Year A - 4th Sunday of Lent

How things change. Over the centuries people would have turned to the Church in times of natural disaster or war, joining its processions, celebrations and Masses, looking for consolation, hope and relief from their sorrows. But what can be done when the Church itself, as today, is part of the danger? Gathering as a Christian assembly can be the source of the virus. The virus has struck. So if we cannot gather because of the virus, can we still offer thanks to the Father through Christ? To do this we must re-learn some basics of our faith:

1. Jesus is present with us. “I will be with you always”, Jesus promised. We must be attentive to God’s presence in our life.

2. My room is basic place of prayer. “When you pray go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father.” We must continue to be people of prayer, taking time each day to give time to God.

3. Centre and summit. We describe the Eucharist as the centre and summit of our Christian lives, but often it is the sole part of our religious lives. This crisis calls on us to build up the surrounding foothills by caring for one another and thanking God at home, as well as in the church.

If we are not thankful for the meals we share at home, we are hardly ready to be thankful at the Great Thanksgiving that we call the Eucharist.

4. Every table is a sacred place

Jesus encountered people and taught at their tables. Every table is a place where we can encounter the Lord in those with us. “Where two or there gather in my name there I am in their midst”.

Living in an affluent society, we have eliminated words like scarcity, shortage and lacking from our vocabulary. We have forgotten that our world is finite and that the resources we have are not unlimited.

As Pope Francis says in Laudato si', "Happiness means knowing how to limit some needs which only diminish us, and being open to the many different possibilities which life can offer" (LS 223).

We will not be gathering as large groups for the next few weeks. Let's use this experience to rediscover that we are the Church; that the Church is not a building. Let's discover what it means to be Church.

Let us remember that we must be Eucharistic every day, but especially at meals. Let us remember that the Eucharist is not an object we get, take, receive or attend.

And let us never forget that the Risen One is with us, interceding for us with the Father during these worrying times.

David Orr
(With help from Tom O’Loughlin. La Croix. 21.3.20)