RBWords - Volume 33 - Number 2: February 2020
Something to Think About
R. B. WORDS – VOL. 33 – NO. 2 – FEBRUARY 2021
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT –
The arrival of the liturgical season of Lent seems almost like adding insult to injury this time! The COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage with all the sorrow and trials it has brought. 500,000 deaths (and counting) have been attributed to the terrible disease. Here in Texas, the horrible winter storm of the past week has added immensely to the suffering – no power or water!! . How much more penance can we take? Maybe the solution means folding one into the other.
Lent is arriving at the time that glimmers of hope are shining because of availability, more or less, of vaccines. I have received two vaccine shots because of my age (78 in a couple of days from now). The new cases and deaths are declining. We still have to wear masks, observe distance and practice hand hygiene to avoid spreading the virus even if we are protected personally. These practices can be penitential and can make us far more aware of helping one another than giving up chocolates or martinis for 40 days. We may still be observing these practices after Easter, but the observance is not just for our own sakes. This is fundamental Christian love of neighbor!
Our longing to return to “normalcy” calls us to the great traditions of virtue: faith, hope and love. Resurrection from the long darkness of the pandemic is coming – a light at the end of a tunnel. But Lent encourages us to maintain the “penitential” pandemic observances in order to help our neighbors. IT’S SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT.
It Has Been Said
. There is no long anything that is “private” that does not also implicate the “public” aspect of the whole community. Love for the “common good” is not a mere Christian dream, its concrete implementation, right now, is a matter of life and death for a life together that is consistent with the personal dignity of each member of the community. For believers, mutually supportive brotherhood is a Gospel-based passion, it reveals without doubt a more meaningful beginning and a loftier destination.
From OLD AGE: OUR FUTURE – The Elderly after the Pandemic
by the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Dicastery for Integral Human Development (Vatican, Feb. 2, 2021)