One cold, breezy morning in March, 2020, I woke up feeling the fresh air of my plants out my backyard: petunias, begonias and aloe vera grown wildly into thicket as I neglected to water regularly, so busy I had been. But the magnolia tree by my bedroom window was beginning to sprout tiny pink flowers, a sign of the coming spring. That should be enough to brighten my day, I thought, despite the threatening morning clouds. Moreover, the morning mass at my parish this first Friday was something I looked forward to. It was the day to spend more hours with the Sacred Heart after enjoying the mass ritual, to receive that precious gift of Holy Communion, and let my soul commune in silence with Christ in front of His Blessed Sacrament tabernacle. Before leaving, I turned on my cellphone for my email and was surprised by the news from my parish. Church events cancelled? My First Communicants will not have their day? No Lenten fish Friday? This couldn’t be true. It never happened before. But yes, new directives from government officials were announced. It was all because of a virus called coronavirus that was fast becoming pandemic, catching unsuspecting victims by surprise. This was a foreboding of more unpleasant news. The coronavirus was beginning to take a tragic toll on parishes, businesses, communities. The day turned out to be as gloomy as the cold, blustery weather.
After mass, I had to go to the groceries for stuff I was running out of. Shelves in the market emptied of usual products. “Where can I find your bathroom tissues?” I asked one sales person. His answer, “I don’t know where they were moved. They must re-arranging things.” He looked as bewildered as I was of what was going on. When I went to another supermarket, all bathroom tissues were also gone. Not only that. Rice, milk, sanitizer, and a lot more. Panic buying? Could it have come to this? Then the announcements and directives were all over TV, radio, throughout all of media. Originating from Wuhan, China where thousand were reported having died, news of more deaths also sweeping all over the United States and other countries---Italy, England, Denmark, Netherlands and other European countries. Travel bans to and from practically all countries issued. Tourists, travelers entering countries put on quarantine.
Guidelines and directions issued were to be followed: Stay home; workers are to do their jobs at home; same with students as all schools were closed; the old, especially those with health problems never to be allowed outside; no social gatherings of any kind; people to be 5 to6 feet from one another with the social distancing rule, no touching of one another, no handshake, much less hugging as was our wont when we want to comfort, to commiserate, to show love. Schools, churches, offices, any place inhabited by people shut down as all were to stay home instead. Work on-line at home, school lessons delivered through online for students to study at home. Events of any kind canceled. No festivities, no world games, meetings, conferences. In short, almost all of life outside had stopped. The hub of business, commerce, the country’s economy---all had ceased grinding. Swamped with rules and directions to observe and follow, our movements and actions constricted, it seemed more than what Adam and Eve were forbidden in the Garden of Eden. Yet, the risk was truly a reality. Disobey and suffer the consequence; it’s at your own peril.
Lockdown has never been a frightening word. What does one do when locked in the house for days and days of unknown length of time. While most employees were allowed to work online at home and still received salaries, others---laborers paid on a daily basis---were not as fortunate. The nannies, the housecleaners, the manual laborers, the fruit pickers. These were breadwinners paid with minimal wage and had to earn to be able to put food on the table and could not even do panic-buying due to lack of purchasing power. What tragedies this Covid19 had inflicted on all of humanity. If not death, it’s making the poor poorer, the aged confined at home as being considered vulnerable and at risk. Fear in the heart of everyone.
But flash forward to the present: As of this writing, this corona virus disease, nicknamed Covit19, is still raging as a pandemic all over the world, an infamous plague, never to be forgotten in history, that brought down mankind to its knees. Thousands dying, from east to west, the Covid19 not choosing its victims: black or white, believers or non-believers, rich or poor, literate or illiterate, the powerful or powerless, celebrity or not. No one is excluded. Everyone, except for doctors, nurses, all other health staff needed in caring for patients, are all mandated to stay in their houses for fear of contagion as the covit19 continues to spread unabated in all countries.
Lockdown has never been as frightening a word as it is during these times, when everyone is quarantined, suspended in a world suddenly turned upside down.
Life’s hub is at a standstill except for hospitals where doctors, nurses and other health workers are ceaselessly scrambling to get patients to breathe again. But lamentably, the bell continuously tolls for the dying, reminding us of our mortality and the presence of the hidden evil stalking grimly all over. Ah, Azrael, whence did you come from? How you have succeeded in striking a world taken aback by your slithering tongue?
