The sanctifying grace of Jesus Christ has been gifted to us in the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. They raise us to supernatural life and enable us to live as a royal priesthood of believers. As Jesus said, where I am going you know the way.
With many of the sacraments effectively shutdown across the country and world the Catholic faithful have become de facto Protestants. All dioceses are on lockdown with the coronavirus pandemic afflicting the world. In practical terms, this means no Mass, no reception of the Eucharist, no confession to a priest, no Baptisms, no Confirmations, and no marriages. It is less clear, if, or where the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick is proceeding. The sacrament of Holy Orders is obviously still going forward with men in the seminary. The sacraments for the laity, however, have, for all intents and purposes, stopped. Bishops have generally either stopped them outright, or allowed for pastors to decide, or given specific caveats of “in case of an emergency” of death. The Church without her everyday, normal sacramental grace has become, at least temporarily, Protestant.
The cessation of large gatherings as at Mass is the correct decision for right now. Coronavirus must be curtailed as quickly as possible. The Church has appropriately recommended that the faithful, in lieu of sacramental confession, try to make regular perfect acts of contrition. One prominent Protestant teacher, who I generally like and appreciate, recommended that Catholics use this moment to give up sacramental confession altogether. Not good! The sacrament of divine healing is a pillar of our faith and a bulwark of grace for the delicate state of our souls.
Protestants have been advocating for ending sacramental confession ever since Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517. Luther’s second thesis addressed penance directly: “This word cannot be understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, that is, confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy.” In other words, Luther was declaring that Jesus did not intend for us to reconcile ourselves to God through the Sacrament of Confession. Our current plague-riddled world of 2020 that has squashed sacramental grace is the realization of Luther’s thesis. We know this is temporary, but it does not dull the pain of our present predicament.
We, as a Church, must embrace this moment of the Cross, and accept the will of Christ in this crisis. Yes, we should make perfect acts of contrition, and yes, we should make spiritual communions. These are good things. Using this time in “corona-purgatory” to reform our daily lives with repentance and penance is a great use of our time. This is perhaps an opportunity to push again in these final days of Lent for our heartfelt metanoia and turning away from sin. This passion in our Church should draw us closer into the Passion of Christ. It does not, however, mean we should jettison our sacramental life. Rather, once this crisis is over and we return fully to the sacraments, I believe, our sacramental life will be so much more alive. This pandemic, which has deprived us of the sacraments, will make us appreciate them all the more. Perhaps, this is the silver-lining in the whole saga: we will as a Church rediscover, like never before, Christ and the real presence of his grace in the sacraments.
“Then if you walk contrary to me, and will not hearken to me, I will bring more plagues upon you.” (Lev. 26:21)
The stoppage of ALL public Catholic Masses in the United States, and in many places around the world, is unprecedented. We know that private celebrations of the Mass by priests continue, but nevertheless, public Masses have ended. One has to go back to the 300’s A.D. in Rome, before Christianity became legal with Emperor Constantine, to find a time when no public Masses were offered anywhere. The Eucharist and the Mass are the source and summit of the Catholic faith. Yet, there is a blackout of public Masses everywhere now. This should grab our attention.
The Old Testament offers many examples when God grabbed the undivided attention of his people by sending plagues upon them too. This does not mean that plagues are synonymous with sin. There is not a one-to-one correlation, as Jesus said in the New Testament (John 9:3). It does not mean someone suffering from the virus, or any other ailment for that matter, has sinned in some way. No, not at all – think of the righteous, but long-suffering, plague-afflicted man, Job.
However, the Bible does make it abundantly clear that plagues can be a tool that God uses to discipline his people and to draw them back to himself. A good father chastises his children when they make bad choices, or are doing something harmful to themselves or others. The global size, scope, and unprecedented nature of the current COVID-19 pandemic suggest something unique is happening.
We, as a Church and a society, continue to stubbornly embrace a moral turpitude against the sanctity of life and marriage and the family. Furthermore, there are unresolved ecclesiastical sexual scandals within the hierarchy of the Church. Others have even made the connection to the public, fertility-goddess ceremony of the pachamama idol in the Vatican during the Amazonian synod last fall and the current outbreak. There is no denying that a certain laxness has crept into the Church in belief and in practice. We see this reflected in flippant casualness in regards to the Real Presence of Christ in Blessed Sacrament. This same lessening of the faith can be discerned in the other sacraments as well, like infrequent Confessions. Worse still, some have left the Church all together. In short, there has been a general falling away from the faith.
