By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
The COVID-19 phenomenon is not just about a disease. It’s also about exposing the maladies afflicting our society and our world. And in the Church as well. “People will die,” we’re told.
“People will die,” we’re told, if we don’t wear a mask, wash hands, anti-socially distance, and stay home. Some people, however, are dying because they are doing these things. COVID-19 is not the only threat humanity faces.
I haven’t heard the same morally superior individuals who are militant about masks warn that people will die because of riots. And people have died because of riots. I haven’t heard the same social justice warriors who harangue on and on about physical health say anything about the fact that people will die if a doctor suctions a living baby out of her mother’s womb.
And yet millions have died and are dying because of legalized child murder in our abortion mills every day. Yes, people will die. But the death of the body is not the only kind of death and it’s certainly not the worst sort of death.
People are dying in the vast wildfires on the West Coast. People are dying as a result of Hurricane Sally. Unprecedented areas of land in California have been consumed by flame and cadaver dogs are being led through the wreckage to find the dead. Over twenty inches of rainfall fell on the Florida panhandle and Alabama and the resulting loss of human life has yet to be fully revealed.
The risk of death begins the very moment we are born and doesn’t end until we die, when and where we do not know. Yes, death can strike fear into hearts because it is unknown. But fear is no way to live. It is a kind of living death, a rejection of life.
“But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12:5).
The Lord acknowledges our fear, but then He warns us of the real danger, that our fears may be mistaken. The salutary, or saving, fear is of the influence and wiles of the evil one, he who “has power to cast into Hell.”
To share in the holiness of the Lord through Baptism into His Passion and death by grace our life is experienced as a gift. He restores the gift of life when we have lost it through fear, mourning, or sin.
Do not fear COVID-19 or any disease, don’t fear death at all. Fear only offending the Lord who alone has the power to give us life after death, to save us from going to Hell because of our sins. Fear sin.
Our Lord always calls us to faith, a personal faith in Him, and instructs us on the reasons for it and the practice of it. He calls us to sorrow and repentance for sin so that we may share in His grace and look to Heaven in hope.
Our Lord also tells us, “People will die.” And He validates our experience of fear. But He does not exploit it for His own ends; rather He offers Himself as the answer to our fear of all the unknowns ahead of us in life and in death.
He tells us that losing what He offers us through His life, death, and Resurrection should be the real motivation behind our lives and our choices. Losing the gift of everlasting life that awaits us in Him after we close our eyes on this passing world for the last time is the real danger to be feared.
The rioters, the abortionists, the politicians who exploit fear for power, the doctors who suction babies out of the lifegiving wombs of their mothers — these are among those who do not heed our Lord’s warnings of the real danger that faces us and all those who persist in mortal sin.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” the Scriptures teach. The wisdom that we need to face all the reasons for fear in the world around us comes from an experience of the Lord, a friendship with and love of Him.
The many faithful people who have fought to claw back their right to worship on Sundays at Holy Mass deserve our thanks for this reason. The bishops who have spoken out in protest against the civil overreach eclipsing our God-given right to worship deserve our thanks. The many priests who quietly kept their churches open and continued to offer Mass during the pandemic deserve our thanks.
All of these deserve our thanks precisely because people will die. People will die and thus people need to have Jesus Christ, the source of life and salvation through grace first and foremost in the sacramental life of the Church.
The Church does the most important work in the world because people will die. People will die and therefore need most that only which it is possible to have after everything else has been taken away after death: eternal life in Jesus Christ alone.
People will die. Yes, that’s true. People die from COVID-19 and many other causes.
There’s something else that’s true: People will lie. They will lie to get what they want. They will lie to coerce your cooperation in their lust for power, wealth, or fame. They will also lie to use your fear, and many do fear death, it’s true.
Here’s something else that’s true: We have no power over when we die, only over where we go when we do. Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell: These are true. The Church must preach these truths and all who are truly of the Church teach them with the Church, both when convenient and inconvenient.
The myth that we have control is the real killer because it’s sending people to Hell. The only thing we can change is how we live, not when we die.
When we live so as to recognize that God is in control and that He only deserves our love, our loyalty, our lives, then we are indeed doing something about the fact that we all will die.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
Join me @FatherKevinMCusick for further conversation at Parler, the new free speech social network.
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