Lent had always been the one season of the Church year I looked forward to with such anticipation. This year, as before, I was intent on accompanying Jesus into His Passion, Death, and rising with Him in His glorious Resurrection on Easter morning. Not to mention welcoming a new goddaughter at the Easter vigil.
Then the pandemic stepped in and uprooted everything.
It was hard to ignore the timing of it all: a pandemic Lent? The weeks leading up to Easter usually marked by sacrifice and giving up something were met with another kind of deprivation never seen before in this lifetime: shelter-in-place orders and social isolation. It took the suffering symbolically experienced during Lent to a whole new level.
Then there’s the biblical connection to the word ‘quarantine’ and the number 40.
My mind raced to the image of the lonely Jesus fasting and praying in the desert for all of those days and this period of darkness that nobody signed up for had truly become quite the Lenten desert experience. In delivering his recent Urbi et Orbi blessing, Pope Francis was the face of that lonely Jesus, reflecting on the current global crisis in reference to the biblical passage of Jesus calming the storm in the Gospel of Mark.
Like so many around me, I had been trying to find a place of peace in the midst of all the disruption. It was hard not to feel the anxiety and uncertainty, because so many people in the world have greatly suffered in the hands of a virus that we couldn’t see. But faith demanded my attention to go deeper, inviting me to find meaning in this Lent-like experience. If I had learned anything from my past losses, it would be that God would go to great lengths to draw my attention back to Him.
Where do I even begin?
Not even into the third week of Lent, the normal rhythm of life I had always known came to a stunning halt. Even the Sunday Mass that I dearly loved was suspended. And along with that, the inability to receive Jesus in the Eucharist. It was hard for me to wrap my head around cancellation of something so sacred, but the grief over Mass suspension and missing the sacrament was immediate and profound. Even turning to the online masses for consoling words in these days of uncertainty and darkness only exacerbated my deep yearning and hunger for Jesus.
Then came the isolation from friendships, community, and the many connections that brought meaning to the human experience. Technology filled the void, but it couldn’t ever replace the human touch. Who could have ever imagined not being able to hang out with friends or giving someone a hug anymore?
“How long will this go on, O Lord?”
By the time Palm Sunday arrived, I was crushed by the lamenting cry of Jesus from the cross in Psalm 22 and the weeks of pent-up sorrow finally opened up the floodgates. Overcome by all the suffering and death in the world, I just needed that release. Those agonizing words of the psalmist experiencing a distant and out-of-touch God tore at my fragile emotional state, eaten away by feelings of helplessness and abandonment in this barren, weeks-long desert created by a relentless pandemic: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps. 22:1).
This prayer of pain was one of Jesus’ seven last words echoed from the cross. In my mind, it was hard for me to imagine a loving Creator would neglect His own children in their time of distress and need. Our finite brains can never fully grasp the mystery and infinite greatness of our Creator. However, a deeper meaning was waiting for me to discover, but I was too consumed by all the stress and anxiety. Not to mention all the death and darkness.
It felt like time froze and we were still on Ash Wednesday when we are reminded of our mortality by the ashen cross on our foreheads. Yet, the Church calendar was pointing towards the joy of the Resurrection on Easter but I just couldn’t feel it. At least not yet.
I couldn’t feel it, because for weeks I buried myself into books and Scripture, poured myself into countless prayer sessions and sought consolation and meaning through online masses, only to emerge feeling even more spiritually empty and lonely.
“Where are you, O Lord?”
I couldn’t feel it, because I was consumed by the loss of our pre-pandemic lives, the loss of normalcy and the restrictions on our freedom.
I couldn’t feel it, because I was in an internal battle with the Evil One who was fighting like mad to steal my heart away from the Light and trying to force me to conform back to the ways of the world, as he had done so easily in the past when I was weak.
But I’d been down those dark roads before.
Like Jesus being stripped of His garments before His Crucifixion, I too had been stripped of all that I’d been familiar with. It would’ve been far too easy to be bitter about all the loss, to go down that path of negativity. But Satan’s tricks and traps are legendary, and his fake promises only made me cling all the more to God, the source of Truth. God alone was my rock, my foundation, my refuge. This pandemic had me spiritually tested again, but I already made up my mind that I wasn’t going to be another lost sheep again.
It was in that truth that I started to “feel it.” This time of suffering had allowed me to mentally enter into, accompany and console Jesus in His Passion: from His arrest and seizure, His journey into sentencing, His physical blows to the body, His scourging and crowning of thorns, and to the final nailing on the Cross in all its bitterness. I was that Mary Magdalene who was desperately looking for the “missing Jesus” at His empty tomb. And it was through the lens of faith that I was able to refocus on His Light and experience His Presence, despite weeks of feeling His “absence.” By bringing the world to a near halt, God presented me (and all of us) a time-out of epic proportions, forcing me to slow down and take notice the minute details of His creation: I rejoiced in the Canadian geese having a buffet every morning, the gobbling of the wild turkeys, the myriad of colorful flowers I seldom had time to stop and enjoy (except maybe to bury my face in a lilac bush for its fantastic fragrance), the antics of baby chipmunks as they fight over their territory, and the sighting of fresh blueberries growing in my yard.
It was also during this time that the Holy Spirit led me to a glorious discovery: the Fatima Shrine that was so close to my house. I couldn’t believe my ignorance for not having noticed the shrine for so long. As it could only be His doing, my eyes one day landed on the large Crucifix on the grounds of the shrine that had been obscured by a forest of trees. Virtually every day since, I would end my solitary morning walks at the foot of Jesus’ cross and have long, heartfelt conversations with Him. And it would be there that I would quietly re-confirm my promises to Him and to echo the same words that the late Sister Clare Crockett once said, “…the only way that I could console him was to give him my life.”
Now, the question is not “How much more longer, O Lord?” but rather “Jesus, I trust in You completely.”
If these pandemic times have taught me anything, it is that God is everything and I am nothing without Him. He is the almighty Creator of the universe, …”the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end … “ (Rev. 21:6-7).
Perhaps God is inviting you and I to release the grip and control over our lives and to leave everything in His capable hands. Without the distractions to the things that used to be more important than Him such as entertainment, shopping, friends, sports, packed schedules, and office gossip, we are left to ponder what is truly of value or of importance. Perhaps God needed to take some things away from us in order for us to understand the value / importance of that “thing.” For most Catholics these many weeks, the “taking away” of the Eucharist (to not be able to receive the sacrament in person) calls us to turn inwards in yearning and longing, for it is there that we have our ultimate source of sustenance, the whole of Jesus in Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.
May God be the only source of value / importance to us; all the other “noise” in our lives does not matter quite as much as He. God holds firm on His promises to be with us through life’s peaks and valleys, “and behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age” (Mt. 28:20). Just as He delivered His people to safety from the Egyptians in Exodus, He too will set us free from the coronavirus “slavery” according to His Glorious Plan. And when that time comes when we are able to be together in person again, may we never take anything for granted again!
Rejoice in the Risen Lord! He is forever our Good Shepherd!
Photos credit: Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash