Be not afraid!

Above is an image of a virus I found online; if you click on it, you'll go to the website where I found it. I have no idea what virus that is, or if it's an accurate image. I picked it because it looks pretty creepy to me. It reminds me of an episode of Star Trek: Voyager where the ship is invaded by some sort of virus that is huge -- globules of goo the size of house pets are floating around the ship! That's some scary stuff.

Are you scared? Are you dismissive? Are you angry? Lots of reactions are possible.

I know people who insist this is all over-hyped. Who knows? They may prove right. Here's the thing: I am not so smart or certain of myself that I'm going to counsel anyone to take this lightly. If I were the archbishop or governor or president, I couldn't let myself off that easily. But I'm not any of those people; they have a job to do, it's mighty difficult, and who am I to throw a spanner into the works?

In any case, as a parish priest, I don't have a lot of say in all this. I can rail against that, or I can keep busy with what I can do.

Here's what we're doing in St. Remy, and I imagine similar things are happening everywhere:

- Pretty much everything is cancelled, except confessions; we are going full-steam there.

- That said, confessions have moved to a larger, airier room, and I'm wiping surfaces down after each penitent.

- I'm offering Holy Mass every day from a sort-of chapel in my house, and broadcasting it on Facebook. Maybe it'll be on Youtube soon, we'll see.

- Our church and our parish office remain OPEN. My staff and I are trying to stay in touch with all our folks.

- We're trying to think of other ways to nourish folks' faith.

Sort of coincidentally, I betook myself to confession on Tuesday. I would have gone anyway, but it was striking to me that as everything seemed to be shutting down and closing in, I hurried to be absolved. Something for all of us to think about.

Now, let me offer some more positive thoughts:

- As bad as this is, it's nowhere near as bad as it could be. And yes, I'm assuming it won't get that bad, because of the many, many advantages we have.

- People who are acting as if this is unprecedented have short memories. Spanish Flu was pretty bad. Two world wars? Pretty bad. Most of human history, people have lived in fear of all manner of plagues and infections and such. They didn't have reliable, sanitary water; vaccines and antibiotics...

- Not to mention heat and electricity and the Internet and all the wonders of our modern world that reliably supply fresh food and other needs to all of us. Yes, it can all be taken away, the worst can happen, but that's pretty unlikely.

- There's a WHOLE LOT to be grateful for. A lot of people are working really hard to keep food coming, medical care coming, a future vaccine coming, and so forth and so on. Pray for all these people.

- Don't worry, pray! Pray also for those who are suffering, whether physically, spiritually or financially.

- Keep a good attitude, and be part of the solution.

We'll get through this.

Whoops! Time to go hear confessions!