Pope Says Post-Pandemic World Must Learn from Mistakes

Things are back to normal, and then some.  I went to a restaurant recently, and it was packed at 6 p.m. There were quite a few people I knew in the restaurant and many others I didn’t recognize.  My first thought was, “I hope they are also all vaccinated.”  But the odds are they weren’t.  

We live in dangerous times, and as Pope Francis warns in a new book he has written along with Italian journalist Domenico Agasso, “God and the World to Come,” the world will not be the same again.  Pope Francis says that we have to spend less on manufacturing and selling weapons and more on curing people and saving lives.  He adds, “The path toward salvation for humanity passes through the rethinking of a new model of development, which has as an indisputable point, the coexistence of peoples in harmony with creation.”  The world has to be “fraternally united” to face common threats and put aside its “shortsighted nationalism, propaganda, isolationism and other forms of political selfishness.”

“If we want truth and life here and hereafter, we must live Christ’s way.  Following him we find God and share in his Spirit, which is also Jesus’ Spirit.  We share that Spirit, we share the presence of God in Jesus in all the sacraments but in a special way through the Eucharist, hence Jesus’ command.”  

In his daily homilies since Easter, Pope Francis has often connected pandemic recovery and post-Easter Mass Scriptures.  For instance, Mary Magdalene and her women companions were overjoyed on finding Jesus’ tomb empty.  They believed the angel’s message that Jesus was risen and lived among them.  But the chief priests and elders were more concerned with the problems that empty tomb would cause them, and they chose to hide the fact.  

“The story is always the same,” the pope said. “Today, too, looking at the coming end of this pandemic, there is the  same choice. Either our wager will be on life, on the resurrection of people, or it will be on the god money, returning to the tomb of hunger, slavery, wars, the manufacturing of weapons, children without education, the tomb is there.”

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Pope Francis has emphasized how it has revealed our interconnectedness.  On Aug. 12 he preached, “The pandemic has highlighted how vulnerable and interconnected we all are.  If we do not take care of the least  those who are most affected, including creation  we cannot heal the world.”  Like many of our wise national and state leaders, including our own governor, Pope Francis has continually urged everyone to get vaccinated.

There is another post-pandemic problem that writers in Catholic religious publications have been concerned about: not having been obliged to attend Mass in their parish churches for more than a year, will Catholics return to attending Mass on Sundays?   This is an important concern, because we Catholics are a eucharistic people, a church based on the eucharistic presence of Christ.  We do not truly worship Christ as our lord and savior if we disregard his command to his disciples at the Last Supper: “Do this in memory of me.”  

The resurrection of Jesus proved that he was indeed whom he claimed to be, “the way, the truth and the life.”  If we want truth and life here and hereafter, we must live Christ’s way.  Following him we find God and share in his Spirit, which is also Jesus’ Spirit.  We share that Spirit, we share the presence of God in Jesus in all the sacraments but in a special way through the Eucharist, hence Jesus’ command.  

The Eucharist has a special role in the formation of our church.  We are descendants of those two disciples who encountered Jesus on the road to Emmaus on Easter Sunday morning.  He first explained the Scriptures to them which clarified God’s plan for sharing our life through him, through Jesus.  Then he shared their meal and as he broke the bread they understood who he really was and began to see that he offered much more than they had ever expected. When we attend Mass, we unite as that community of Jesus’ disciples which he created to continue his bodily presence on earth, to continue his way of life.  We may recall another traveler on another road, the road to Damascus.  The Acts of the Apostles says, “Suddenly a light from the sky flashed around Paul.  He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul! Why do you persecute me?’  ‘Who are you, Lord?’ he asked.  ‘I am Jesus whom you persecute.’ ”  We cannot separate Jesus from our church which is the community of his followers.  It would be, as St. Paul says, to the Colossians like separating the head from the body.

The church is the presence of Christ in his people as they worship at Mass, listening to the Scriptures that reveal him and his teachings, personally encountering him in Communion and going forth to care for each other in his name.  It is the home to which we must return from all our journeys to find God.  He is as close to us as our seat is from the altar. 
See you at Mass.

Father Carville is a retired priest in the Diocese of Baton Rouge and writes on current topics for The Catholic Commentator. He can be reached at [email protected].