Unprecedented
We live in an age of superlatives. We witness a “100 Year Flood” every other year. In the past 30 years there have been at least 20 college football games labeled as the “Game of the Century”. The “best” and the “brightest” and the “most powerful” are used so often they have become meaningless.
So, as commentators use the term “unprecedented” to describe the Covid-19 Pandemic, I tend to cringe. In the past 20 years, we have experienced SARS, Bird Flu, and Ebola. In modern times, cholera and polio outbreaks have afflicted the world’s population and the 1918 Pandemic, often called the Spanish Flu infected over 500 million people (1/3 of the world’s population) and resulted in 20 to 50 million deaths and shut down entire cities. So, in some ways, Covid-19 is not unprecedented. Yet, in some ways, it is.
It is unprecedented the way technology and instant communications has changed the way we react to this worldwide crisis. We are connected intimately even as we practice social distancing. There have been many times in the past when the faithful have been denied active participation in Mass and other church services, yet today we have the opportunity of joining others around the world in prayer and liturgy. This past weekend I joined my family stretched from New York to California and from Boston to Peru in celebrating 5 March birthdays. We laughed and sang and blew out candles and even toasted wine glasses – together, yet apart.
Our parish, like many other churches and congregations, is reaching other to others through phones and internet. We know there is a deep down human need for contact and we are responding as best we can. I wonder if, when this crisis is past, will we continue to make use of the marvelous resources we have “discovered” in the last few weeks. I wonder if the faithful will return to pews after experiencing liturgy from their living rooms.
The countless acts of charity and courage as individuals and groups help other who are struggling with the consequences of this virus are not unprecedented. The ways we are invited to join in and experience community in new ways is. Will we take the best of what we experience in these weeks and coming months and make them part of the fabric of our lives? Will we take this time of pain and stress and separation and make it an opportunity to grow as people of faith and love? Now, that would be unprecedented.
Ed Duncklee
March 30, 2020