______________
Melissa Nolledo, community awardee artist in Oregon, describes her feelings in art in the opposite page. A jumble of emotions: angry over the scourge on humanity, fearful for loved ones, befuddled over the barrage of information, prayerful for the end of the pandemic.
___________
This is a time when sharing is a word absolutely prohibited and condemned, and distancing from neighbors a law. No sharing of any kind. How is sharing ever to be fulfilled in a world of individuals isolated from one another? Boxes of stuff ready to ship to those in need in another country, books to feed those thirsty for knowledge, sacred materials to those hungry for the Light, goodies, children’s books, and holy cards for my First Communicant children whose First Communion ceremony was cancelled as all other events, activities, festivities---all will have to wait till life begins humming again.
For the first time, I feel the grief of not having anyone to share that which I long to give and to share with people who may be in need. Except for food sustenance, of course, medical equipment and supplies to heal the sick, the afflicted, the victims.
How forlorn seems the universe. The usually busy thoroughfares are deserted. How empty, how deadening is the silence in this earth planet that now seems uninhabited. Talk of doomsday, of the earth drying up, as resources are fast depleting---these are fears of peoples losing hope.
For the first time in the history of mankind peoples were united in prayers to beg the Creator for mercy to end the scourge, to transform souls, to heal the wounded both in body and in spirit and save the diminishing world. But heaven seems unresponsive. Is God sending a message to earth by allowing evil to engulf us, by letting Satan succeed in plaguing the earth? Is this a trial as cruel as what was heaped on Job by Satan to test his faithfulness to God? We know it’s not the doing of God, for God does not wish any evil on His people that He loves so much. But why has He allowed Satan to dump this evil on humanity gasping now for the freedom to breathe and move on in life? Are we being punished for the depravity of our rapidly degenerating morals, the perversity of men and women of our unbridled generation? Could God’s wrath not be contained anymore at the abuse of His mercy and generosity?
He tested Job. Can we keep our faith like Job who never for a moment lost his trust, and never doubted His inexhaustible mercy and kindness? But the heroes, the innocents, the aged, the vulnerable, the helpless, Lord, are being taken away from us, we might argue. Oh, how mysterious are Your ways. How unfathomable. They are a puzzle we cannot even attempt to unravel.
We need to fortify our trust in the Lord. If we lose our trust in Him, who else can we turn to? As Simon Peter responded to Jesus when many of His disciples turned away from Him, and He asked if the others would also want to leave, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe, and are convinced you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:67-70)
Yes, He alone, we trust, can heal and raise again this abysmal world, if we repent. Thus, we ask forgiveness for our iniquities: Lord, beneath your cross, we kneel and cry mea culpa, for what we have done and for what we have failed to do. For the millions of babies murdered in mothers’ wombs or out of their mothers’ womb as infanticide. For all mankind, especially sinners that Jesus wants us to bring to Him, as St. Faustina has written in her diary; “for those who do not believe in Jesus and those who do not yet know Him; for the souls of separated brethren; for the souls who are detained in purgatory; and for the souls who have become lukewarm.”
On each day of a novena to the Divine Mercy, St. Faustina continues, Christ says, “you will bring to My heart a different group of souls and you will immerse them in this ocean of My mercy...” Thus, we are asked to pray:“Most Merciful Jesus, whose very nature it is to have compassion on us and to forgive us, do not look upon our sins, but upon our trust which we place in Your infinite goodness.” We are asked to pray for others unlike our usual wont to pray for our own selves. The faithful are called upon to pray for their brothers and sisters.
Is this a message that we have not prayed enough for others? That we have not shared enough our faith or in support of our priests and religious? Perhaps, we have not humbled ourselves enough in penance and bathed enough tears at the Lord’s feet, as Mary Magdalene had done with pure nard as token of her penance? If, as Jesus is pictured in a song as telling us, “… my people will humble themselves, and pray; if they seek my face…” will Jesus hear and cast Satan away and end this pandemic that brought us havoc? Ah, the dark consequences of our iniquities. That evil has been able to penetrate the soul of every country and inflict the worst to its people, this is as deplorable as the sun hiding from our planet.
How has this evil traveled to the whole world? Who can be held accountable for its origin? China admits it started in Wuhan when people started dying due to the corona virus. Whether in a market place or in a lab is still being investigated as of this time. Meantime, dead bodies overflowed the river of life. Who is the guilty mankind can point out to? No matter. It is Satan who must be gloating secretly. Should we let him? Nay, surrender should not be in our vocabulary. So long as the sun shines, the moon and the stars light our way in darkness, love will continue to reign, and hope will spring eternal.
