2020 3rd Sun Lent

• Third Sunday of Lent
  Reading 1  Ex 17:3-7

  Responsorial Psalm  Ps 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9.

  Reading 2  Rom 5:1-2, 5-8

  Gospel  Jn 4:5-42

This is a very strange time for the world, and for the Church. A coronavirus has disrupted life, starting in China, then moving to South Korea, Iran and Italy, and finally throughout western Europe, and the United States. Sports leagues, concerts, and public gatherings large and small have been cancelled around the world. For the Church in all of Italy, including in Rome itself, public Masses have not been said for a couple of weeks and there was even brief talk about the Churches in Rome being closed entirely. In our own diocese, the Sunday obligation has been dispensed, which I have never heard of before. In light of this, as Christians, what should our response be?
 
One possible response to avoid is seen in the Israelites response to being thirsty in the desert in the first reading. As they journey towards the promised land, they grumble against Moses about their lack of water. It’s important to note that they are not praying for God’s aid, but instead complaining about Moses bringing them out of Egypt, to the point that Moses begins to fear for his life. Moses cries out to God, he prays, and is instructed on how God will give water to the people. The people lack faith in God, leading them into panic and quarreling with each other, as the reading tells us the names Massah and Meribah indicate. Moses’ prayer saves them. The people reject God’s gift of freedom. In the words of the Psalm, they harden their hearts. They immunize themselves against God because of their physical thirst. Their response to thirst is to reject God.
 
A similar hardening of our hearts for us could be seen in: panicking and refusing to trust in God’s willingness to hear our prayers; mocking those who pray for healing or an end to this crisis, or even just ignoring our spiritual lives because of the disruption to our physical lives. We still need spiritual nourishment and to be open to God, especially in times of crisis. As the Gospel tells us, there is a food and water Christ gives us, the spiritual food and spiritual water that nourish us for eternal life, the food Christ has that his disciples do not yet know about when they’re in Samaria on their way to Jerusalem. We still need Christ, and the food and water that only he can give us even if we are also starving, thirsty or sick.
 
Another mistaken response would be to take an exaggerated reading of the second reading, along with a caricature of what I just said, and deny the necessary physical precautions we should take. In the second reading, St. Paul tells us that we have been justified by faith, which allows us to hope in the love of God poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, and he gives as evidence of this Jesus Christ dying for our sins while we were still in opposition to God. This is a beautiful meditation that connects Divine Love to the forgiveness of our sins and our response to Christ. Well worth praying over.

 
What it does not mean is that we can ignore any recommendations given by government and health care organizations, and instead “trust” in God to protect us, and carry on our lives as if nothing was going on. You can’t see this but I put “trust” in scare quotes because this is not really what trust in God means. This is a description of the vices of pride and vainglory. It isn’t trusting God, it is putting yourself in His place by rejecting the physical nature of the body he has given you. It is true, as the Gospel tells us, that spiritual water and spiritual food given by Christ are both necessary and sufficient for eternal life. We need nothing outside of Christ to enter eternal life, and nothing outside of Christ can lead us into eternal life. However, God also made us as physical beings. This means we must care for our physical well-being, which includes drinking physical water when we are thirsty, eating physical food when we are hungry, and not putting ourselves at unnecessary risk.
 
So, a Christian response to the coronavirus must take into account both a physical and spiritual component in the light of the unique circumstances. So, what does this look like?
 
The physical component is straight-forward: simply follow the recommendations given by doctors and put out by the CDC. Most of these are well-known by this point: wash your hands with soap for 20 seconds regularly, avoid physical contact with people and practice social distancing, try to avoid touching your face, large gatherings, unnecessary travel and so forth. These measures must be taken seriously because of the risks of coming into contact with the virus and the need to combat it on the physical level by starving it of the resources it consumes and requires: human beings.
 
We must also combat coronavirus on the spiritual level. This requires a bit more thought. One way to do this, provided we are healthy and able to do so, is to really dedicate ourselves to the penitential nature of lent. Natural evils such as deadly illnesses and plagues usually happen without being the result of any specific evil act done by any individual. Nevertheless, all evil, and all death, has its origin not in God, who created all things good, but in the sin of humanity, in the sin of Adam and Eve and the many sins that we continue to commit. Therefore, a necessary part of our response to natural evil, even though it is not directly our fault, is doing penance for our sins and for those committed within our community, country, and world. It is interesting that this situation has developed during lent, a season that already has a penitential character, and during which we have already taken on extra penitential practices. Making sure we follow these, and thinking about adding in additional practices would be an appropriate response to the coronavirus.
 
It is also important that we maintain contact with Christ, even when it becomes imprudent or impossible to be physically present at the sacrifice of the Mass, including on Sunday. After all, it is Christ who banishes death and sin from the Earth, and whose support we need to banish death and sin from our hearts. A part of this is making a spiritual communion if we are not able to physically receive His body, blood, soul and divinity. You can start this by watching a Mass on television, or online, or, if that isn’t possible, reading or even just imagining the Mass. Then prepare yourself as you normally would to receive the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. Then carefully say a prayer similar to this one, written by St. Alphonsus Liguori: “My Jesus, I believe that you are in the Blessed Sacrament. I love you above all things, and I long for you in my soul. Since I cannot now receive you sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart. As though you have already come, I embrace you and unite myself entirely to you; never permit me to be separated from you. Amen.” We worship Christ in Spirit and Truth, so he is willing to come to us and to be with us even when we are not able to be physically present at the re-presentation of his death and resurrection, as important and essential as that physical presence in the community of the Church is.
 
The spiritual aspect of our response must also include prayer, both for healing of victims and for eradication of the virus. The President of the United States has asked that today be a National Day of Prayer because of this national emergency. Regardless of what we think of him as an individual or as a president, this is an important request for a civil leader to make. Prayer, offered in Spirit and Truth: opening ourselves to Christ as the Samaritan Woman in the Gospel does, receiving His spiritual water and food, following Christ in doing the will of the Father, is necessary at all times, but especially in times of need. At this time, it is necessary and obligatory for us to open our hearts to God and our neighbors and intercede to God for the good of our neighbors and our society. Instead of complaining, the Israelites should have prayed when they were thirsty. Instead of complaining, whether about Donald Trump or the Democrats, or the Italians, or the Chinese or bats, we should turn our hearts to God and pray.

 
During Communion, after we sing the Proper of the day, the communion antiphon corresponding to this Mass, we will sing a short hymn whose text comes from a prayer addressed to Christ through the intercession of Mary possibly written by nuns in Portugal when the plague struck them in 1317. It is a fitting prayer for us to say in response to our current pandemic: translated, it says: “The Star of Heaven that nourished the Lord drove away the plague of death which the first parents of man brought into the world. May this bright Star now vouchsafe to extinguish that foul constellation whose wars have slain the people with the wound of death. O most pious Star of the Sea, preserve us from pestilence; hear us, O Lady, for Thy Son honors Thee by denying Thee nothing. Save us, O Jesus, for whom Thy Virgin Mother prays to Thee.”