“Something strange is happening – there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep.” These are words from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday that the Church’s Office of Readings offers for prayer each year on that day. It ponders in a palpable and evocative way the silent pause between the Lord’s death on Good Friday and his triumphant resurrection on Easter Sunday.
This issue of the Sooner Catholic is being published on Easter Sunday, but I suspect that for most of us it will still seem like the long Lent of 2020 continues. It still feels a great deal like Holy Saturday. We are waiting in hope. There is “a great silence on earth today.”
We are sheltered in place. Out of concern for ourselves and one another, we are practicing social distancing to slow the spread of the virus. We feel isolated. We miss our ordinary routines and social contacts. We have not even gathered to sing our Easter praises with our parish community. There is not a public Mass being celebrated in any of our parish churches for Easter Sunday or for the foreseeable future. The Lenten fast continues in the form of a prolonged fast from the Holy Eucharist.
“Something strange is happening,” perhaps something unprecedented? No one living today remembers that on Oct. 4, 1918, a letter went out to the priests of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia during a similar crisis stating:
Rev. Dear Sir: We hereby direct your attention to the order of the Board of Health, issued Thursday, October 3, which prohibits the assemblage of all persons in the churches and schools of Philadelphia until further notice.
Yours faithfully in Christ,
+D.J. Doughterty Archbishop of Philadelphia
Undoubtedly, such prohibitions were common during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. That crisis passed and this one will too. God is with us.
We may continue to experience for quite some time fear, vulnerability, economic insecurity and the burden of our own mortality in the wake of COVID-19. Our own experience of the joy and victory of Easter might be delayed this year. But Christ is Risen. He is truly Risen!
Jesus, the Son of God, took on our human weakness and mortality. He embraced it so that we would not suffer alone. He invites us to unite our anguish and sufferings to his as he offers himself to the Father for our sins and the sins of the world.
This crisis will pass because Jesus Christ is victorious! Because God is faithful. His mercy endures forever! We may have to experience the waiting of Holy Saturday a bit longer, but it is a grace-filled time. During this time, we are becoming more aware of the needs of one another. I hope that we are becoming more patient, kind and understanding of others. We all are enduring similar burdens though some are certainly heavier than others.
I pray that our experience of solidarity brought on by the global pandemic of COVID-19 continues to find expression in our attitudes and actions long after this crisis passes. I pray that our current longing for the Holy Eucharist and the sacraments produces a renewed commitment to share fully in the life and sacraments of the Church long after our livestreamed Masses and closed churches give way to open doors and in-person celebrations of the Mass and sacraments once again.
Most of all I pray we may experience anew our need for the Lord, who alone can satisfy the deepest yearnings of our hearts and that we might turn to him and find joy. He offers us his friendship, and there is no greater consolation than that.
I pray that the invitation we received when we were marked with ashes to begin this long Lent finds new meaning this Easter season: repent and believe in the Gospel.