Tag: Coronavirus

7 min read

Saints

Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Advice Amid Crisis

Clare McGrath-Merkle

May 17, 2023 11:06 am May 17, 2023

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Pope St. Gregory the Great thought he was living in the end times. Reigning at the turn of the seventh century, Gregory had served as the prefect for Rome in…

Pope St. Gregory the Great thought he was living in the end times. Reigning at the turn of the seventh century, Gregory had served as the prefect for Rome in his early 30s, resigning after only a year to become a monk. Reluctantly elected pope at the age of 50, his writings give us a window into the widespread chaos of his era as he lamented political overthrows, flooding, plagues and pestilence on all sides.

Today, in our current worldwide crisis, priests can look to Pope St. Gregory for sage advice because he made it his work to prepare extraordinary priests to meet the extraordinary times in which they found themselves. He wrote The Book of Pastoral Rule, a manual used in the training of bishops and priests for the next thousand years. In it, he outlined his ideas on how pastors facing crisis can be “physicians of the heart” in their “cure of souls.”

Gregory’s teachings can be helpful for priests who may be struggling with the demands of serving their parishioners at a distance and also providing the sacraments to the very sick, while themselves facing their own personal trials, doubts and fears. His teachings can also be a source of consolation to the faithful to know of ways their pastors can be attending to them spiritually at such a time.

Spiritual Fatherhood

While priests may not be able to provide their parishioners with the sacraments at this time, there is much that they can do. Gregory, in fact, purposefully expanded his priests’ ministerial roles to become spiritual fathers in new ways.

Gregory has been called the “doctor of desire” because at the center of his teachings for priests was the notion of the heart yearning to be satisfied. Gregory wanted his priests to discern both the movements of the Holy Spirit and the spiritual needs of their charges in order to bring healing to their hearts. In today’s crisis, that is a tall order if pastors can only communicate with parishioners by phone or the internet. Or is it?

In a culture sympathetic to it, scholars have noted that the pastor’s role has migrated into becoming a therapeutic one, which, truth be told, can be exhausting, and really not possible given training and time constraints. While priests may be keeping in good contact with parishioners during this crisis, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to provide counseling to so many parishioners.

Gregory’s idea of spiritual fatherhood, however, bypassed the psychological model for the spiritual. Gregory’s pastors’ hearts longed for God and the discernment of God’s thoughts rather than enlightenment through human reason. Through prayer, Gregory felt, priests could learn what God had in mind for those in his charge.

Fast forwarding to today, keeping in touch with their spiritual children via email or phone, pastors may only be able to provide a few words of prayerful encouragement or advice, but these can and do mean a great deal. Importantly, priests can promise to take intentions to prayer and also share their own intentions for parishioners to pray for as well.

Intercessor

For Gregory, a pastor’s heart belongs to God. His priests were to spend time in meditation and contemplation before God. A very important icon for Gregory in this role of spiritual father was the Old Testament priest Aaron, who bore the burdens of the people on his breastplate as he entered to pray before the Holy of Holies. Gregory’s pastor was also to bear his spiritual children’s burdens on his heart.

Priests do this already, of course. But, Gregory’s teaching can help priests and laity better appreciate this sometimes underemphasized aspect of priestly identity — that of intercessor. Intercession is considered the greatest of charisms and one that the priesthood has in superabundance. At the holy sacrifice of the Mass and in personal prayer, the priest brings our petitions to God.

Spiritual Works of Mercy

Some priests might feel sidelined or out of action during quarantine, but nothing could be further from the truth. Gregory pointed his priests to the Rule of St. Benedict as a model to live a more monastic, ascetical lifestyle. It is also a rule proposing moderation, a key monastic virtue.

Gregory warned priests not be overcome with the excesses and cares of life. Gregory wanted his priests during momentous times to be a model for the laity to lead the kind of contemplative life that showed balance in judgment and balance between inner and outer lives.

The contemplation that Gregory urged of pastors also required the outward reach of mercy. If priests are prevented from performing many works of the corporal works of mercy at this time, they can focus on the spiritual works of mercy.

Pastors, of course, cannot give what they do not have. Returning frequently to the well of prayer and restful study is an antidote to overwork.

Gregory wanted pastors to be preachers, first and foremost. Because he thought it was the end of the world, Gregory thought that the evil one would be influencing learned men to be duplicitous and to give false teachings. So, he urged priests to focus on the study and preaching of the Bible.

