Dear Community of Christians,
The world has entered a completely new phase in the development of global consciousness. Never before in our lifetime (or ever!) have we felt ourselves to be SO connected to everyone across the globe. The internet and the global media have connected us virtually, which has changed our lives already so much; but now, this new novel virus named "Corona" has made us irreversibly aware just how interwoven our lives are—how vulnerable we truly are to the touch and breath and thoughts and experiences of other human beings sharing this earth together. And now, as the spiritual reality that is COVID-19 makes it way through our human community, we are asked to develop a new social consciousness for one another. To limit our contact to the essential, to self-isolate, to "socially distance" as an act of socially caring. It seems antithetical.
But isn't this the homeopathic principle at work? Like cures like. One great illness we suffer in our growing culture oriented towards personal freedom/development is the ever present danger to go too far in: to become adherents of rugged, uncompromising individualism and social darwinism. Of course, we all know the drill on the airplane: please put your mask on before helping your neighbor. But we all also know it is our call as human beings to then definitely help the neighbor! Love your neighbor as yourself, is how Christ phrased it—because we are so created by God—to be selves—but selves who are on a path to find communion with God and other human beings and ultimately the whole of Creation. The gospel reading this week is full of imagery about this call by God through Christ to human beings to wake up to our true humanity—specifically to be united with Christ, to gather with Him.
We can understand this in many ways, of course. But I wonder if we are not being called to find a higher unity in Christ. I have wrestled intensively this week between wanting to welcome you into a shared celebration of the sacrament to lend us all strength—the very thing I live for!—and the social call I perceive ringing out to do our part to limit the spread of this virus and help those on the frontline of underprepared hospitals have to deal with as few cases as possible. What is the more right thing to do?
What I do know is this: by the grace of God the renewed sacraments were bestowed upon humanity in 1922. Human beings have been making a relationship to them Sunday after Sunday, for almost 100 years. The Act of Consecration of Man has begun to really live within us. It lives in us and through us into the world, has strengthened us to be able to make Christian community wherever we go and with whomever we meet. That is why it is given to us to practice every time we are graced with the ability to come before the altar. And now, in this Passiontide, the world is in crisis—one could say, growing faster than we know how to incorporate yet. Every crisis is an opportunity, by very definition of the word. To ripen the fruits of this crisis, we will need to practice spiritual fortitude, inner enlivening, and seek new ways of connecting with one another. This crisis is asking us what is most important to us, who we want to be as human beings. It has brought the threshold of the spiritual world to the doorstep of our daily lives. It has asked us: what is the point of all this freedom, of all this selfhood?
What opportunity are we being given to help prepare for the Risen One to rise within humanity? What spiritual activity is now being summoned from us—you and me—as individuals—and from us as a Christian community? What new depth of inner participation can become possible from this physical time out?
I will be celebrating at least every Sunday of Passiontide at our altar, and holding you all and the world in which we live as I celebrate the Act of Consecration. I ask you to join me inwardly. And I wish you all strength and beauty and revelation in this time of great challenge; and to reach out to one another as if it were the end of the world—because it is. The world as we knew it is coming to an end, and the world we know can be more true and beautiful and filled with goodness is rising. Can we help serve the shaping of this new world consciousness with our Christian community?
Yes, so be it.