5/10/2020
Dear St. Joseph Parish Family,
Happy Mothers' Day! Please make sure to do something nice for your mothers today. And thank you to all the mothers in the parish– your work of love is an image of God's love for us. May you have a blessed day!
On a different note, I've been pondering this experience of quarantine we've all been living through. We seem to be frozen in a stasis– nothing much changing from week to week. I feel like I'm on an old sailing ship in the middle of the ocean, where every week feels the same as the last and all I ever see is the same endless ocean. But we know that land will come at some point. We know that this pandemic will come to an end sooner or later, or at least the quarantine will loosen.
This stasis parallels the Easter Season. Christ is victorious, He has risen from the dead and now is bedecked in glory. And yet the world is still a mess, and we are still subject to evil, sin, and death. Christ has won, and still injustice and suffering and evil perdure in our world. And we are not exempt from suffering that evil or contributing to that evil. Jesus has won, and yet everything else looks the same. What's happening?
In this liturgical season, we still await Pentecost– the coming of the Holy Spirit upon us. It's the sending of the Holy Spirit, after Christ's Ascension into heaven, that enacts in our lives the victory won by Christ. Pentecost historically has already happened, but we can still feel in some ways what the Apostles felt in this pre-Pentecost Easter time– that anticipation for sharing in Christ's victory.
How does Christ's victory come to us? The Holy Spirit comes upon us in baptism and confirmation, and with the other sacraments. He transforms us within, starting the process of recreating us to be like Christ after the resurrection– to be fully alive, fully ourselves, holy and immortal– to be adopted children of God. Christ left this time between His resurrection and the end of the world, this last age of the world, as the period of spiritual transformation for us. He is filling heaven with His adopted family and offering us the promise of joining that heavenly assemblage. Evil and suffering continue until the end of this world when everyone destined for eternal life has been called.
But what about now? This time is a twilight age. Christ has won, but the consequences of that victory are still unfolding. The world is still fallen, evil still seems strong, the world is still dark with lies and tribulations. But that is only for a time. Each of us in this time is called by Jesus to be transformed and made ready for what comes next. Each of us is a work in progress, and when our pilgrimage here is completed we are called to be glorious saints in heaven, seeing and living with God face to face.
This time we spend in a world still not fully redeemed is meant to be a place where we grow in holiness by choosing God, by rejecting the evil and darkness of the world and living by faith and hope. During our lives on earth we are called to encounter God's love for us amidst the difficulties and sufferings of life, and start to live from that divine charity we've encountered, to learn to love like God and thus increase in holiness, which is nothing other than charity itself, which binds us to God.
This quarantine is an analogy for life here on earth. We live in a strange reality in quarantine, awaiting the joy of the world reopened. So too this whole life is a strange reality, where we await to live in the fullness with God in heaven, where we see directly the love that moves all creation. This pandemic will end, and so too will our sojourn here. We should anticipate both. The post-quarantine new normal, and the ultimate new normal– living in the glory of heaven. Use this time– this quarantine and this life on earth– to prepare for that new normal. As much as we prepare for life in the city after the quarantine, let us prepare for life in the new heavens and new earth that will commence when Christ comes again. Our faith points to hope beyond quarantine, beyond all the suffering of this world, and to a joy we cannot begin to imagine.
God Bless,