Faith, between fear and epidemic

Editorial Staff

In my opinion, the dramatic experience of the virus epidemic, which we have been experiencing in recent months, has put us all against the wall: we have had to lower the pride that came from clinging to technological capabilities, we have contained the arrogance that we expressed towards nature and other living beings, we have taken off the false mask of masters of life and the future. Fear has invaded our souls: we have loudly invoked scientific research, but it is giving results slowly. I confess that I too, despite the faith that has accompanied me since I was a child, I feel frightened and I no longer know where to hold on...

C.M.

Dear friend, as Christians we cannot and must not but cling to our Easter faith in Christ the Lord, who died and rose again for us! The Gospel shows us that the heart of the heart of revelation in Jesus, the merciful face of the Father of all and creator of all things, is compassion. What we are living in these months can become an opportunity to take stock of our maturation in humanity. Being human, without being content to be part of the category of human beings who inhabit this edge of the cosmos with and among other creatures, means accepting our limits and honoring them.

The epidemic we are going through is not a divine scourge, it is a sign to be read with humility and to be carried with patience and compassion. We Westerners were perhaps too sure that we were free from our dimension of creatures like everyone else. Instead we must measure ourselves against the fact that we are not exempt from mortality, even if we feel so omnipotent. The forced optimism in which we have armoured ourselves with the idea that, although we are not the superior race, we are those who have been able to take their destiny into their own hands, must be transformed into tragic optimism: we are creatures like everyone else and the hope of a long and beautiful life cannot be a jealously guarded privilege, but a treasure to be shared, as we do on feast days when, as well as we all feel we are good and filled with joy. Suffering never leaves us equal to ourselves: it either makes us better or makes us worse.

The death of many people, the suffering of many and the fear of all are a sign that calls us to a shudder of dignity and humanity. And here prayer is a sure anchor: addressing the Most High, as creatures among creatures, we find our right dimension. In this way we can mature the capacity to take on even death without ceasing to love life and to fight so that everyone may have it more abundantly. One question remains unanswered: as men and women will we know how to reknit and strengthen that “social chain” of which Giacomo Leopardi, with his enlightened pessimism, spoke? And again: how will we, as believers, know how to distinguish the illusion of immortality from the desire for eternal life towards which we turn serenely, considering the death of ourselves and of the people we love?

All this is certainly not easy, but it is equal to our being created “in image and after likeness” of God. The consciousness of our limit as creatures must be honored, welcomed and loved. Let us all hold hands... even if at least a meter away!