Viruses, the living, the dead and the age to come: 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Readings for the 15th Sunday
in Ordinary Time

What is a virus? A virus like the coronavirus is a snip of DNA (or RNA in the case of retroviruses). Some viruses operate by attaching themselves to the cell membrane and then penetrate all the way to the nucleus. The virus then reprograms the target cell to make virions, essentially replicas (virions) of the virus. In the normal course of events, the virions overwhelm and rupture the host cell. The liberated virions go from cell to cell, organism to organism replicating the process. This is how nature operates at the viral level and how viruses make us sick.
 
So, is a virus alive like bacteria and germs, or are they something different? There are a variety of opinions. Some scientists think that virus are basically a chemistry set, that is, they don’t reproduce like living creatures. Living beings consume, process, expend energy and reproduce. A virus cannot reproduce on its own like the process of cell division in mitosis. Even amoebas can split and make replicas of themselves. In a fascinating  article in  Scientific American (December 2004), Luis P. Villarreal argues there is a “spectrum ... between what is “certainly alive and what is not.” Viruses challenge the idea that non-living matter is inert and static. Inertness is an illusion. All matter is full of motion and energy. Our bodies are not just chemical reactions, but chemical reactions do occur inside human bodies. We are complicated and we exist in a very complicated, vibrant, pulsing, living reality. St. Paul gets that right in his Letter to the Romans.
 
Romans and the Fate of this World
The Letter to the Romans is St. Paul’s most complete statement of Christ, salvation and Creation.  In Romans, Paul talks about the relationship between the salvation of humanity and the fate of all creation—not just human beings but the whole created world. The New Testament is concerned with more than just the salvation of human beings. The Book of Revelation talks about a new heaven and a new earth to be recreated from this world. In Romans 8, our reading today, St. Paul describes what is going to happen to creation at the end of time.
 
Paul was formed by the ancient Jewish distinction between two spheres of reality, the old creation and the new creation.  In Hebrew rabinnic language, “this age” ( ha olam hazeh) and “the age to come” ( ha olam habah).  In some ancient Jewish writings, there was a sequential relationship between the present world and the world to come. We live in the present age and “the glory to be revealed” refers to the world, the New Creation where we are reunited with our bodies in the world to come.
 
For St. Paul, the present world is like a pregnant woman struggling to give birth. The world he describes is not an inanimate collection of atoms and molecules. The present world is pregnant with meaning, purpose and a destiny. The pagan philosopher Aristotle would say that there is a final cause, a telos, to the existing world. St. Paul taught that “all of creation is waiting for the revealing of the sons of God.” The world is not alive in the sense that a human being is alive, but still, there is more to creation than inert matter. At the end of the present age, this universe will share in the resurrection of the righteous on the last day. The cosmos itself is actually going to participate in the resurrection of humanity.  
 
Christians ought not to think of salvation only in anthropocentric terms—in other words, human terms. God is saving the entirety of creation. According to St. Paul all of the universe will share in the resurrection of the dead. Salvation is not just something for humanity. Salvation is something that involves the whole universe, the whole cosmos. And so he’s saying that creation itself is going to be set free, because creation itself is subject to the bondage of death and decay.
 
St. Paul is not preaching Mother Earth or Gaia, in Greek mythic terms.  He does depict creation in feminine terms,

“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us. For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God; for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”  Rom. 8:18-23

 The image for the final judgment and the new creation is a woman giving birth.   The beauty of our world, our parents, families, the trees, the oceans and even viruses are subject to decay. The mountains will wear down and the sun will burn through all of its fuel. This world is slowly falling, day-by-day. Every beautiful forest is full of life and death and something in between. The waters of the sea, beautiful as they are, brim with the corpses of whales, fish, and shipwrecks. The Book of Revelation describes the Final Judgment,

…And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne. And there were open books, and one of them was the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their deeds, as recorded in the books. The sea gave up its dead, and Death and Hades gave up their dead and each one was judged according to his deeds. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death—the lake of fire.…Rev. 20:12-14

 The end of the Book of Revelation describes the New World to come

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.   I also saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race.  He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them [as their God].  He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, [for] the old order has passed away.”   The one who sat on the throne * said, “Behold, I make all things new.”  Rev. 21:1-5

 God will restore this creation into a new creation. In Romans 8, St. Pauls says that is the hope of Christians. Will viruses be there? Will the rules of chemistry be different? Maybe. Lots of controversy about viruses.
 
Human Beings at the center of Creation
How we think about the connectedness of our world is fundamental. Maybe that is the gift of the present pandemic. Before the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, Christianity offered a more complete view of creation. In the medieval view, man was not the center or dominant figure in creation. Life extended above us to the angels and below us to the animals. We were unaware of the controversy surrounding the nature of a virus.
 
C.S. Lewis wrote his last book just before he died, entitled The Discarded Image. Prof. Lewis was first and foremost a medievalist and The Discarded Image is a book that recaptures the medieval view of life. He wrote,  

Man is a rational animal, and therefore a composite being, partly akin to the angels who are rational but—on the later, scholastic view—not animal, and partly akin to the beasts which are animal but not rational. This gives us one of the senses in which he (the human) is the ‘little world’ or microcosm. Every mode of being in the whole universe contributes to him; he is a cross-section of being. As Gregory the Great (540–604) says, ‘because man has existence ( esse) in common with stones, life with trees, and understanding ( discernere) with angels, …Lewis, C. S.. The Discarded Image . HarperOne. Kindle Edition.

 Man is a composite of the angelic, animal and vegetative world in the medieval view. Lewis describes the nature of the animating souls in God’s creation; the vegetative, animal and rational souls.

The powers of Vegetable Soul are nutrition, growth and propagation. It alone is present in plants. The Sensitive Soul, which we find in animals, has these powers but has sentience in addition. It thus includes and goes beyond Vegetable Soul, so that a beast can be said to have two levels of soul, Sensitive and Vegetable, or a double soul, or even—though misleadingly—two souls. The Rational Soul similarly includes Vegetable and Sensitive, and adds reason. Lewis, C. S.. The Discarded Image . HarperOne. Kindle Edition.

 And death?

“It is not the soul’s nature to leave the body; rather, the body (disnatured by the Fall) deserts the soul.”  Lewis, C. S.. The Discarded Image . HarperOne. Kindle Edition.

 Some medievals argued that the human person was three souled.  Above us in the fullness of creation are the angels who participate only in the rational world as they have no bodies. Human beings, in the Biblical view, were not the center of creation, in the sense that creation is all about us. Instead, human beings are somewhere in the middle of all that our Creator has made unique because we are a composite form of life. Viruses are loved by God although they are neither vegetable, animal or rational.  They too, like the human person, can be very destructive.  Somehow, they play their part in God’s creation and preparation for the world to come.  The scientific view is a better mechanical view of the world, but the medieval view probably makes more sense of the whole world. What we gained in technical understanding in modern science, we have lost in vision of what it means to be a human being.  
 
Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’ (May 24, 2015) challenges us that “ everything in the world is connected,” from the well-being of the poor to the flourishing of the planet itself. Viruses connect us to Wuhan, China and all points in between. Nature is not the dramatic background scenery for our own life drama, but is part of the chorus of the play God is directing. Everything, even a virus has a part to play in the story of creation. St. Paul reminds us that the patience of our mothers giving us birth has much to teach us in the time of pandemic.