March 13, 2022

Jesus Christ: yesterday, today and forever!

“Ding dong, the witch is dead. The wicked witch is dead . . .” Those are the words from a song from the Wizard of Oz, and that’s how I feel about the end of the covid pandemic. It has been a long two years since we closed everything down and went through three waves of the virus. At last, the masks have come off, the signs have come down, and we can return to being human – phew! I feel as if some great moment has come for the world, as if a world war has ended, and we need a ticker tape parade and public events to mark the occasion – but we aren’t – how awful. This is a moment to mourn the dead and grieve what has been lost; to celebrate the end of a tyranny that has ruled the world for two years, and the return of humanity.

It is also a time to honestly assess what we did right and what we did wrong. I hope that our world leaders will learn from this and in the future, not over react, quarantine the at risk while letting everyone else go on with their lives, stop calling people who have been vaccinated “immune” when more resistant is the best we can hope for, count those who have had the virus as being as resistant as those who have been vaccinated, and stop with the constant fear mongering. Unfortunately, there will be more pandemics to come (and deadlier), so we want to learn from our mistakes from this one, so as to handle the next one so much better. Keep a box of masks in a closet somewhere.

Returning to ‘normal’ includes returning to Mass and the Church. For most of us, we have returned or never left. For many though, on-line Masses became a life line for the immune compromised, the frightened, or sadly – lazy. I say that last one confidently as many people have confessed it to me. But at least these people watched Mass on-line, so many other Catholics don’t even do that.

One of the fallouts from the pandemic is the loss of a certain percentage of Mass goers. We don’t know what that percentage is yet, as people are still drifting back. Many people, once they got used to not going to Mass, found they didn’t want to return. For these Catholics, their faith must have already been weak when the pandemic struck. Hopefully they’ll come back in time. What this means for the rest of us, is that the Church is a little smaller now, and a little more committed. A good place to rebuild from.

I have attached below some cut outs from the Seattle Archdiocese’s website about reasons to physically return to Mass. The people reading this pastor’s column don’t need this per-se, yet the below points might help you to evangelize those Catholics you know who don’t attend Mass, or watch it on-line when they could be coming in person.

May God Bless You,