Carrying on from yesterday’s inspiration article on facing crisis, Fr Antony Christy sdb reflects with us the desert experience of our forefathers during the Biblical times. His reflection enriches us on how to face the pandemic with Christ’s help from three P-verbs.
The Lockdown experience that is proving intolerable to a many and to societies today, has to be made sense of without fail, if our reflection on this present crisis has to be in any manner complete. There are some Biblical events that could throw light on the lockdown experience of today. The desert experience of the people of Israel, where they had no control of their own lives, their food was given to them from heavens, they could not assure themselves of the next meal, they were at times discouraged with the elementariness of the food, they had no land of their own and were at the mercy of those whom they encountered… these could be in a way a reflection of the lockdown experience.
Read first part:
Facing CRISES WITH CHRIST on our side
There could be also other experiences in the Old Testament – namely, the siege of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, the exile – these were the sort of lockdowns that the people of the Old Testament experienced. In the New Testament, we have the upper room experience, which was not merely the coming of the tongues of fire but the fear, guilt and discouragement that preceded that glorious event; the experience of Saul blinded on the horse, waiting for Ananias to come to him; the prison experience of the Apostles Peter, James, John, Paul, Silas, Barnabas, and most of the others, all these were in a way lockdown experiences reported in the biblical narratives.
From the light of these, and from the life style that we have given ourselves into in the last couple of decades, there could be a few simple but concrete messages that a Biblical interpretation of the Lockdown can offer us today: Slow down and take stock, the call to calm down the mad rush of humanity which is hurting the real cosmic order and harmony; Evaluate, unlearn and relearn the ways of living a meaningful human life, with right priorities and right perspectives; thirdly, the call to Re-pristine out commitment to care for our common home, look out for our brothers and sisters, and set our minds, hearts, families and societies in order.
Extending our perception into the Scripture further, we encounter numerous models that present us with their lives of faith amid crises. Consider a cowardly Gideon who took on the mighty walls of Jericho (Judg 6), or a trembling frail Esther who proved a heroine to her entire people though surrounded by such a hostile situation, or a weak and lonesome Hezekiah who cries out to the Lord in the face of an annihilation that was imminent and routed his enemies with no sword of his (Isa 37,38), or the tormented prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and others who were constantly surrounded by persecution and death, or a young and meek Mary who said a great ‘yes’ in spite of the dangers it would amount to, or the spirited first Christians motivated by the witness of the Apostles ready to lay their lives down for their faith – these are great testimonies we have of those who lived through moments of gory crises, with faith, with tremendous faith.
Faith for them was their relationship with the Lord, a relationship that was founded on the unfailing relationship that actually the Lord had initiated: I shall be your God and you shall be my people. These examples and inspirations need to impel us towards looking at, facing and living through, not just this pandemic and the lockdown but through any crisis in life. Hence today, it would do good for us to take stock of our attitudes and choices towards projecting a way ahead that would distinguish us in the larger world, as persons who are imbued with the mind of Christ.
The way ahead or the life after the Pandemic should be determined by these three P-verbs:
Prioritise: the overwhelming cry of the universe and the entire humanity to every person on this planet today is, to prioritise our choices, our meaning-giving elements in life, our criteria of choices and judgements. The world is wrangling around warped priorities – money means more than meaning, pleasures in life are valued more than real values that make life human; career and competition run a person’s life to the detriment of the person’s relationships and family, things are loved and persons are used, and above all, God seems to find one of the last places in the list of valuables in life, at times even that last of places to be considered highly fortunate. After all these distortions, we still cry out saying, we do not understand why things are going wrong all over the world! Stay calm today, take time and set your priorities right. When this ebbing time of crisis flows out into normalcy, you would be ready to restart your life based on the new set of priorities!
Perspectivise: a neologism perhaps, but an age-old principle that says you understand the truth depending on, from where you see it. There are very many things going wrong in the society today – the destabilisation of marriage and family, the dehumanisation of economy, the ambiguation of international affairs, the exploitation of the weaker sections of humanity, the manipulation of ecology and many such. The reason, the overwhelming perspective of human community today, the perspective of I-me-and mine. It is high time we unlearn this perspective and relearn the fact that the only perspective that can do good to all, is that one overarching and holistic perspective: the perspective of God. The more we look at everything from the perspective of God, the more holistic meaning they begin to make. The more we begin to look at the other as God looks, as a child of God with dignity and respect, the more meaningful our relationships become. The more we look at our world as a common home we are gifted with, the more responsible we can grow. Perspectivising our life is an urgent need today and the present crisis offers an opportunity to work on it.
‘Person’alise: a sense of awe and respect to persons and their importance in our daily life and crucial decisions, can make a world of difference to our existence. The recent events like the custodial deaths, police violence, riot mobs, border breaches, anti-people policies, political exploitation of masses… these are typical instances where persons and communities of persons are sidelined in comparison to other ends. Persons are made means to an end, which is unjustifiable whatever the end be! To bring the ‘person’ to the centre again, is not some type of a humanism that seeks to establish an anthropocentrism. It is more a personalism, which is inspired and founded on the Person of God, from whom every human person draws his or her personhood; it is looking at the one next to me, my neighbour, my brother, my sister, the other as an image and likeness of God, deserving my utmost respect, regard and response. All that I think, say or do, has to spring from this regard for persons – that would make me consider persons more important than projects, persons more important than the so-called progress, persons more important than any kind of policies! ‘Person’alsing my vision of life, makes me prepared to look at the holistic meaning of human existence.
Pandemic, disease, infection, contagion, death, destruction, depression… these are daily vocabularies today, signalling the crisis that we are living through. As children of God and disciples of Christ, we who call ourselves Christians are called to stand out by giving hope to the rest of the world, not judging and pointing fingers but encouraging and empowering humanity to rise from this fire as a phoenix to new life. It is an arduous ordeal, but not impossible because ‘the love of Christ urges us’ (2 Cor 5:14) to declare, ‘we can do all things in the Lord who strengthens us’ (Phil 4:13)!