In similar instances in the Old Testament, God called his people a “stiff-necked people” (Ex. 32:9), because they were stubborn, obstinate, and recalcitrant in their sins and unbelief. When they refused to repent, God did at times send plagues upon them. In the Book of Exodus, God dealt with the hard-heartedness of pharaoh by sending ten plagues upon him and the Egyptians for not letting his people, the Israelites, go free to worship Yahweh. The last plague, the death of the firstborn sons, led to the freeing of the Israelites, and the institution of the Passover sacrifice. Out of the plagues, God ultimately brought something good, as pharaoh finally relented and let his people go.
The plague that brought the first Passover is the same Passover sacrifice that Christ celebrated at the Last Supper, or the first Catholic Mass. The Passover sacrifice was a prefigurement to the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, the true Paschal Lamb of God, and the Eucharist. It is the same public sacrifice that God permits now to be stayed by a plague.
It was not just the Egyptians who had to contend with plagues because of their hard-heartedness. The Israelites, too, in their wilderness wanderings often times strayed from the will of the Lord, descending into idolatry and immorality. Even at the foot of Mount Sinai, the mountain of God, as Moses was receiving the Law, the Israelites worshipped the golden calf and “rose up to play,” a euphemism for sexual immorality. God immediately answers this with a plague: “And the Lord sent a plague upon the people, because they made the calf which Aaron made.” (Ex. 32:35)
There are numerous other instances throughout the Old Testament that God chastises his own beloved people through plagues:
“While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague.” (Num. 11:33)
“behold, the Lord will bring a great plague on your people . . . ” (2 Chron. 21:14)
“they provoked the Lord to anger with their doings, and a plague broke out among them.” (Psalms 106:29)
We get the point. Plagues are one means that God turns us away from sin and leads us back into obedience and sanctity. It is a wake up call. Sin has consequences. This is not something our sophisticated modern ears really want to hear. To our insulated Disney World perspective of life, if you will, these are foreign concepts. The reality of sin and just punishment is something we wrestle with. Yet, here we are.
This corona event may be a necessary prick to our consciences. But, one may ask, for what reason? Perhaps, it is a reminder that God is in control, and he has established his unchanging law and commandments that we are obliged to follow. The coronavirus has been an earthquake to our society, to the world, in terms of our collective health, economy, and way of life. It is an unmistakable call to penance. We avoid activities now that would endanger our mortal bodies, but what about preserving our immortal souls? This is a spiritual event. It is like a large, blinking, neon yellow “CAUTION” sign to stay on the straight and narrow path to eternal life.
The physical crisis is a symptom of our underlying spiritual crisis. It is meant to wake us from our spiritual slumber. We know that God only allows evil for an ultimate, though mysterious, greater good. Scripture tells us that God “desires all men to be saved.” (1 Tim. 2:4) Our heavenly Father wants every single one of us to be in Heaven with him. We must play our part though by turning away from sin, and offering repentance and prayer. This great momentary pause in things is an opportunity for us. It is our monastic moment, cloistered in our homes, to examine honestly the state of our souls. Perhaps, if we loosen our stiff-necks and turn away from sin, then later, like the Israelites, we may enter into the Promised Land.
“Do you wish your prayer to reach God? Give it two wings, fasting and almsgiving.”
-St. Augustine, Discourse on the Psalms
“What happened to fast and abstinence in the Church in the United States?” This was the question Pope John Paul II asked Msgr. Charles M. Murphy, the former Dean of the Pontifical North American College, in a conversation they had in Rome in 1980. Pope John Paul perceived what is readily apparent to us still today, the seeming collapse of the practice of fasting in the day-to-day lives of Catholics. This question is particularly relevant now in the midst of Lent as the Church unites herself “to the mystery of Jesus in desert.” (CCC 540) The Bible tells us that Jesus “fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards He was hungry.” (Mt. 4:2) If we are to unite ourselves more closely with Christ, we need to rediscover this holy practice of fasting.
