Inbox Inspiration: April 15, 2020: Living Through This - 4

Living Through This – 4
 

Dear Friends,
On March 27, Pope Francis spoke in Saint Peter’s Square in Rome.
He stood there – alone.
No one else was present; there was a strict stay-at-home order in Italy.
Francis gave what is called an Urbi et Orbi message – the Latin words for To the City and the World.
Usually, the Pope gives such a message only at Christmas and Easter.
However, the Holy Father judged that the present crisis demanded that he speak now.
He began with the passage from the Gospel of Saint Mark 4:35-41.
Jesus is in a boat with the disciples and the water becomes very rough and frightening.
Here is an excerpt of what the Pope said.
“‘When evening had come.’ (Mk 4:35). The Gospel passage we have just heard begins like this. For weeks now, it has been evening. Thick darkness has gathered over our squares, our streets and our cities; it has taken over our lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a distressing void, that stops everything as it passes by; we feel it in the air, we notice it in people’s gestures, their glances give them away. We find ourselves afraid and lost. Like the disciples in the Gospel we were caught off guard by an unexpected, turbulent storm. We have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, but at the same time important and needed, all of us called to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other. On this boat… are all of us. Just like those disciples, who spoke anxiously with one voice, saying ‘We are perishing’ (v. 38), so we too have realized that we cannot go on thinking of ourselves, but only together can we do this.”
The Pope expresses well where we are and how we are feeling right now in the midst of this coronavirus pandemic.
He reminds us that, like the disciples in that boat, we are all in this together.
And now, the “we” is all of humanity – everyone on this earth.
That is the perspective that Jesus calls us to have in this turbulence.
More from Pope Francis next week! 

May the peace and hope of the risen Christ be with us!
Father Michael Schleupner