Back to Basics
A Lent to Remember
Lent as a season has always been a sort of a “back to school” for Christ’s disciples. No matter whether you’re eight or eighty-eight, everyone is invited to reenter a sort of spiritual catechumenate, to seek deeper conversion and conformity to the life of Our Lord. This Lent has been no exception. Almost three billion people have now received the command to observe quarantine, effectively creating the conditions which, in normal times, would very much resemble a forced retreat. This is absolutely unprecedented in terms of scale, and we have yet to understand the ramifications of this crisis in terms of economic damage and lives lost. St. Augustine wrote that the purpose of trials is to purify the just and punish the wicked, which I think is the most sane and even-handed approach to discerning the meaning of this crisis. It is ultimately irrelevant whether this pandemic is a divine chastisement for our sins: the fact is, as our Lord reminds us in the context of another tragic ‘act of God’ in the Gospels, “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3). It is easy to get lost and distracted in debating whether this or that event is a punishment from God, instead of focusing on the solid fact that we are sinners, and our God is just. We will be chastised, whether here or hereafter. But will we be chastised as sons of our Father, or as strangers? If we are just, all the trials we experience will constitute a sort of purification. Insofar as we are all wicked in certain ways, every trial is truly for every individual both trial and punishment. Like polishing a piece of silver, the trials of life are the necessary friction to remove the dross from our lives. The difference between trial and chastisement to me seems only apparent, because the difference lies in the state and receptive response of the ones who suffer them. Most of our Church leaders have been loathe to enter into the debate regarding the ‘final cause’ or purpose of the current pandemic, mostly because so many have neglected our theological vocabulary on the subject of Divine Justice for so long. Yet it is the clear teaching of the Church that God does in fact punish individuals, nations, and humanity. This teaching cannot be neglected without grave harm to the good of souls. However, we too must avoid the extremes in our spiritual perspective which have been the object of satire and mockery from Celsus to Voltaire. What may be safest to say now, in my opinion, is that no matter what the providential purpose of this pandemic may be, it is clearly a producer of, and motivator to, penance, solitude, and introspection.
COVID-19 has raised all the traditional questions of theodicy, which several Church commentators have neglected, having recourse to humanistic platitudes, conflating worldly optimism with the virtue of Christian Hope. The pandemic is revealing, like most trials, the cracks in our ecclesiastical and personal foundations. What sort of ‘cracks’ do we see? What sort of a conversion is being asked of us by this present crisis?
‘Mere Priesthood’
I recently spoke on the phone with a Priest friend who has been in the midst of a personal health crisis, and so has been in convalescence for almost six months. Requiring major surgery, and now classified with those who are ‘high risk’ from COVID-19, he has been on a reduced workload as he recovers. As a man who has enjoyed good health all his life, he, like most people who get seriously ill, has been reflecting a lot upon the health he took for granted, as well as the value and meaning of life without it.
One of the first things he experienced was a quick devaluation in the assessment of his ‘usefulness’ by parish staff and even fellow Priests. Sympathy gave way to frustration on the part of the staff, as they could no longer attempt to micromanage his daily life. The people grew frustrated at this Priest’s unwillingness to add yet another prayer service, Mass, Confession Time, or other ‘service’ to the rotation. His humanity, with all its fragility, was on full display; and most people were frustrated with him, not helpful. Typically blessed with great energy and pastoral zeal, the poor man has had to learn to moderate his pace. Self-care has become a top priority, or else the only other option is the grave. The Priest mused that he has been effectively on quarantine for six months, and he feels he has lessons for brother Priests who are struggling with the current conditions.
This is a time in which now every Priest seems to feel he needs to become a televangelist or internet media mogul in order to be ‘doing ministry’ in the midst of the pandemic. The average Catholic in the Western World can watch literally thousands of different Priests in thousands of Churches offering Mass. As much as I sympathize with the desire of people to be near to their Parish Priest and their Church, and also the salutary and inspiring example of the love of the lay faithful for the Eucharist, there is a dark side to it.