The Catechism lists fasting as one of the three pillars of penance in the Christian life. Fasting, prayer and almsgiving express our conversion, respectively towards oneself, God, and neighbor. (CCC 1434) Fasting is a critical part of our metanoia, our turning away from sin. We are in constant need of this conversion towards God. It was when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit that Original Sin and concupiscence entered our human nature. Since then, as St. Paul eloquently wrote, “the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh.” (Gal. 5:17) This is our human predicament. The question we must ask ourselves is: Do our bodily desires and instincts rule our spirit, or does our spirit control our bodies? The mortification of the flesh, through fasting, offers a sort of “liberation of man” against this “wound inflicted on the dignity of our nature by intemperance.” (Paentiemini, II) Through fasting, we can cultivate this cardinal virtue of temperance, as moderation and self-control tame the unruliness of the flesh.
In the Old Testament, Nineveh turned away from their sins. The wickedness of the city had reached a point that God sent the prophet Jonah to warn them that in “forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed.” (Jnh. 3:4) However, the people of Nineveh believed Jonah and the words of God, so “they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.” God reacted by not carrying out His threat against them. God showed Himself to be “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” (Jnh. 4:2) It is an example for us. By fasting, we can demonstrate our humility before God by repenting of our sins and asking forgiveness. As the story of Nineveh shows, God readily accepts this act of contrition.
Jesus is our example par excellence on the vital spiritual importance of fasting. Scripture tells us that before He began His public ministry, He was “led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.” (Mt. 4:1) Just as the first Adam was tempted by the serpent and failed by eating the fruit, so the second Adam, Jesus, was tempted by Satan, and yet resisted him by not eating. Satan tempted Jesus to break His fast by turning stones into loaves of bread, at which Jesus countered him, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” Jesus’ fast spiritually prepared His humanity to confront and resist the devil. This is reminiscent of the disciples, who were unable to cast out a demon from a boy. Jesus rebuked them for their lack of faith, and then, exorcised the demon. Later, when the disciples asked Jesus why they could not cast it out, He replied, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.” (Mk. 9:29) Prayer and fasting are fundamental tools we have to overcome the devil and his minions, and temptation. Fasting is a powerful weapon.
This self-denial and mortification, as expressed in fasting, is also efficacious for the conversion of others. Sacrifice and prayer are the vicarious payment we make towards the redemption of another. It is the required “money,” if you will, offered on behalf of their “debt.” St. Paul captured this eloquently when he wrote, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body.” (Col. 1:24) This remains the same for us. We know that our love and intercessory sacrifices for others will cover a multitude of sins. (Jas. 5:20)
Intercessory prayer and fasting is exactly the message of Fatima as well. Our Lady of Fatima said, “Pray, pray very much, and make sacrifices for sinners; for many souls go to hell, because there are none to sacrifice themselves and to pray for them.” Mary revealed that our prayers and sacrifices are truly efficacious reparations, in which we can even positively affect someone’s eternal destiny. This Lent is the perfect opportunity for us to heed her words, especially this year, the 100th anniversary of the Fatima apparitions. Heaven is waiting for our daily prayers, sacrifices, and fasts.
As Christians, we need to re-embrace this pillar of our faith and practice regularly the discipline of fasting. It is a transformational habit that would enliven the modern Church, liberate us from our intemperate desires, and bring us into a closer divine intimacy with God. It also draws us nearer to the hungry and the poor, in line with the Beatitudes of Jesus. Although Jesus forbade His disciples from fasting while He, the divine Bridegroom, was still here, He did exhort future generations, and for that matter, us, that once the Bridegroom was gone, “then they will fast.” (Mt. 9:15) Some 2,000 years later, we continue our fast, at the behest of Jesus’ Good News, “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” (Mt. 4:17)
Of course, fasting is not easy. It is a discipline that we must train our bodies to handle. We can accommodate fasting to our life situation. The important point is that we fast in some fashion, in union with the Church, particularly on Fridays in remembrance of Christ’s Passion, whether just giving up meat, or strictly on bread and water, or somewhere in between the two. The ancient ascetic monks perfected the discipline of fasting in the desert. Yet, we can bring fasting into the hustle and bustle of our lives, and families, and homes, and Churches, to form an oasis of sanctity in our modern world. Let us renew our faith – and fasting – this Lent, and beyond.
