Salvator Mundi

In our diocese, the Bishop has announced that after this week, much like the rest of the country, there will be no weekend Masses to help limit the spread of the Covid-19 virus. So this morning we all arrived in silence.  The usual comradery and social pleasantries were eerily absent from our typically social country parish.  At the end of Mass, the plates of sweets laid out for our customary after-Mass social remained covered in plastic, as people who normally congregate in the lobby quietly walked to their cars, emptying the church almost immediately.  Going to Mass this morning felt very much like Good Friday, which I remarked to my husband. His reponse was that we are almost more solemn than Good Friday.


This is truly saying something.  Because year after year during Lent, and especially on Good Friday, we are asked to enter into the suffering and Passion of our Lord.  We are asked to take it seriously, and to be penitent, and we really do try.  But for all of our efforts, often it is difficult to really, truly wake us from our usual habits. We go to Mass, we hear the readings, we receive Jesus, we experience community. We try to keep Him before us, maybe, if we think of it. But for me at least, so much of it is habit.  Until that is, something like this happens, to stir us and awaken us.

Why are we so solemn today? For many of us, it is the awareness of Who we receive in the Eucharist, and the thought that we may not be able to receive Him again for some time.  We came to the altar not out of habit or obligation, but with a true awareness of Who we were receiving, and the magnitude of what is being asked of us in the coming weeks.  I can not tell you when is the last time I even considered how deeply I need Jesus in this way, beyond just acknowledging it as "book knowledge". Today what has been taken for granted in my heart emerged as the most important fact of my life as I walked towards the altar and received the Blessed Sacrament.  I was aware what a true gift it was.

There is also something profoundly beautiful to  me about the fact that the world is experiencing this together, at the same time.  Week after week our parish priest asks us to pray for this or that disaster taking place in the world, and we do.  But it doesn't touch us the way this is.  And knowing that it is touching the whole entire world at the exact same moment in time, is to me almost sacred.  We are bound together in this way. What other possible event could do such a thing?

I kept hearing over and over as we prepared for Mass today, the Catholic Hymn, "Salvator Mundi, Salva Nos." (Saviour of the world, save us.)  We sing it typically on Good Friday, as a reminder that we are all sinners, and are all in such desperate need of Christ. In an online discussion yesterday, a friend commented that people not willing to accept the measures asked of us by our Bishops as an act of charity are suffering from a spiritual blindness, and for me, this is how it all comes together in this moment.  In our small corner of the world, we don't have Coronovirus.  We are not physically sick.  But we all in some manner or another, have spirtual blindness.  Even those of us who are willing to do what is asked of us. 

We are all sinners in need of salvation - this is not just a sentiment but a fact! A fact that is being made profoundly clear as we prepare to sacrifice our ability to receive the Eucharist for an unknown period of time.  My need for Christ has never been so real or true for me than it is in this moment, and for this I can only respond in gratitude.  What took place more than two thousand years ago has somehow erased time, crossed over millenia, and come to touch me here, in 2020, as a true fact in my life. This is the omnipotence of Christ, drawing us into His passion in the present.  For me, this elevates what we are living to the level of sacred.

Please continue to pray for each other and the world, as we join together and embrace the reality of Christ in front of us now, and what that means for each one of us.