Faith in the Time of COVID-19

Back when I was deciding whether to seek ordination or not, I wrestled with the fear that being a pastor would place a barrier between me and others.

I had noticed that many of my friends and acquaintances had reacted poorly to the news I was attending divinity school. Many thought it odd and not especially worthwhile. Like many today, they couldn’t quite understand why I would commit to such a thing. Christianity, after all, was on the ropes, and being a pastor a dead-end proposition.

Indeed, over the years I’ve officiated at any number of weddings. More often than not the young people treat me as if I’m a Martian or something, an odd creature whose life-sensibilities are mysterious if not just plain weird.

Fortunately, this turned out to be the minority response. Instead of creating distance, I experienced precisely the opposite. Being a pastor turned out to be a veritable gateway into the lives of others. People would often share their most intimate moments.

In my first two years at the last church I served, I conducted roughly forty funerals. One week I had no less than four! To most people this would seem an unalloyed negative.

While it is true I dreaded receiving these calls in the middle of the night informing me that a church member was sick or dying, I discovered early on what a curious blessing these calls really were.

This is not to say I welcomed them or was indifferent to the sufferings of these about whom I cared deeply. No, it was that in responding to their sufferings, I would invariably experience something of God’s grace.

In encountering the pain of others, one gains entry into their inmost being. But more than that, one encounters the authentic reality of God’s presence. Some of the most beautiful moments I’ve ever known were at the time of death. And I think I can say that for family members as well.

Death is a time when the veil is lifted, if only temporarily, and we glimpse a reality far bigger than ourselves. We discover that our everyday habits, desires, obsessions, and fears often mask a profound truth – that the spiritual world is not only real but everywhere. Such an awareness places all life-matters in their proper context.

This, in essence, is the great paradox of Christian faith. Our suffering invites revelation. Life is reoriented. We lose our lives and gain them.

Biblical faith never avoids pain, or suffering, or death. It ennobles them. It reminds us that we are God’s beloved creatures, and that even in death there is life, life eternal. These are truths we generally ignore. But when adversity hits, our Christian faith steps forward to reveal the oft-hidden magnificence and beauty of life. As well as the awareness of how far we’ve denied this simple fact amid the frenetic pace of our everyday activities.

One of the most unfortunate consequences of the current response to the COVID-19 virus is the shuttering of our churches. Just when we need God most, we are denied the salient effects of worship, spiritual counsel, and pastoral care.  

Compounding this, we live in an age that actively denies death and suffering, that relies not on faith, but on the technocratic fix.

“We are bombarded,” writes R.R. Reno, “by the gospel of perpetual youth won through diet and exercise (supplemented by the ersatz immortality of social media fame). [When] churches are darkened in the face of sickness and death, only TV talking heads, media pundits, and public health officials will speak to our anxieties and fears.”

“This reinforces the secular proposition,” he concludes, [that] this world is the only thing that matters.”

This is not to imply that the threat is not real, or that we shouldn’t take necessary and prudent steps to protect human life. But it is to say that when one of the most important resources available to us is silenced, replaced by the blare of media hype and secular doom, we are robbed of an essential means to God’s solace and peace.

In closing, I would like to offer this poem, now widely disseminated on the internet, by Brother Richard Hendrick, a Capuchin Franciscan living in Ireland. It is entitled, Lockdown:

Yes there is fear.
Yes there is isolation.
Yes there is panic buying.
Yes there is sickness.
Yes there is even death.
But,
They say in Wuhan after so many years of noise
You can hear the birds again.
They say that after just a few weeks of quiet
The sky is no longer thick with fumes
But blue and grey and clear.
They say that in the streets of Assisi
People are singing to each other
across the empty squares
keeping their windows open
so that those who are alone
may hear the sounds of family around them.
They say a hotel in the West of Ireland
Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.
Today a young woman I know
Is busy spreading fliers with her number
through the neighborhood
So the elders may have someone to call on.
Today, Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples
are preparing to welcome
and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary
All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting
All over the world people are waking up to a new reality
To how big we really are.
To how little control we really have.
To what really matters.
To Love.
So we pray and we remember that
Yes there is fear.
But there does not have to be hate.
Yes there is isolation.
But there does not have to be loneliness.
Yes there is panic buying.
But there does not have to be meanness.
Yes there is sickness.
But there does not have to be disease of the soul
Yes there is even death.
But there can always be a rebirth of love.
Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.
Today, breathe.
Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic
The birds are singing again
The sky is clearing,
Spring is coming,
And we are always encompassed by Love.
Open the windows of your soul
And though you many not be able
to touch across the empty square,
Sing.