The coronavirus is killing thousands of people. Fear is causing overwhelming anxiety. Joblessness and economic crisis are rampant.
We have a new perspective. Haunting helplessness has become our new filter.
Actually, not new at all, it is simply history repeating itself. But it has taken us by surprise.
Throughout these historical horrors,
the living spent most of their time burying the dead.
• The Bubonic Plague stole 10,000 lives per day.
• The Black Death wiped out 25 million.
• The Plagues of London and Marseille took 100 thousand each.
• The 20th Century Third Pandemic struck down over 15 million.
We weren’t quite ready to social distance ourselves, give up that physical connection we have come to take for granted.
We weren’t ready for the emptiness of no warm embrace, no friendly kiss or hug, no reassuring squeeze of our hand for consolation.
The aloneness is daunting and depression stalks our quiet moments.
Termed recently by a New York Times columnist, David Brooks, plague eyes is a new distinction between social connection and social solidarity and has become our new perspective. Social connection is having a kind, empathetic feeling toward others and solidarity is a more tenacious, active commitment to the common good of others. And now we are experiencing a required position to differentiate and choose between those two social spaces.
We have donned the coronavirus ‘plague eyes’ filter. This is our new perspective.
Or is it?
Solidarity is the sinew of our Catholic faith, like a fiber woven into a cloth. It’s the active belief of the infinite dignity of each human person God created.
This belief becomes action as it embodies a noble virtue as evident in our healthcare workers tending to the needs of our afflicted through fatigue amid terror and uncertainty. It is the faith that God will guide us, give us strength, love us as we love each other. Hope is born through the action of believing and persevering. In the solidarity of our faith, we have hope.
Hope dawns from the darkness of plague eyes only with faith in God.
Today is Good Friday and we have faith that the Lord will rise on Easter Sunday. We have hope eyes.