With so many ways now to reach out to followers on the internet, pastors can continue to preach to and teach their parishioners in new ways, gaining assistance, if needed, by reaching out to tech-savvy parishioners to make that happen. Shorter online Masses can allow priests to devote themselves to longer sermons. Parishioners are hungry for the Word of God, and to see and hear their beloved pastors.

With the laity leading more cloistered lives at the moment, pastors could help us to grow in relationship with the Lord by giving advice on how to do so. One resource that I always recommend is the practice of lectio divina, that is, divine reading — simply reading and thinking about a scripture passage, letting the Lord speak to us in our hearts. Using each Sunday’s readings is a great way to do that. No books are needed, nor fancy meditation techniques required.

Leading parishioners daily online in the Liturgy of the Hours, Rosary or Divine Mercy chaplet may be other ways to serve and to stay connected, both as leaders and friends.

Lastly, Gregory always looked for signs of the Holy Spirit in his priests’ lives to determine where to send them to serve. If he saw a priest who had the gift of healing, he would send him to work with the sick. Times of crisis can bring out hidden gifts and purposes for the sake of others. God is pouring out His gifts and mercies even and especially in times like ours. Priests can ask themselves what is stirring in their hearts to do in this momentous time and bishops should be discerning that with them.

God gave us St. Gregory, the monk-pope, who is even now teaching priests, from across the centuries, how to face unprecedented challenges with mercy and wisdom for the sake of others. For just such a time as this, God has well prepared his priests to serve Him and His people. Like never before, they have new tools available to serve their parishioners as physicians of the heart. St. Gregory, pray for us.

His feast day is September 3.

Clare McGrath-Merkle, OCDS, DPhil, writes from Maryland.

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5 min read

Saints

Blessed Engelmar Unzeitig: A patron at the time of an outbreak

Mary Hallan FioRito

March 2, 2022 7:00 am March 2, 2022

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5 min read

Americans marvel at the commitment and courage of our nation’s healthcare providers as they struggle under enormous pressures to care for the sick and dying during the COVID-19 pandemic. In…

Americans marvel at the commitment and courage of our nation’s healthcare providers as they struggle under enormous pressures to care for the sick and dying during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the doctors, nurses and paramedics who were already actively working to care for COVID-19 victims, thousands more have come out of retirement to provide assistance to those on the front lines, choosing to put themselves directly in harm’s way to help.

While volunteers in times of medical emergency do not have an obvious patron saint, they might very well find one in Blessed Engelmar Unzeitig, known as the “Angel of Dachau.”

Blessed Engelmar Unzeitig. Public domain

Born in what is now the Czech Republic in 1911, Hubert Unzeitig joined the Marianhill Missionaries at age 18. After completing his studies in theology and philosophy, he was ordained in 1939 and given the religious name Engelmar. A month later, World War II began.

Although he desperately wanted to serve as a missionary among the poor, he was assigned as a parish priest first in Austria, then in the Bohemian Forest region of Germany. It was there Father Engelmar encountered the Hitler Youth, who eventually reported him to the Nazi regime for his homilies, in which he defended the Jewish people and criticized their increasingly dehumanizing treatment. Father Englemar was arrested by the Gestapo on April 21, 1941 and sent to the concentration camp at Dachau. He was 30 years old.

Dachau was a unique place among the Third Reich’s concentration camp scheme. Established in 1933, it initially was used exclusively for enemies of the state. Beginning in 1940, Nazi leadership chose Dachau as a designated site for the consolidation of religious ministers and began a transfer of those being held from other camps to Dachau. In total, 2,720 men were incarcerated, 95% of them Catholic priests (the vast majority of them from Poland). The remaining men were Jehovah’s Witnesses and Lutheran or Evangelical Protestant pastors (most of these from Germany). Father Engelmar arrived in Dachau on June 3, 1941, was assigned inmate number 26147, placed in Barracks #26, and given a badge to wear on his camp uniform. Distinct from the yellow star denoting Jews or the black triangle designated for Gypsies and prostitutes, Father Engelmar was given a red triangle, the symbol reserved for “rescuers of Jews,” political prisoners and Catholic priests.

From the moment of his arrival at Dachau, Father Engelmar entrusted himself to God’s will and to His Divine Providence. In August 1941, he was permitted to write a letter to his sister, Regina, and assured her, “God directs everything with wonderful wisdom. Only we don’t always know immediately what everything is good for.”

Father Engelmar’s confidence in God’s care for him and his desire to help others manifested itself almost immediately; he began to learn the Russian language, so he could minister and care for Eastern European inmates, he often gave up his own food rations for those who were hungrier than he.

