March 25, 2020

Quarantine Reflections

-Fr. Jacob Anish Varghese

As the pandemic of covid- 19 looms large and potentially more hazardous than anything known to mankind, there are extreme measures being taken all over the world. In India, we find ourselves at the beginning of a 21- day lockdown. There are orders from the civil authorities that places of worship must be closed and all believers must be at home. In the time of the Great Lent and as we draw closer to the Passion Week, it is an unimaginable disaster for every Christian. As a priest, it is unnatural for me to sit at home on a Sunday and to miss the Feast of the Annunciation to St. Mary; it is unimaginable that I could not participate or celebrate the Holy Eucharist. At the close of every Eucharist, the priest bows in reverence to the Holy Altar of the Lord, saying that, I do not know if I will come back to the presence of this Altar. I do not think that any priest can recite that prayer without a twang of pain shooting through his heart. To be unable to enter the Holy Altar and celebrate the Holy Eucharist is a feeling that I can describe, close only to asphyxiation. 

In this time of extreme desperation and in absolute anxiety, I remember the words of Br. Jean- Marie, of Taizé who once told me, that to have communion with God, two things are absolutely necessary: One, communion and fellowship with those around you, our fellow- beings, and the other, a deep retreat within ourselves. We retreat into the fathoms of the soul and the mind created by God, and try find our bearings. In the words of Henri Nouwen, a human is intensely personal and as well as expansively universal. To reach out, one needs to reach within, a certain peregrination of the mind and soul. 

Why me?

An elderly Jesuit fell off the ladder, and lying on the ground, muttered to himself, “O God, why me?’ It is a question that God must often have heard. We think that if we were God, or if we were given a chance to decide nothings for ourselves, we would have done a more efficient job, omitting all complications and contradictions. 

Henry David Thoreau wrote, ‘Most men live lives of quiet desperation.’ Our hopes and expectations constantly fall short of fulfilment. At first we blame other people, or circumstances external to us, and try to change them to our purposes. Reality, however, remains obdurate and our frustration grows. 

Wisdom is to know the harmony of things, and joy is to dance to its rhythm. When independent strands of melody meet together, they produce harmony, a new and richer sound. As individuals, we have many independent strands of melody within us. We can become so attached to a particular one, whether through love or fear of it, that we cannot allow it to join the other strands of melody within us and thereby other people. Consequently, we cut ourselves from the harmony of things, screeching in our solitary frustrations. 

Why me, may not have a simplistic answer. It may require a multifaceted and multifarious scrutiny; one that harmonises and which is interdependent in its cause and effect relationship. 

From loneliness to solitude

At the heart of human frustrations could be the longing to love and be loved, but in actuality we are fettered and imprisoned by chains of loneliness. On the one hand, we may have a longing to be at one with all peoples and creation but on the other we may spend most of our lives protecting ourselves against creation and all that it contains. We long to be true and dedicated to the truth but discover endless depths of self- deception. We need to explore these dualities and tensions as God nudging us from destructive loneliness to creative solitude, from fearful hostility to welcoming hospitality, from self- deception to self- surrender to God in prayer. In creative solitude, the Spirit of God hovers over our chaos, bringing light to our darkness, life to our stagnation, and the assurance that nothing- no individual, no state of mind, or state of the society around can ever be hopeless. As we allow God to be the God of mercy and compassion to us and through us, we can let go off our individual strands of melody and allow them to join in the harmony of God and of all creation.