It is worth
remembering that this pandemic, regardless of its origin, has neither been the
first nor will it be the last. To remember only the most lethal since the
beginning of our era, we can cite the plague of Justinian (541-542) that ended
the lives of more than 30 million people in just one year. The Black Death
(1347-1351) took away more than 200 people (a third of the population in Europe
at that time); smallpox (1520) took the lives of 56 million people; closer to
us we have the American flu imported into Europe (1918-1919) which wiped out 20
million people, and finally AIDS (1981- ) which has killed between 25 and 35
million people.
It is worth
remembering the history of pandemics to avoid the presumption of believing that
they are new catastrophes. Certainly, no pandemic is similar to another; in
this sense we can say that what is happening to us is something
"new". For example, one of the novelties of Covid19 is the rapidity
of its expansion, the result of the great interconnectivity of humanity, as
well as the media magnitude it has had or the incredible impact on the world
economy, managing to paralyze for the first time in history, and at the same
time, the largest economies on the planet. As some experts say, the economy is
now in uncharted territory.
Even so, these
unique characteristics, typical of the globalization achieved in the XXI
century, should not overshadow the reality of a common denominator that helps
us to interpret each pandemic from its fundamental keys. While the tools with
which we must deal with this pandemic should not be the same as those of our
ancestors, it would be foolish to discard the wisdom acquired by humanity
throughout its turbulent history. To give an example, there we have the ancient
technique of confinement or separation between healthy and sick as the best
solution to stop an uncontrolled infection.
Believing and Reading the Virus
Unfortunately,
we believers have not always been bold enough to face the evils that come from
a nature in constant creative process; we have not even been to interpret
natural disasters within the divine design in a constructive way. In this way,
we must recognize that religion has sometimes understood pandemics as plagues
of divine origin, either to annihilate enemies (as in Egypt) or to punish
believers themselves for their sins (such as banishment). The tremendous
insecurity that produces the human being not understanding neither the meaning
nor and the origin of the tragedies seems to have made it necessary to look for
"culprits", whether It is God in his inscrutable designs or the human
race in his sinful condition.
It is evident
that there are fundamental theological experiences related to concepts such as
"divine punishment" or the "wrath of God", although making
a literal reading of them, ignoring the historical, psychological and even
mystical contexts, can make us fall into many traps from which we will know a
lot to get out. The simplicity of attributing to God any event that overflows
our intellectual and even spiritual knowledge can constitute a serious
transgression of the second commandment, shamelessly taking the name of God in
vain to justify not only our rational limits, but even our intellectual and
spiritual laziness.
Believing attitude to the Virus
Reality is
making us smaller and smaller in number, but that does not mean that it has to
make us weaker. On the contrary, in nature this process of dwarfing has its
advantages by increasing what is now called "resilience". An elephant
or lion may be stronger than mice or ants, but it is elephants and lions that
are in danger of extinction, not mice or ants. A smaller Church can also be
more flexible and resilient when its size shrinks at the same time as its ties
become closer. Therefore, this is an ideal time to recover some essential
values of faith, especially those that reinforce the community as an antidote
to individualism. If individualism makes the subject great in order to
differentiate him from the community, Christian personalize advocates a
relational humility that not only dignifies the individual by turning him into
a person, but also reinforces the resilience of the groups whose members live
in communion.
The stress to
which we are subjecting the planet forces us to a more ecological model of
Church, where relations with nature, with others and with God are imposed by
their quality. Digitalization is going to test the quality of our
relationships. If new technologies cease to be a means and become an end, there is a fear that far from strengthening us as individuals and groups they will make us
more fragile, immature and dependent. It is essential to value a natural
relational sense, where the artificial is a means and never an end in itself.
The domestic church must take center stage and with it the pastoral promotion
of family relations. I am thinking, for example, of the need to recover child
catechesis as a family, freeing parishes from a structure that is too collegial
to become oases of spirituality again in an increasingly desert world. The
treatment of the sick and elderly in hospitals and nursing homes must be a
priority, prolonging the healing of Jesus of Nazareth. It goes without saying
that given the economic crisis that is looming, social service from charity
must be the backbone of our parishes, even if this means the loss of economic
power of the clergy who, although already low, enjoy social security within the
reach of many few people.
In conclusion, it is
about taking another step in the process of pastoral conversion that is based
on a spiritual renewal, taking advantage of the plagues to get out of our
addictions and enter freely into the deserts of life, because the hardness of
the desert also frees us from the accessory, purifies and strengthens us in the
essentials.
