I
CHICKEN LITTLE AND THE IMPORTANCE OF THE TRUTH
Visiting the edges of the internet these days, you would think it was the end of the world. One wild story says that COVID-19 is a biological weapon which either accidentally or on purpose escaped a nefarious government laboratory in either China or Washington State or Venice, depending on which Tweet you read.
Such posts remind me of “Chicken Little,” whom I first heard of when I was three years old. You remember her: the little chicken who was picking up corn in the barnyard when all of a sudden an acorn hit her on the head. “Goodness gracious” she exclaimed! “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
The story of this terrified little chicken, the patron saint of conspiracy theorists, goes all the way back to a Dutch collection of children’s fables in 1823. It made its way to Boston thirty years later with the publication of The Remarkable Story of Chicken Little and was promoted by none other than Sarah Josepha Hale, the author of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and the first promoter of the idea of Thanksgiving, but that’s a story for another day.
The story of chicken little took off all on its own and is told to children in almost every language and culture, largely because the idea of conspiracy theories and hysteria exist in every culture and language and land.
Every once in a while you hear conspiracy theories about nearly everything, and no less so in these days epidemic with fear.
There are conspiracy theories that allege that Jesus was married with children, that the Bible is a ruse to cover up the existence of aliens…that the Pope, the Queen and Harry Styles re all shape shifting Reptilians from another dimension. And that’s not even to mention Black helicopters, New Coke, Freemasonry, the illuminati and the New World Order.
As the movie Contagion made so clear a decade ago, it is often the epidemic of conspiracy theories and the fear they spread which are even harder to contain than the virus itself. And the lies are often the more deadly, for they threaten not just the body, but the soul as well.
Perhaps that’s why, from the time of Moses, the ninth commandment forbid false witness again my neighbor: thou shalt not lie.
But we have a witness even greater than Moses here, for in Jesus we have the perfect antidote to chicken little. For Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. The truth that, as Saint John tells us, will set us free. And in an age of pandemic conspiracy theories the truth is more important than ever before.
For, without the truth we are lost in the dark. With the truth and nothing but the truth (so help me God) we can discern the clear path that leads to God, the way of prudence, of wisdom and of love.
Otherwise, whether it’s the origin or transmission or treatment of the latest virus or the meaning and purpose of life, without the truth we are little better little children, or hysterical little chickens running in circles and clucking at the top of our lungs…the sky is falling! the sky is falling!
Not a bad lesson to remember in these sometimes troublesome days.
II
ON BEING SICK
Everyone has been spending a lot of time thinking about getting sick these days; and while the vast majority of us will, by the grace of God, be just fine, some will get sick in this pandemic. So sickness is not a bad thing to reflect on during these days of Lenten pandemic.
A couple of years ago I was privileged to go to Lourdes with the Knights of Malta, where I learned the answer to a very important question, one which has been on my mind a lot lately. What does it mean to be sick? I met an orthopedic surgeon there, a newly minted Knight. A wildly successful and prosperous surgeon, he seemed to have life on a string and all was good until they noticed a spot on his brain scan. A few weeks later headaches began waking him at night. Very quickly he went from being the doctor with the highest success rate in complex hip replacements to an old man so weak that he could not stand without the assistance of his wife. He quickly found out what it meant to be sick. It meant he was no longer driving the bus and someone else was in charge.
“You know”, he told me one night as we went for a walk, “Even better than eventually getting rid of the brain tumor and returning to health, getting sick like that was the greatest gift of my life. Because the real sickness I had was thinking that I was in control and that the purpose of my life was to be successful, respected and rich. I was very successful and I had a whole wall full of awards along with three houses, four cars and a big boat. The real sickness though was not the one that started with the headaches. The real sickness was the one that tempted me to forget to pray to God and to rely instead on my own resources, seeking my own pleasure and patting myself on the back for all my wonderful successes. I had forgotten what I learned from the Catechism as a child. That God made me was to know him and love him and serve him in this world, in order that I might be happy with him in the next. It took cancer, that blessing of cancer, to bring me back to what really matters. One night,” he told me, “when I was convinced the cancer was going to kill me, I went to bed and for the first time in my life, I asked myself the question: What’s this all about? My life, career, religion, marriage and kids? The truth is that it’s all about Christ on his cross and about picking up my crosses and trying to love like him: a self-sacrificing, self-emptying love. The truth is that this life is not about what we take, but what we give and that all suffering, all sacrifice and even sickness itself is but an opportunity to love and to join our sufferings to his perfect sacrifice and in so doing, to learn how to love.”
Two weeks ago I had the flu. Not a bad way to start Lent, helpless, hacking and out of control. At first I loudly lamented to the heavens that I did not deserve this! I groaned about how unfair God was being and how he had failed to realize how much important work I had to do. But then I looked up at the cross on the opposite wall and the Christ nailed up there to suffer unto death for love of me. I felt more than a bit ashamed and I began instead to thank him for the gift of the flu, of being reminded that suffering, all sacrifice and even sickness itself is but an opportunity to love and to join our little sufferings to his perfect sacrifice and in so doing, to learn how to love.
We all have moments like that, and I suspect they make Jesus smile. He understands how we tremble when we hear words like pandemic, mortality rate and “it’s all but certain.” But even in the face of COVID-19 , which will probably get worse for a time, even in the face of fear and suffering and death, we Christians are a funny lot. For we have something better than all the vaccines and hand sanitizers in the world: we have the Cross, in which death becomes life and suffering is changed to hope by him who offered the perfect sacrifice of praise for our redemption. Sickness is more than just a personal tragedy. It is an opportunity to release love, in order to give birth to works of love towards neighbor, in order to transform the whole of human civilization into a civilization of love.