For instance, for the first time in fifty years, many Priests en masse have had to relearn how to celebrate a ‘private Mass’. Dioceses and Liturgists have issued directives, some of which are laughingly apoplectic as they try to reconcile centuries-old precedent with mere decades-old practice. Some have voiced frustration and befuddlement at the very concept. Yet this was an acceptable practice for hundreds of years, and of course it is still quite acceptable, even if it is not ideal. Even though I recognize pastoral benefits in Priests who want to broadcast ‘their Mass’, I also see a very troubling aspect to it: that there are some Priests who simply cannot live without an audience for what they do; Priests who need people to see them, in order to feel they are doing something of worth, even in the realm of the Sacraments.
It may seem strange, as men who are in theory dedicated to prayer and ever-increasing union with Christ, that we seem to demonstrate a marked inability to accept simply being still, or embracing the true discipline of solitude. This bears little difference from the secular workaholic or the millions of relatively comfortable middle class Westerners who chafe at the loss of their freedom of movement, all the while enjoying a standard of living and entertainment which should, again in theory, be able to stave off and numb the ennui many postmoderns perceive, prowling at the edge of their consciousness.
To counterbalance this problem, just like my convalescent friend, I see and hear of Priests who have taken this time away from ‘the people’ to dedicate themselves to a deeply spiritual program of renewal. I hear of Priests who are fasting several times a week, who are extending their time with the Blessed Sacrament, reading books they haven’t had time to study, and also receiving the time for rest and leisure as a gift from a loving Savior, rather than as a burden or an imposition. In other words, they are beautifully recapturing the intercessory and Christological relationship which is at the core of their Priesthood. This pandemic is a reminder to the workaholic Priest that one day, all our ‘activity’ will cease. Even the administration of the Sacraments will pass away. What then, is the Priest, with ‘nothing to do’? He is a being marked, like Christ, totus ad Patrem. The pandemic is an invitation, at least in part, for Priests to come apart for a while to be with the Master, and to invoke his mercy on the Church and the whole world.
Although I suspect activity may pick up in the coming weeks as more Priests are called upon to give the Sacraments to the sick and dying and to bury the dead, right now at very least, the fault lines are becoming clear between the men who have, up till now, masked their interior vacuity with a shield of programs, initiatives, and meetings, and those who have a more ample and theologically and spiritually grounded understanding of their Priesthood. As an aside, I think the pandemic will be especially salutary for chanceries and Conferences of Catholic Bishops. All these meetings, paperwork, and bureaucracies; there is a reason why the danse macabre has always been a poignant image in a time of plague. We mortal men, doomed to die, use a thousand subterfuges to distract us from the fact that there is Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. Maybe this is also the reason so many danse macabre images feature prominently not the poor and humble of the earth, but kings and prelates? The powerful and the wealthy tend to be the most deluded about their own self-importance. The fact is, at God’s time, each one of us will go to our reward. In terms of all our plans and the things we think are so important (and so they may be!), it takes an existential honesty to admit that, in a sense, we are replaceable, – for from these stones God can raise up more children of Abraham – but that does not mean our deeds have no importance, because ultimately they reflect the quality of our character.
‘Mere Catholicism’
For the lay faithful, especially those who are attentive to the disciplines and spirituality of Lent, this time has been particularly difficult. Not only are so many worried about losing their livelihood, but added to this, the strength and consolation which flows from the Sacraments, and also the support of fellow Christians, are both somewhat suppressed.
As I stated in my last article, I feared that many marginal Catholics, due to the suspension of Public Masses and other Liturgical Services, have already begun to manifest their ‘spiritual decoupling’. I have heard, and I have colleagues who have heard, of Catholics eating meat on Fridays, not observing the Lord’s Day in any substantial way, and even going so far as to ask whether Lent or Easter have been ‘cancelled’, as if that were possible. Certain Bishops have not been helpful in this regard, with several of them giving dispensation from the precept to abstain from meat, and downplaying the need for any penance because of the extraordinary nature of this crisis.
