Holy Week and Easter present us with a critical choice about real conversion.
National Review’s offices are just a few blocks from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan. So, on a good office day, I get to church when it opens at 6:30, attend the 7 a.m. Mass, maybe go to Confession if it’s time, pray my morning prayers, and give Jesus a little time to say whatever He has in mind for me for the day. Because there is a Mass every half-hour through 8, I sometimes happen to be present for three Masses. (If I see that the master of spirituality priest who happens to be on staff there is giving one of the homilies at one of the other two Masses, I’ll pay extra-special attention.)
But this Holy Week, with public Masses unavailable live and in person, that three-Mass record is history. On the other hand, I get these notifications now on my phone and laptop for livestream Masses. Sometime when this quarantine got serious, I would find myself not going to sleep until Pope Francis’s morning (Rome time) Mass at Santa Marta at the Vatican. I seemed unable to go to sleep until the Church was praying again a new day.
It drives me a little crazy that we say Masses are canceled. Because, actually, in a way, we’re more united in the Mass than ever. Priests are still celebrating Masses, just not in the way we are accustomed to — where we are physically present! And this spiritual-communion business is real. That may be hard to believe in a culture that thinks prayer is inactivity, but Christian communion as the Body of Christ in the world possibly has never been stronger. Not if we are entering into prayer with love and commitment.
On Palm Sunday, I happened to pray the Mass in Rome and Fifth Avenue, a few blocks from the White House, as well as Phoenix. On Holy Thursday, it was the Holy Father in an empty St. Peter’s, Providence in Rhode Island, and Cardinal Dolan in NYC again — and wrapping up the day with Los Angeles. You can go to some websites with some incredible lists — pray the Mass in Knock, Ireland, if you choose.
Now, what we’re finding among Catholics who truly believe in the Real Presence is that it is some kind of agony not to be receiving the Eucharist. If you believe that Jesus is truly present, that would be a big ask. But from day one of this inability to receive the Eucharist, I’ve become more and more keenly aware of my own unworthiness. Think about it: The Creator of the world sends His only son to die for me so that I might have eternal life. It’s absurd that I could ever deserve such a thing. I’m a weak human being with all kind of flaws. If you don’t know me, you know the type. Perhaps it’s your autobiography, too. But that’s the magnificence of this time — Holy Week and Easter, and way beyond. We have been made by love, chosen to be gifted a faith that transcends whatever is going on in the world — this gives meaning to all the suffering, this raises us up to greatness, because our lives do not depend on us overcoming every human flaw, but trusting in that Creator who does the most amazing things for us in this valley of tears.
Now I recognize that this isn’t everyone’s faith. But gosh, when you have someone as a friend or neighbor who freely lives this, that’s not a bad deal. When we truly believe, we can be good friends and neighbors (to some of our good friends and neighbors who are our older brothers in faith or those who try to live good and decent lives without the kind of explicit supernatural help some of us rely on). Living the Beatitudes, we could even amaze you with our love. It’s amazing grace and all. And don’t we see it now, during this anxious time? A UPS driver delivered a package to me the other day: He had gloves on, and he wore a mask, though it was pulled down. He seemed to want to smile, with the brightest of smiles — and to make sure I saw it, that it brightened my day, whatever he was delivering. He seemed to want to show, simply by saying “Good morning,” that there is hope — that he has hope — that we need to be careful, but we also need to live and love one another.
I’ve been missing something awful some of the men and women I see from day to day walking from St. Patrick’s to my office. They sit on Fifth Avenue — and more than one of them has told me they choose there because the wind isn’t as bad as the East side and the foot traffic is good. Well, not these days. I’m nowhere near midtown, like any of us who could escape, and I don’t know where they are. Like the UPS driver, they are encounters with Jesus for me on so many days. This time is reminding us of that — of all the ways God is present to us in the world. I pray someone is Jesus to them wherever they are.
Like many of us, I know people who have died, who have lost someone, who have fought and recovered from COVID-19. My life is made possible by people who haven’t ceased putting themselves in harm’s way. If there is only one thing that we learn from this quarantine time, may it be that everything good is a gift, and we are so much closer to one another and to the Creator of us all than we realize when we are sucked up in the business of everyday life. Coronavirus changing us has to be a choice. And it’s a choice between the soul’s life and death.
We know what we want, don’t we?
This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.