Why the Coronavirus?  Why is there Suffering in the world?

The Oxford mathematician John Lennox wrote, “… the coronavirus pandemic is perplexing and unsettling for all of us.”   
[Where is God in a Coronavirus World?] 

“Most of us have never lived through anything like this pandemic. There’s no play book or instruction manual for getting through this.  We’re all making this up as we go along …. the hardest part of this is that we can become so overwhelmed by the changes in our lives, so afraid of the potential harm to us and those we love, that we retreat into ourselves, that we become trapped in our own brokenness.”  [Connections, July 2020]

Wearing our mask and keeping our social distance are signs of our love for God and for our neighbor and will help spread Hope during the Pandemic darkness.

To live, to love, to be human means many things - including the experience of suffering.  No Christian, any more than Christ Himself, is called to love suffering. However, we are called to love, and if we are willing to love, then we must be willing to suffer - to bear with our limitations, frustrations, imperfections, disappointments, heartaches - and those of others.

In St. Matthew’s Gospel we read, “Just as weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.”  During the past several months we have been living among the “weeds” of the coronavirus and the “weeds” of our fear, our anger and our frustration.

The “weeds” of COVID-19 will one day be vanquished by the furnace of a vaccine, the more important question is what will we learn from the quarantine time, the mask time, the social distancing time, from living through the pandemic?  May the “Weeds” that have grown in our spiritual garden be removed by the “Wheat” of our deeper love for God and love of our neighbor.

May God Be Praised!

I ask you to join me and cry out from the depths of your heart to the Lord who hears us.  “Lord, listen to my prayer: turn your ear to my appeal.” [Psalm 143] God, You are our refuge and our hope, we turn to you during this COVID 19 pandemic and plead for Your intercession.  In Your mercy and Your compassion “… grant eternal rest to the dead, comfort to mourners, healing to the sick ….” [Collect from Mass Time in Pandemic].

Provide strength to the first responders and medical personnel.  End this coronavirus scourge.  Bring Your light to all who wander in the darkness of this pandemic and give each of us hope in Your eternal love today and every day.  Amen.  [Dcn. George Kelly]