In the last few weeks, I have received many emails, messenger, and ‘WhatsApp’ messages and questions from fellow Catholics and other Christians about the current situation of the viral pandemic. These communications have gotten me to look at the situation from a different angle.
A deep daily reflection on our experience with the viral pandemic brings into our current reality the exilic experience of the people of Israel. We are in exile; whether we see it that way or not. Here comes Easter in Exile. How do you celebrate that joyfully, in spirit and in truth?
We read from the Prophets of the Old Testament, especially the Prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, Malachi and others that the people of Israel were exiled because of idolatry, waywardness, and disobedience to God. They were defiant and cast aside the precepts of the Lord. According to the Prophet Jeremiah, Thus says the Lord:
“I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and bounty, but you came and defiled My land, and made My inheritance detestable. 8The priests did not ask, ‘Where is the LORD?’ The experts in the law no longer knew Me, and the leaders rebelled against Me. The prophets prophesied by Baal and followed useless idols” (Jer. 2:7-8).
The prophet continued to point out that:
“It is because they have forsaken My law, which I set before them; they have not walked in it or obeyed My voice. Instead, they have followed the stubbornness of their hearts and gone after the Baals” (Jer. 4:8-9) In addition, “the shepherds of my people have lost their senses. They no longer seek wisdom from the LORD. Therefore, they fail completely, and their flocks are scattered” (Jer. 10:21).
Similarly, we have been exiled because we turned our backs to our Lord and Creator, and abandoned his ways and our baptismal life and obligations to witness to the values of our Lord’s Kingdom. Instead, we have embraced worldly principles as our value system, making a mockery of our religious faith, consigning it to the backseats of the world, and worshipping the baals of intelligentsia, science, and technology as the true sovereign, shunning any sense of obedience and loyalty to our God and Creator.
We have fallen into the harlotry of post-modernism with it’s a delusion of “success” and “happiness” by greed, false self-determination, egocentrism, material wealth, and self-indulgence, with unparalleled appetites for luxury, preference to information technology, false advancement, and social incivility devoid of absolute truth.
St. Paul rightly speaks to us today of our postmodern attitude and disconnectedness as “Christians” just it was when he wrote his letter to the Romans:
“For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and darkened in their foolish hearts. Claiming to be wise, they became fools . . . because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen” (Romans 1:21-22, 25).
Members of the Church on earth that the Lord has built on the “Rock” no longer hold to their faith in the Lord. The prophet Ezekiel, very poignantly, prophesied about this very situation that we’re in right now, regarding the Church:
“Her shepherds do violence to My law and profane My holy things. They make no distinction between the holy and the common, and they fail to distinguish between the clean and the unclean. They disregard My Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them” (Ezekiel 22:26).
The prophet Malachi also laments our situation in prophesy: “For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, because he is the messenger of the LORD of Hosts. But you have departed from the way, and your instruction has caused many to stumble. You have violated the covenant of the priesthood],” says the LORD of Hosts” (Mal. 2:7-8).
Now, the heavy, dark cloud of the “crown-virus” has descended upon us, and has made many bow to its demands with fear and trepidation. This “crown-virus” indeed now sits on the throne in the entire world, and the entirety of humanity lives under its reign of fear and panic.
Some may ask: “what has religion or faith got to do with the viral pandemic?”
Well, the fact that there is a new kind of virus is not the problem. Viral mutations have been going on for thousands of years, and our ancestors who have lived myriads of years before us, and who have always been in tune with our God and Creator as the Source of human life, have always had the unique wisdom and knowledge to deal with viral infections.
The problem is: today, we think, as intelligent beings, we are independent and capable of self-determination; separate from our source; our God and Creator; the Primary Genome of our very being, in whose image we were created. Yet we’re not independent. So long as we are creatures we can never be independent. We were designed and created to live and function in a certain way; in communion with HIM.
So when we disassociate ourselves from that “certain way” of living, and adopt contrary ideologies and lifestyles, we expose ourselves to organic and spiritual mutation that alters our innate design, information processes, and defense mechanisms. We become dependent on artificial creations and thought processes, wiping out the innate processes within us by which the creative wisdom and insight are given and illuminated by our Creator.
Today, the lack of such creative wisdom and insight codified within our innate information processes by our God and Creator, and which is necessary to effectively deal with such viral parasites as corona virus with immediate impact, stems from the very fact that we have neglected the core values of our being, and have focused on the excitement of modern technology and illusionary attraction and appeal to intelligentsia to live our lives.
But our God is faithful, and calls us back to repentance from our ignorant and sinful ways that “shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or [causes] the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among [His] people.” Yet, “if my people,” says the Lord “who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chr. 7:13-14).
In the same vein, and by the canticle from the morning prayer of Friday, April 3, the Lord, through the prophet Isaiah, invites us to abandon our worldly idols and worthless ways, and turn to HIM, and be saved:
“There is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is no one besides me. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (Is. 45:21b-22).
It is not a coincidence that we find ourselves in this home-based exile due the reigning “crown-virus” during this season of Lent. I believe that it is a call for us to extend the Lenten observance of penance, prayer, and fasting, to truly demonstrate our sorrow for our sins and to beg our God for forgiveness.
I realize that the Church has a fixed liturgical calendar by which we celebrate the liturgy on all Sundays of the year. However, we are in an extraordinary moment in the life of the world that calls for temporarily suspending the fixed liturgical calendar, just as we suspended the “liturgy of liturgies” on Sundays because of the viral pandemic. I call on the Church to extend the season of lent; to do penance, fast, and pray until the pandemic ceases. Going strictly by the liturgical calendar, this Sunday begins Holy week and next week is Easter.
If we are true to ourselves, life circumstances, and to God how can we truly as Church “joyfully” and triumphantly” celebrate the resurrection of our Lord under the bondage of fear and panic imposed by the viral pandemic?
The whole world is under a universal bondage of fear and panic as s result of the cloud of the pandemic over us. The Church is a universal Church, as such, we must “in spirit and in truth” of our current situation and circumstance under the dark cloud of the viral pandemic — in which we, all of humanity, find ourselves continue pray, fast, and do penance in spirit and in truth.
We must fervently pray in the spirit of continuous penance that our God may look upon us in His mercy, and eradicate from the face of the earth, this viral pandemic. And then, free from the fear and its hold it has on the world, we will then joyfully and triumphantly celebrate the resurrection of our Lord in conjunction with our healing and liberation from the pandemic.
Indeed “God is our refuge and strength, a helper close at hand in time of distress. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should rock, though the mountains fall into the depths of the sea;. For the Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our stronghold.
O Lord our God, our Creator and Source of our lives, come to our aid in this time of distress. And deliver us from the destruction of evil in the Most Holy Name of your Son our Lord Jesus, Amen.
Source: Emmanuel Sogah, USA.
Disclaimer: The views/contents in this article are sole responsibility of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of Newswatchgh.com. Newswatchgh.com is therefore not liable or responsible for any inaccuracies contained in this article.”
Reproduction is authorised if permission is granted by Newswatchgh.com