III
IT’S OK TO BE SCARED
It’s scary these days. And that’s OK to admit. Each of us are scared that we may not have washed our hands enough today, scared we may have rubbed our eyes one too many times and scared of that person who coughed...was he closer than six feet away? We’re also scared for others, too. Scared of watching them get sick and scared of watching some people die.
But it’s OK to be scared. It happens to us a lot in life, like when I was in fifth grade and President Kennedy was shot. Mrs. Katomski, my home room teacher cried when she heard Mr. O’Leary announce the President’s death over the loudspeaker. My home room teacher cried when I was in fifth grade: now that’s scary!
Or on that September morning when I looked out the window from my office at the Bishop’s Conference in DC and watched the plane that went into the Pentagon and then saw the twin towers fall on the little TV in my office a few minutes later. That was scary!
Or on that afternoon, not too many years ago, when seminarians returned from the Boston Marathon to report how close they had been to the bombs which went off. I was scared.
Another time I was scared was when I was pastor in Spencer and a number of teenagers committed suicide, one right after the other. First one, then two, then three kids took their own lives, most frequently with a shotgun.
And what could I, as the Pastor of Spencer, offer to their paralyzing fear? Certainly not lies like, “It will be alright,” because it probably wouldn’t be. Not, “Don’t worry, God will protect you,” because it was true that their child could be the next victim. So what can a pastor say in the face of terror and fear?
He can tell the truth. The truth that there is a real and present danger, but it is not all present. The truth that if we carefully follow the best medical advice, we will probably not get sick, and at least we won’t make the pandemic worse. Probably, but not certainly.
For the truth is that none of us are immune from the terrors of life: from violence, or from cancer, or from accidental death or even from COVID-19. But the point of life is not staying alive and happy and healthy. The point of life is to do the will of God, and sometimes that involves picking up the Cross: the Cross which gives
meaning even to senseless and random viruses. God writes straight with crooked lines. Even from darkness and pain and senseless suffering he can bring forth his light, and his truth, and true hope.
For Christ walks into the dark upper rooms of our lives and says “Be not afraid.” Not because there is no such thing as suffering and death (he shows us his wounds, after all, and invites us to touch them). He tells us not to be afraid because he is ever present and in our suffering we are drawn closer to his Cross, the Cross by which he has defeated Death and Darkness and Sin. We have nothing to fear, ever again, as he whispers in our hearts: “Peace be with you!”
So what does the Pastor have to offer on dark days like these? The same thing he offers each day...the same one he offers each day...Christ, and his cross and life in Him.
IV
A TIME TO PRAY
Health Care workers labor day and night to save the sick. Public Health officials agonize over the best public policy to stem the spread of the virus. Citizens stay at home, wash their hands frequently and observe the requisite social distancing. Essential services try to keep themselves safe while keeping the wheels of our society turning.
Everyone is doing their part, and so should we.
We who believe that it was through Christ that all Creation came into being. We who, especially during this week we call holy profess and celebrate the life-giving Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God. We who believe him when he said “ask, and you shall receive.”
So we should do our part and ask. We should pray. In the morning when we rise, in the middle of the day and at the end, just before we fall asleep we should be praying. We should look up at that crucifix on the wall (and if there’s no crucifix, print one out and tape it up there!) and place all our anxieties and fears in his hands, joining our sufferings to his perfect sacrifice.
Bishop McManus has been praying for us since this all started a few weeks ago. Two weeks ago he blessed us from the steps of six of our Churches throughout the Diocese and last Monday he blessed our hospitals. This is what he prayed:
Heavenly Father, source of all blessings and life, hear our prayers for those who rest in this house of healing. Bless the doctors and nurses and therapists. Bless those who seek to bring relief and healing to the sick. Grant them peace and reward them for their goodness. Bring peace to the hearts of those who are afraid, heal the bodies of those who are sick and give us the strength to live through the present moment until you call us back to praise your name in the heart of the Church, that we might praise the glory of your name, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
We should join our chief shepherd in this prayer for those who work and are treated in our hospitals, the center stage of this epidemic, just as we should pray the Prayer in Time of Pandemic which the whole Diocese has been praying for the past month.
O God, whose Only Begotten Son bore the weight of human suffering for our salvation, hear the prayers of your Church for our sick brothers and sisters and deliver us from this time of trial. Open our ears and our hearts to the voice of your Son: Be not afraid, for I am with you always. Bless all doctors and nurses, researchers and public servants; give us the wisdom to do what is right and the faith to endure this hour, that we might gather once again to praise your name in the heart of your Church, delivered from all distress and confident in your mercy. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
You are probably reading this column on Good Friday, a day uniquely suited to reflect on our anxious state. It is a day of emptiness and fear, as the disciples take refuge in the upper room, locking the doors lest death come knocking. I can just imagine the prayers they must have prayed to the crucified one who promised he would return.
They probably prayed Psalm 69: “I am wearied with crying aloud; my throat is parched.
My eyes are wasted away with waiting for my God…In your great mercy, answer me, O God, with your salvation that never fails.” (verses 4, 14) And then, we are told, despite their fears, despite the big heavy locked door, the Lord appeared in their midst and said four simple words: “Peace be with you.”
It’s Good Friday today. It will be Easter on Sunday. Let’s pray with the hope of those who know that Easter is only a short time away.
