give us their best informed opinions. Our civil and religious leaders have to make their choices based on their evaluation of these expert opinions.
There is another parallel we can draw between the current COVID-19 outbreak and our experience of other kinds of serious illnesses. People who have had cancer or other life-threatening diseases will often say how their priorities were changed. They came to see that some things they had treated as important were not, and that some things they were ignoring were truly important. In the same way, the social distancing and the stay-at-home orders that most people face are giving people the time and space (should they so choose) to evaluate their lives, their priorities, and see if they need to make a course correction here or there. We have seen air and water pollution reduced because of our reduced activities in the wake of COVID-19. We have seen people pull together, as often happens in crises, and help one another. However, we have also seen people try to take advantage of the situation and prey upon those made vulnerable by fear or isolation.
This is a good lead-in to my next point. We often hear of how our lives have changed because of the coronavirus and the strictures put in place in an attempt to limit its spread. We are all aware of this in many ways. There is another side to this crisis, though. COVID-19 has also served as a prophet for us. Not prophecy in the sense of foretelling the future; prophecy in the sense of holding up a mirror before us and revealing to us truths about who we really are and what our priorities and attitudes truly are. COVID-19 did not create those truths and priorities no more than a mirror creates you when you look at it. No, it reveals what has already been there for anyone willing to look and see.
Let us choose a few examples of how COVID-19 has become a revealing prophet for us.
Our civil leaders have distinguished between “essential” and “non-essential” jobs. Employees with “non-essential” jobs must work from home, if possible, or may be laid off, as millions have been so far. Think of the emotional impact on a person to be told that their job, their career (perhaps their lifelong passion) is “non-essential” after all. Moreover, look around. Our society is already showing the strains caused by missing the efforts of these so-called “non-essential” workers. Do we not do a similar thing – implicitly – in the Church, naming some ministries as “essential” (usually more active ones) and others as “non-essential” (usually more contemplative ones)? We may say the correct things about them, but do our attitudes correspond with our words? Moreover, can any distinction between “essential” and “non-essential” people be squared with St. Paul’s teaching on the Church as the Body of Christ in 1 Corinthians: “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I do not need you”, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I do not need you.’” (1 Cor 12:21) If this is so, do we as Christians have something to say to the society as a whole about this distinction between “essential” and “non-essential”? If so, why are we not saying it?
The CDC now recommends that people wear some form of face mask when in public as a defense against the virus. Can anything be more prophetic for us as a people than this? Do we not already wear masks in public – carefully chosen, worked on, and perfected as much as possible? Are we not on guard against any appearance of vulnerability or weakness? Are we not afraid of being seen in our exposed, embarrassing truth? How often do any of us venture out among others without some kind of psychological or spiritual mask? There are times when we need to put on a mask in the sense of a role or job or ministry. But do our masks enable us to reach out in love to others and to be loved by God and others, or do our masks get in the way of love? Do they hide too much? Do they present a false front?
I have spoken in previous posts of the bishops’ decision to limit our Masses to small groups of ten or less and to exclude everyone else from being there physically. In explaining his decision, one bishop was quoted as saying that the safety of people was his number one priority. There can be no doubt that the safety of our people is extremely important. We are a pro-life Church community, and we show this in how we seek to support and nurture all human life, from the womb to natural death and beyond. But as important as this is, is this really our number one priority? Does it not get Jesus’ response to the question “What is the greatest commandment?” in reverse, by ranking love of neighbor (as essential as that is) above love of God? Does such an approach not invalidate the witness of the martyrs, whether in the early Church or the martyrs of today? They knew the risks of belief in Christ and membership in the Church. They did their best to reduce the risks. After all, Christians in Rome did not gather for Eucharist outside Nero’s front door! But still they gathered, despite the risks, as they believed that the Word of God and the Body and Blood of Christ were worth living for and dying for. What would have happened if the early Church put safety first? Would there even be a Church now? Is not the blood of martyrs the seed of Christians? Are there ways that we can better apply this today?
Today we celebrate Easter Sunday. We have followed Our Lord through His entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, Gethsemane, His condemnation, Passion and Death. We now celebrate His Resurrection. Among the many messages of Easter is that Our Lord, in His infinite love and wisdom, has anticipated our failures, has taken them upon Himself, and has redeemed and healed them from within. His Risen Body still bears the wounds of His Passion. One might also say that His Heart still bears the wounds of Peter’s denial, of Judas’ betrayal, of the abandonment of many of His disciples, as well as our own sins. That wounded Risen Body serves a prophetic role for us, just as He did throughout His public ministry in Israel. In seeing His wounds, we are invited to recognize how we have wounded Him. But this recognition is not meant to shame us in the end. It is given to us, always, in the context of immense love. With the recognition of our sins comes, at once, the outpouring of love from that most merciful Heart.
Let us, then, as a people of God, a people who have been both faithful and unfaithful, be brave and trusting enough to welcome the Risen Lord, to acknowledge how our sins and failures have wounded Him, how we have such an overwhelming need for His mercy. He comes to bring us that mercy. This is the year where we may learn, in perhaps a more profound way than ever before, what it means to be loved by God.