The treatment priests received in Dachau ranged from tolerable to torturous, depending on the day and the commandant’s mood. One historical account of the priests’ barracks notes:

“Priests at Dachau were not marked for death by being shot or gassed as a group, but over two thousand of them died there from disease, starvation, and general brutality. One year, the Nazis ‘celebrate'” Good Friday by torturing 60 priests. They tied the priests’ hands behind their backs, put chains around their wrists, and hoisted them up by the chains. The weight of the priests’ bodies twisted and pulled their joints apart. Several of the priests died, and many others were left permanently disabled.”

In late December 1944, Dachau experienced an outbreak of typhoid fever. Those who contracted typhus were isolated into separate barracks and left to die alone. Father Engelmar (faithful to the motto of the Marianhill Missionaries, “If no one else will go: I will go!”) offered to enter the typhoid barracks, along with 19 other priests from the clergy barracks. No medicines and no protection from the typhoid infection were offered to them, yet they tended to the sick and dying with tenderness, bathing, comforting and anointing them. Although he knew this mission would likely be his last, Father Englemar nevertheless maintained his faith and confidence in a good God. In January 1945, he again wrote to his sister, “We must never forget, you see, that everything which God sends or permits is meant to contribute to our good.”

Of the 20 priests who volunteered for the typhoid barracks, 18 died. Father Engelmar was among them, passing away on March 2, 1945. He was 34 years old. Six weeks later, American forces liberated Dachau.

Years later a miraculous cure from cancer, credited to Father Englemar’s intercession, was investigated in the Diocese of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It involved a man who had been among the American troops that liberated Dachau.

Pope Benedict XVI declared Father Englemar venerable in 2009 and Pope Francis designated him a martyr, killed “in hatred of the faith.” Beatified in 2016, Blessed Englemar’s feast day is March 2.

Mary Hallan FioRito is the Cardinal Francis George Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame.

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5 min read

Lent

Holy Thursday Amid COVID-19

Father Andrew Clyne

March 31, 2021 7:02 pm March 31, 2021

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5 min read

With Holy Thursday, we arrive at the Triduum, the most sacred time in our liturgical calendar. These days sometimes have been referred to as the “still days,” but for most…

With Holy Thursday, we arrive at the Triduum, the most sacred time in our liturgical calendar. These days sometimes have been referred to as the “still days,” but for most of us, our prior experience of them has involved very little stillness. While the Church sets aside extra time for special liturgies recalling the mystery of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection, the world generally takes very little notice. It continues on, with its hustle and bustle, with commerce and the cacophonous noise of lives simply moving without pause. And while we might be members of the Church, we are also creatures of this world. It is difficult for us to resist the inertia of that hustle and bustle that too often moves us along unthinkingly, and that makes these days just like those on the rest of the calendar: markers of time come and gone.

This continuous flow of activity impedes us from entering into the requisite stillness to which we are invited. But this year things are markedly different. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has ushered in an unanticipated and enforced interruption of activity. The hustle and bustle we simply assumed as a given, that we took to be as natural as the passing of days, is revealed now as what is truly artificial: it is, it turns out when all is stripped away, the stillness that is the constant, not the busyness.

We can resist that disclosure or we can accept it. We can choose to embrace the privileged time and silence to which God has constantly been inviting us. Or we can once more rebuff that offer by desperately searching for distraction instead, as so many will be tempted to do. This moment affords us, though, the possibility of allowing ourselves now to take the plunge into the mystery of God in ways previously unimaginable.

And it is a special challenge leveled at the Church and her members. The world does not know what to do with itself now. But we do. We have this knowledge not through our own merit, but only as those who have already received the gift of God’s largesse. We have been given God’s life and made stewards of it in order to extend it to others. That is the nature of God’s very life — a Triune exchange of giving. Our privilege as the Church is to be invited into this; but that privilege comes with a mandate to draw others — through our service — into this same life. And that summons to service is especially what Holy Thursday and the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper brings to the forefront.

The collect, or opening prayer, of Holy Thursday’s Mass reminds us that the God who has “called us to participate in this most sacred Supper,” is the same God who has entrusted to us “a sacrifice new for all eternity, the banquet of his love,” so that we might draw from so great a mystery “the fullness of charity and life.” In case the meaning of what we have been so entrusted with remains unclear, we have the most dramatic gesture of this annual celebration, which is the washing of the feet. The significance of that action for all of us is stipulated by Christ’s words in the Gospel proclaimed: “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do” (Jn 13:15).

