O’Connor anticipated that we would save the elderly from living by euthanasia. We would spare suffering to mother and child by abortion. We do this out of efficiency, tenderness, and for their own good. We get rid of sin by first mocking it and then deciding we want different rules than God had made. Our world would be better if we could decide good and evil for ourselves. We are told that Jesus loved Martha, Mary and Lazarus. Why did he allow Lazarus to suffer and die? Why does he allow our loved ones to suffer and die? What is going on here? This is OVC and I am Fr. John Arnold“One of the tendencies of our age is to use the suffering of children to discredit the goodness of God, and once you have discredited his goodness, you are done with him… Busy cutting down human imperfection, [those who seek to eliminate it] are making headway also on the raw material of good. Ivan Karamazov cannot believe, as long as one child is in torment; Camus’ hero cannot accept the divinity of Christ, because of the massacre of the innocents. In this popular piety, we mark our gain in sensibility and our loss in vision.
If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.
These reflections seem a long way from the simplicity and innocence of Mary Ann; but they are not so far removed…” A Memoir of Mary Ann, Flannery O'Connor
The Covid 19 pandemic is not the first and it won’t be the last threat to life. Pandemics are frightening because they make us think of death. Death is at the heart of nature; every living thing dies. Death, absent Christ, is not only the destruction of the body but also the ruin of the human spirit.But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit dwelling in you. Rom. 8:8-11
Jesus, the light of the world, is revealing the glory of God in the darkness of death.“Are there not twelve hours in a day? If one walks during the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.” Jn. 11
Jesus waited two days, arriving in Bethany on the fourth, thereby permitting Lazarus’ death. How is God’s love revealed in Lazarus’ death?“So the sisters sent word to him saying, “Master, the one you love is ill.” When Jesus heard this he said, “This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Jn. 11:1-5.
Palm Sunday and the Paschal Triduum“for Christ, it was more important to conquer death than to cure disease. He showed his love for his friend not by healing him but by calling him back from the grave. Instead of a remedy for his illness, he offered him the glory of rising from the dead."