A lot of routines were disrupted in March. “Disrupted” might be too mild a word. More like smashed, mangled, and buried in the back yard.
For Christians, there is nothing more routine than going to church on Sunday. I can’t remember when Mass wasn’t part of my Sunday mornings (or Saturday evenings beginning in 1970). So, when churches closed in March, it was strange indeed.
I have a confession to make. There were a few Sundays, especially during planting, when I kind of liked having a Get-Out-Of-Church-Free card. I guess that’s proof that the flesh is weak.
At St. Mary’s we began public Mass in May. At first, two of every three pews were roped off. Now every other pew is roped. I don’t envy anyone in a position of deciding how to return to what we used to know as normal. They deserve our prayers and support.
I was at 9:30 Mass last Sunday. Early on, I looked around and saw most parishioners wearing masks. I was struck with how odd that was, how I couldn’t have foreseen that in a million years. Later as I settled into the prayer that is the Mass, I started to feel a sense of connection to those masked men, women, and children. It is after all a selfless act where we accept a small discomfort to protect each other. Like everything human, it’s not perfect, but it’s beautiful in its way.
Besides Sunday Mass, I added another routine 20 years ago, I began an hour of prayer at Perpetual Adoration early Wednesday mornings. Last week I returned there for the first time since March 11. I have prayed in the interlude, in the yard, on a tractor, in bed. But returning to the Adoration Chapel felt like seeing an old friend after five months.
“Jesus! How’ve you been? Me? Oh, I’m fine. Life’s been interesting, but you know that. There’s been a lot of sadness, 700,000 dead from this virus, 700,000 stories of loss. I don’t think of this as ‘God’s plan.’ It’s nature working in its wildly complex ways. Amid this all, I know your love prevails and you desire us to love our neighbor and ourselves. I’ll keep trying.”
Months away from routines did free up time. With all manner of things being cancelled, a lot of us had extra time. I thought here was an opportunity to clean the basement and learn Spanish. Alas, I did neither. I might need a ten-year pandemic to accomplish those.
In the time away from church, our spiritual lives kept on. We are either moving closer to or further away from God every day. Our minds and bodies are not static. They’re changing every day. The same is true for our soul.
In the time I wasn’t able to go to usual church, the Church of Marriage went on meeting. Pam was off work for a while, then worked from home for a time. I was around the house, too, with events being cancelled. We got to hang around each other more than normal. I took it to be practice for getting old, when, God willing, we’ll have some retirement years together.
I can think of two major fights we had, along with several lesser skirmishes. You would think 40 years into a marriage, there wouldn’t be anything left to argue about. We don’t begin a day setting out to have disagreements, but it happens. I suspect we fight about the same old things, just dressed up in different clothes. Regardless, such spats offer a chance to practice forgiveness and atonement.
I have met couples who said they never had a fight. I’m not sure what to make of that. Some of our worst and best moments have come from fights, and I don’t think I would give those up. At the end of fight, in the reconciliation stage, that is when I recall that our vows mean that loving and supporting this person is among the most important things I will do here on Earth.
We’ve all had extra time for the Church of Self, too. The pandemic exploded into the issues around the George Floyd killing. Suddenly race, equality, and societal structures, hidden and visible, made this a uniquely challenging time. Here was an opportunity to dig deep inside and see what is in our core. Not only as an individual, but as a member of this society in this time and place.
It seems obvious now that a set of citizens of this country have been deprived of not only equal opportunity, but even their lives, as we saw in Minneapolis. Slavery, through Jim Crow laws, through thousands of subtler but effective rules and norms have given people with darker skin than me a more difficult row to hoe. That’s not fair.
One of the things I have Iearned is how generational wealth advantages some of us, mostly white people. Generational wealth that passes forward and benefits children and grandchildren can be obvious things like land and money. But it can also be education and employment paths that are passed on. When those are never allowed to accumulate in a family, each generation is starting from square one. That has repeatedly been the case for minorities.
It is easy to say “I’m not a racist. I don’t see color. Not my problem.” That is the position of certain letter writers to The Journal. Good for them. The rest of us need to be part of making this country better as soon as possible. We’re 400 years late.
Elizabeth Bruenig is a young Catholic writer I enjoy. In a recent column, she wrote about Archbishop Patrick O’Boyle’s invocation at the demonstration where Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech in 1963. The archbishop “called for the Holy Spirit to open the eyes of Christians to the injustice of racial discrimination and praised the activists who possessed the courage to go forth like Moses in search of a beautiful country.” Fifty-seven years later, we are still about that work.
Bruenig also quoted Black friend and radio host, Gloria Purvis, with this striking thought. “Racism makes a liar of God. It says not everyone is made in his image. What a horrible lie from the pit of hell.”
Amen, Gloria. A pandemic and protests are proving to be learning moments. God works in funny ways.