On Holy Thursday we recall Christ’s institution of the Eucharist, the “sacrifice new for all eternity” alluded to in the Collect Prayer. What will undoubtedly make this particular Holy Thursday memorable, and regrettable for so many, is the inability to receive that very sacrament. But it is worth recalling that reception itself is not its own end. We can take Christ on our tongue repeatedly, all the while being closed to him interiorly. The meaning of our reception of Communion as a believer is to — in St. Augustine’s formulation — become the mystery we have received. Or alternatively expressed: to become like Christ, who is himself “the fullness of charity and life.”

How does one do that? The foot-washing has already shown the way. As he says, “I have given you a model to follow.” We the beneficiaries of Christ’s humble service are likewise called to the same service. Those who have received Christ’s life poured out in them are to pour out themselves for others. The pouring out of Christ for us is most fully expressed in the Eucharist. It is true that COVID-19 may deny us this Holy Thursday the privilege of receiving that Eucharist, but it does not prevent us from being the mystery we receive; that is, it does not preclude us from becoming now Eucharist for the world.

Father Andrew Clyne writes from Maryland.

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7 min read

Prayer

The Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary in the Time of COVID-19

Michael R. Heinlein

March 24, 2021 7:09 am March 24, 2021

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7 min read

First Sorrowful Mystery: The Agony in the Garden It’s instinctive for us to recoil from times of uncertainty, suffering and pain. And it’s natural for us, as a byproduct of…

First Sorrowful Mystery: The Agony in the Garden

It’s instinctive for us to recoil from times of uncertainty, suffering and pain. And it’s natural for us, as a byproduct of our first parents’ act of disobedience at Eden, to always want control. The challenge for us, when faced with trials, is to open our hearts and minds to acceptance of God’s providential care. The struggles Christ faced in the Garden of Gethsemane — fear, anxiety, helplessness, etc. — have been experienced by us all. Currently, the challenges we face in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic are many: temporary separation from the sacraments and distance from our friends and family, unemployment and new financial burdens, even sickness and death. In their face, we might not be able to pray as we ought, we might feel alone, and our thinking can be clouded by temptations to doubt and the pressure of the circumstances. This is what Christ faced the night before everything — his friends, his family, his clothes, even his life — was stripped away from him. But his example compels us to trust that even the crosses that we carry in life have purpose. Let us embrace God’s will above all else by echoing the words of Jesus: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done” (Lk 22:42).

Second Sorrowful Mystery: The Scourging at the Pillar

God’s own son took the punishment that rightly belonged to us. The beatings and blows that he endured were accepted willingly, out of love for each of us. As the prophet Isaiah foretold, “By his wounds we were healed” (53:5). Objectively speaking, Jesus’s scourging was an injustice beyond comparison.

In our own lives, we face difficulties and sufferings. Often do not give much consideration beyond their meaning beyond injustice. That means we can be tempted to grow angry, embittered and jaded. How do we process it all without giving into depression and despair? The key is to join our sufferings to those of Christ.

When imitating Christ’s sacrifice, accepting our sufferings in accord with God’s will and making of them a offering, our sufferings can be transformed as offerings of love. Rather than occasions for self-pity, transforming our suffering in Christ becomes a means to participate in his work of salvation.

In the end, the only way to make sense of life’s sufferings — especially important to remember now amid so much sorrow — is by understanding it all through the transformative love of Christ’s passion. We wonder: Why do bad things happen to good people? Why has this virus attacked the world so viciously? Why must we suffer? Let’s ask God for the grace to see through the pain, take each step forward in faith, and embrace what He has given us, confident in the hope that “does not disappoint” (Rom 5:5).

Third Sorrowful Mystery: The Crowning with Thorns

Christ’s crown was a sign of contradiction; the crown he received was not the crown he deserved. Both acclaimed and denounced as King of the Jews, he received the crown of one whose kingdom was “not of this world.” Those who follow Christ rightfully crown him by inviting him to reign over our hearts. This means we follow “the way, the truth and the life.”

In bearing a crown of thorns, Christ the King raises the dignity of humanity, he gives new meaning to life in this “vale of tears.” He opens our hearts to all who suffer and gives meaning and purpose to all our own suffering. That can be difficult to understand, especially when so many are suffering from the outbreak of a deadly virus or from anxiety, from separation from family and community and from the inability to receive the sacraments. But Christ reigns when we invite him to enter our hearts, when in imitation of him we conform ourselves according to God’s will, and when we imitate his unbounded charity. As citizens of Christ’s kingdom, supported by his grace, may we dare to live by his example: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:13).