I don’t want to come across as overly critical, but I think the same thing is wrong with this approach that was wrong when the Bishops suspended public Masses. I agree with the approach of giving people relief and dispensations where needed. However, I think how it is being done is wrongheaded in two ways: first, because we have always taught people that no one is held morally to what is impossible to be done. For instance, if the country were under interdict, and no one could go to Mass, no one would therefore be morally liable. People are effectively dispensed ipso facto because public Masses have been suspended, although perhaps making such a dispensation explicit may be helpful to comfort the doubtful and the scrupulous.
Second, I think that the dispensation from traditional Lenten penances without insisting upon the need for penance in general, just as I said regarding the importance of impressing upon people the need to still keep holy the Lord’s Day even without being able to attend Mass, creates the impression that ‘Catholicism Lite’ can be diluted further. Perhaps now we will have a Diet, No-Sugar Catholicism. I joke. Nevertheless, I feel somehow that we are accelerating the process toward a Catholicism with minimal communal and personal commitments, which inevitably is a shallow religion, which cannot endure under severe stress. The Orthodox have been abstaining from meat, dairy, and other animal products for weeks, and have fasts throughout the year. The Eastern Catholics likewise have a demanding penitential regimen. Most of this has remained unchanged for thousands of years, through war, famine and pestilence. Why is this time so different in severity, with the shelves of the grocery stores still largely stacked, that the need for penance is somehow too onerous?
So these are some ways by which ‘Mere Catholicism’, in the sense of watering the practice down, is dangerous, in my opinion. But, more importantly, there are ways that this quarantine may force a return to ‘Mere Catholicism’ which will expose a bedrock upon which we can build a New Evangelization, and a more committed and deeply spiritual lay faithful. What should be encouraging to us is the amount of families taking time for common prayer and even the reverent watching of, and participation in, Mass via the television. How many families are rediscovering the power of the Daily Rosary? Litanies? Devotions? Work and leisure spent together? The present crisis will divide very clearly the chaff from the wheat in this regard. Personally, I have already received requests for Facetime-based Bible Studies for families and individuals. They see afresh the critical importance of the “domestic Church” of the family, and the need for spiritual nourishment for the mind and the soul. There is a thirst out there for a deeper interior life, and ‘Catholicism Lite’ cannot provide it. As it was suggested in the Wall Street Journal last week, this pandemic could be the catalyst for another Great Awakening. I sure hope that assessment is correct.
The Wheat and the Tares sifted
As Pope Francis remarked during his Urbi et Orbi homily, we are living in a time of a sort of communal judgment. The stripping away of most of the distractions of modern life will, in time, make very clear how sound is the health of our societies in almost every way. The anxiety caused by the quarantine is already causing a spike in suicides. I pray particularly for those who are quarantined in conditions of squalor, and for children, and indeed all people, quarantined in the same living space with the abusive, the vicious, and the addicted. Some of us have no idea how good we have it. Others are due for a collision course with their deepest demons. Our Lord has told us that the wheat and the tares, that is, the good and the bad, live together until the end of the world, and that he will divide them at the Last Judgment. Yet we also know that just like St. Bernard could speak of an intermediate coming of Christ, so too there are many ‘little judgments’, both personally and socially, throughout history. The wheat and the tares do not just exist in the context of the body of humanity. They exist inside each human person, with their virtues and vices. At the very least, we may be able to say that the pandemic may save us from that pernicious danger of superficiality. So many of us for too long have lived on the surface of what life is about. The virus may yet claim more lives. Perhaps it may even claim my own. God alone knows. But if we are using this time, like any time we have, profitably, we will understand afresh the words of the prophet: now is the acceptable time. Today is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2)!
