PUTTING COVID19 IN ITS PLACE

We can't escape the fact that for the past year we've been experiencing everything in the context of the

Covid Pandemic. From planning the Olympics to practicing high school basketball, from the pandemic's dire effects on airlines and corner bodegas. 

We've grown used to (not to mention fatigued by) the pervasive presence of the coronavirus, and are reminded of it every time we put on our mask, distance ourselves from someone, or attend a meeting or a class over Zoom. And we mustn't forget the over 500,00 Americans who have died; for many of us the statistics are very real, they have names and faces 

This is our world - and it's not a pleasant picture. 

Easter, however, invites us to ask the question: "Which is the bigger reality? The Universal Christ who has conquered death, or the pandemic?" For a Christian, to think of "Easter in a time of Covid" seems to be getting things completely backwards. The background against which we experience the events of our lives is not the pandemic at all, but rather the Easter Event: By dying and rising, Christ has conquered death and has brought us with Him. This Easter Event is the central fact of our existence, of our entire universe, and provides the background, the context, the "wallpaper" against which we experience everything in our lives, whether good or bad, happy or sad, including the Covid19 pandemic and everything about it.

For a Christian, then, the challenge is to experience the pandemic in the light of the Easter mystery, to put the pandemic in its proper context. Maybe the key here is to think in terms of the "Paschal Mystery," an expression that has come up in recent posts. The paschal mystery, which is the central belief of every Christian, refers to Christ's suffering-death-resurrection as a single event, in which the three seemingly separate experiences of Christ are inseparable from one another. And, of course, this is true of or own suffering and dying: they are part of that same Paschal Mystery that always ends in victory over death.

All of the suffering that is connected with the pandemic is, then, somehow, mysteriously, a participation in the sufferings of Christ, and of his death and resurrection. 

In the light of the Paschal Mystery, all of this Covid suffering has meaning. With our limited intellects, we can't understand the meaning yet; but with the eyes of faith we can see that it's all part of God's infinitely mysterious love for each of us.