Fourth Sorrowful Mystery: Jesus Carries the Cross

Along the road to Calvary, while carrying the cross burdened with the sins of the world, Jesus encountered the goodness of friends and strangers. These models of charity console Jesus’ heart during his final agony and give him an opportunity to rest his weary body. Those who helped Christ or encountered him on the way to Calvary did so knowing they could face harm themselves. But they put their lives on the line to help Jesus carry his cross, wipe his bloodied and sweaty face, or give him a glance or word of love to alleviate his pain.

In the face of the current pandemic, healthcare professionals across the globe are doing the same in service to their sick brothers and sisters. Great are the sacrifices they make. Long is the list of selfless doctors, nurses and medical personnel exhausted from long working hours, often separated from those closest to them for fear of spreading infection, and risking infection themselves. And long is the list of many others making sacrifices to help keep safe the vulnerable in our midst. May the Blessed Mother, St. Simon of Cyrene, St. Veronica and the women of Jerusalem intercede for them!

Fifth Sorrowful Mystery: Jesus dies on the Cross

Those who suffer in extreme from the novel coronavirus, who have difficulty taking even one breath, can identify with the Crucified Christ as he hung on the cross. The weight of one’s body pressed against the lungs is what ultimately brought death for most crucifixion victims (and gave to us the origin of the word “excruciating”). No one wants to contract this virus, and so its victims can identify with the sinless Christ killed for our transgressions. As we hear in the first epistle of Peter: “He himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (2:24).

From the Cross, Christ shouted in misery, “I thirst” (Jn 19:28). Those words resonate with the faithful as we face the coronavirus pandemic and its many effects. Given the serious contagion and associated risk of death, bishops throughout many countries have suspended the public celebration of the Mass. As the faithful are left without the consolation of the sacraments at this moment of crisis, so many hunger and thirst to receive Christ sacramentally in the Eucharist. Many of the dying, especially the victims of the pandemic, find themselves without the ability to unburden their souls of sin by confession to a priest or receive the anointing of the sick, even at the time of death. As Jesus, in his final moments, welcomed the Good Thief into heaven, so we beg the Lord, in his never-ending mercy, to usher these souls into paradise.

Michael R. Heinlein is editor of Simply Catholic. Follow him on Twitter@HeinleinMichael.

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4 min read

Lent

Good Friday Amid COVID-19

Father Andrew Clyne

February 19, 2021 9:36 pm February 19, 2021

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4 min read

Good Friday’s is the starkest of the Church’s liturgies: the sanctuary is divested of every encumbrance, the altar left bare, the tabernacle emptied of the Lord’s Eucharistic presence. Such starkness takes on new meaning, though, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, as it is not just the gathering place of the church, which is so stripped, but the social spaces of the world as well.

And not just these gathering spaces; increasingly, as time marches forward toward an indefinite future, each one of us is being stripped as well. The layers of performance we have developed for the world’s benefit are rendered pointless, as the stages for those performances are made one by one to disappear. We are left only with ourselves, as we truly are, hovering over the abyss of the nothingness from which we emerged and to which we can always return.

When confronted with this — having been unburdened of our delusions of control and power — we become acutely more aware of our need for salvation, for a savior. But the real one: not the innumerable impostors that are the stuff of advertising and politicking. We need the one who actually has the power to lift us from the abyss, because he is the same one who entered fully into our powerlessness, and unlike us, did not reject it, knowing that “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9).

The power of God’s incarnate weakness is most visibly manifest on his cross, the object of Good Friday’s veneration. We, who have not yet learned to embrace that weakness, are made to confront this instrument of torture, which is the consummate symbol of those who seek to wield power and impose control, when in truth they lack both. The enemies of Christ (which we are through sin) think they can keep him at bay. Wood, nails, hatred or even indifference should do the trick. Only they will not, and for that, thank God. Thank God that our powerlessness before him has not excluded us from being the recipients of his power made perfect in weakness. For as St. Paul reminds us, Christ “while we were still helpless…died at the appointed time for the ungodly,” and in doing so, he “proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners [he] died for us (Rom 5: 6-8).”

Beyond venerating the cross, Good Friday is defined by its silence. The silence with which the service begins, the silence in which it ends: the cry of the crucified Christ enveloped in the silence.

