Gift in the pandemic?

It is the last week of May, 2020, and the Provincial government has just announced an extension of the pandemic state of emergency. Some stores are being allowed to reopen but schools will remain closed for the duration of the current school year. People are getting antsy with all this, and the sacrifices we made in the early going are getting harder and harder. The restrictions are a great burden especially on a warm sunny day. People want to get out, and they want to mingle!

At this point, churches remain closed as well. And it is Pentecost weekend at time of writing. What a sobering thought. That event of 2000 years ago took place during a gathering of thousands of pilgrims who had come to Jerusalem for the annual  'celebration of the early harvest.' When the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles and they started preaching, locals and travellers alike understood them, regardless of their native language. We are told that 3000 people were added to the growing community of followers of Jesus.

That gathering would simply not be allowed today in the pandemic environment. Moreover, we can't even gather to remember it! And so for the 10th+ week we are challenged to reflect on what our gatherings mean: what they mean to the community and what they mean to us individually.

I continue to be moved by the phrase 'transformative sensory experience', written by Randy Boyagoda a few weeks ago in the Globe and Mail, and referring to what happens to us when we gather as community for celebrations of Eucharist at Mass. That phrase sums up what we are missing in not being there. The transformation is in the experience of touching Christ in the Bread, in the community, in the Word.

I believe there is a longing for touch, for connection that makes us whole. Inside the faith context and outside of it. Physical touch, verbal touch, visual touch.

I recall years ago reading Ronald Rolheiser's book "The Holy Longing.' I dug it out again, and found this:  "....(S)pirituality is not about serenely picking or rationally choosing spiritual activities like going to church, praying or meditating, reading spiritual books, or setting off on some explicit spiritual quest. It is far more basic than that. Long before we do anything explicitly religious at all, we have to do something about the fire that burns within us. What we do with that fire, how we channel it, is our spirituality…… Spirituality concerns what we do with desire."

And of course that is where we humans also get in trouble. Where we need healing and redemption. Our desires, our tastes, our wishes for experience take us in all different directions, often contradictory within ourselves, often contradictory to good order, often hurtful – to ourselves, to those we love or don't love, and to our relationships with the God we profess to believe in.

All of this is the back story of the Incarnation. The Son of God coming among us. For us. Our redemption through his death and resurrection to set things right. To let us reset. To heal our hurts. But here's the point Fr. Rolheiser makes that is germane to our present discussion: we talk about the physical body of Jesus being with us for 33 years. "God came to earth and then went home." That language, he says, is misleading and wrong. The Incarnation actually continues. In the Catholic tradition we talk about the Body of Christ, and we mean three things: the physical presence of Jesus who walked the earth; the Eucharist; and the body of believers. Yes. Us. We are the Body of Christ. Christ continues to dwell among us.

You remember, of course, that healings took place when people touched Jesus. The woman in the temple who suffered from a hemorrhage is a prime example. "This text… lays out a pattern… Simply put… just like this woman, we will find healing and wholeness by touching the Body of Christ and, as members of the Body of Christ, we are called upon to dispense God's healing and wholeness by touching others… If you are a member of the Body of Christ, when you forgive someone, he or she is forgiven; if you hold someone in love, he or she is held to the Body of Christ.… Your touch is Christ's touch."

Father Rolheiser goes on to say this does not mean that we forgive sins or that we bind and loose. "It is Christ working through us, who does this… (I)n the Incarnation God has chosen, marvellously, to let his power flow through us, to let our flesh give reality to his power."

Father Rolheiser explains that even after this reconciliation through touching the community of faith, private confession is still needed. (The healing of the woman in the temple was completed when she spoke to Jesus after her bleeding stopped as she touched his garment. Mk 5:25-34) The point for us today is this: "… (T)he basis for Christian ecclesial community, church, is a gathering around the person of Jesus Christ and living in his Spirit."

This is marvellous and heady stuff to contemplate. But contemplate it we should, especially in the challenge presented by the lockdown of pandemic. Especially on Pentecost Sunday. The pain of separation and isolation we are experiencing is in its own way a gift. Or more accurately, perhaps, a pointing towards a gift that we often miss or even take for granted in our faith community. That gift is the gift of God's touch that we give and receive to and from each other through the continuing Incarnation of the Son of God. In us. As Fr. Rolheiser says, it almost seems too good to be true! Indeed. That's how marvellous It Is. That's how much we are loved.

Perhaps we will come out of this horrible time with a new awareness of who we are to each other, how important we are to each other in our brokenness. We are the Body of Christ.

The world should change because of that.