Increasingly our world is enveloped in silence. Not on our screens, surely, from which much noise and silliness continues to spill. But in the places of flesh and blood, in the face to face encounter, the stuff which goes to make up a human life fully realized. There, only a haunting silence.

Silence though, is an interesting phenomenon, for not all silences are in fact the same. Especially with respect to the relationship between silence and love, the type of silence involved speaks volumes.

There is the silence that manifests love’s absence: the silence which refuses to speak the necessary and life-giving truth, the silence of fear which true love casts out, the silence of conspiracy, the silence of indifference, the silence of brooding hatred, the silence that refuses to impart forgiveness. These are a type of silence, the silence which is love’s enemy.

But there is another kind of silence. Adoring and restful silence before the beloved, the contented silence that follows the mutual declaration of love, the silence that follows the exhausting sacrifices of love made visible in action.

Perhaps the last of these is most beneficial to dwell on in this moment. There are all kinds of malicious silences plaguing our world. The trajectory of our hyper-individualistic technologically oriented culture is toward the silence of indifference and neglect. The coronavirus pandemic presents the strong possibility of pushing us further in that direction.

But there is another possibility. We consciously embrace our enforced distance from the flesh and blood encounter and its silence, not out of indifference, but out of concern for others, making it a silence of love. We do whatever we can for those on the front-lines of this struggle, who have been rendered silent by their exhaustion, reduced as they are to speechlessness by their self-giving love. And we take some time to silently and delightfully bask in the wonder of other persons, most especially the person of God.

We embrace these silences of love, knowing they are made possible by God’s own loving silence. For we belong to a God left silent on the cross after saying “it is finished” (Jn 19:30), because with such love expressed, what more needed to be said?

Father Andrew Clyne writes from Maryland.

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3 min read

Lent

Pondering another COVID-19 Lent

Michael R. Heinlein

February 15, 2021 10:38 pm February 15, 2021

3 min read

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3 min read

Many have remarked that the COVID-19 pandemic has felt like a long Lent since the pandemic got fully underway, of course, in the United States in March 2020. Given the…

Many have remarked that the COVID-19 pandemic has felt like a long Lent since the pandemic got fully underway, of course, in the United States in March 2020. Given the spiritual themes of Lent, this analogy is fitting, for we can see many of Lent’s themes present in our lives for the past year.

Penance

Lent is a time of penance, and certainly the last year has been full of opportunities to suffer. The challenge of the Christian is to unite these sufferings to the Lord, thereby finding meaning, strength and hope. As baptized Christians, we have been conformed to Christ crucified, and this pandemic has given us the opportunity to truly respond to that call. Lent is the opportunity the Church presents to us for taking stock of our own lives and how well we are living up to that call. And we do so as we journey alongside Christ, partaking in his suffering, on the way to Calvary.

Purification

Lent is also a time of purification. In many ways, this pandemic has served as a great purging. We have gone without a great deal of what we have known and loved to be commonplace — in an unexpected way. We have seen much less time spent with family and friends, even from receiving the Eucharist. Much, both good and bad, has been stripped away from us. Through it all, however, we are presented with an opportunity: to see how God is alive and active, even during a pandemic.

Fasting

Lent is a time of fasting. Because of the pandemic and its effects, we have been forced into all kinds of fasting in the past year. We have fasted from friends and relations, vacations, and from celebrating birthdays and holidays. Church life and institutional structures have been diminished. Perhaps, most of all, we were forced to fast from celebrating the sacraments, attending Mass and regularly receiving the Eucharist. It’s up to us to seize upon God’s gratuitous grace so that these are moments of opportunity rather than occasions for despair. For God does not abandon his people.

Holiness

Lent’s focus on preparation for baptism, or the renewal of our baptismal promises, shifts our focus to the purpose of our lives: to become saints. This is a call to daily follow Christ and make him the center of our lives. Our invitation to follow after Christ comes, after all, not as one of wealth, power, pleasure or honor. It is, rather, to take up our cross and follow him. And so, these times are ours. These times are for us. God calls us to share more fully in his life and to mirror it to the world through the crisis we face. Fortified by God’s grace and formed by his Word, we are called to respond to our circumstances as the saints have done.

For more, see “Finding Christ in the Crisis: What the Pandemic Can Teach Us” (OSV, $1.95) by Father Harrison Ayre and Michael R. Heinlein. Don’t miss the companion free study guide for Lent.

Michael R. Heinlein is editor of Simply Catholic.

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