Last week The Church of St. Michael & St. George circulated on the internet our protocols for resuming public worship when the Diocese of Missouri tells us we can proceed. A paper copy of these protocols is in the mail to all parishioners in case we do not have your email address or you do not have access to the internet.
It is important to keep a perspective on what we have been through. Shutting down our lives prevented about 60 million coronavirus infections in the United States and 285 million in China, according to a research study published today, in the journal
Nature
, that examined how stay-at-home orders and other restrictions limited the spread of the virus. These are abstract numbers unless you are one of the 60 million who would have gotten the disease or 3 million who would have died from it.
As faithful Christians whose churches have been shuttered, we struggle with the loss of the Sacrament of Holy Communion to nourish us week by week. We struggle with the loss of fellowship that we find when we attend church together. The spiritual, emotional and economic costs of the shutdowns are all too tangible. The health benefits of the shutdown are invisible because they are tallied in people who have not gotten sick.
All of this puts the shut down in context of the greater good that was achieved. And this is the way the world does business. We count the cost in terms of the greatest good for the greatest number. Shutting down was expedient for public health.
But if we only look at the shutdown in those terms we are missing the true spiritual opportunity that the shutdown can be. For me the shut down has been terribly frustrating. The change in my routine is frustrating. The loss of worship in church has been frustrating. Not knowing what was happening when has been frustrating. Working from home has been maddening. And as these studies show my frustration all went toward the larger cause of lessening the impact of the disease. But more than that, all my frustration was also an opportunity to grow spiritually. In this shutdown, I have not had things the way I have wanted them. I’ve not had things “my way”.
All my life, America has been so good at giving me what I want that it’s easy to lose track of the spiritual reality that a lifetime of getting what I want does not make me into a Christlike person. Our economy is so successful at giving us what we want that it’s easy to forget that being pampered is not the same as being holy. In fact, being pampered is antithetical to being holy.
Speaking spiritually, being deprived of what we want conforms us to Christ. Not getting our way can be one of the best ways of saying to God, “Thy will be done.” If we want to be parts of Christ’s body, we must want to be like him; and his life was a series of deprivations. “He had no place to lay his head”. (Luke 9:58). He was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). If Christ’s head was crowned with thorns, why do we think ours should only ever be crowned with roses? It is good to be like Christ, and conformity often comes through suffering.
Being deprived of what we want loosens the world’s hold on our hearts. If we want to remove a tree from the ground, we need to first loosen the earth from its roots. In that very way, the Holy Spirit digs away at our earthly comforts to loosen the world. Being denied serves to shake away our attachments.
I think of the words of Father Alexander Elchaninov who lived through the Russian Revolution and died in 1934 at the age of 53: “When a man finds in himself the power to acquiesce in the ordeal sent by God, he accomplishes great progress in his spiritual life."
For you and me, the shutdown’s primary importance is as a spiritual exercise because in contending with our frustration, we have the chance to become just the slightest bit more holy.
Facing frustration when my plans are thwarted, I often begin by praying:
Dear God, things are not going as I planned, help me cope.
And once that prayer begins to take effect and my frustration quiets, I pray:
Dear God, things are not going as I planned, are you up to something?
On the night before our Blessed Lord was crucified, he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, Thy will be done.” (Matthew 26:42.)
Jesus trusted that even in the most terrible of circumstances, God was at work and he submitted himself to God.
It might sound maudlin to liken having to forgo public worship to the torture and crucifixion of Jesus Christ, but what else have we got? All we have to offer is the quotidian banality of our lives. Indeed, the banality of our lives gains value by being “offered up” or being bound up with the acts of God Incarnate.
The shutdown in general and our church remaining closed to public worship in particular have been frustrating. Can we turn our frustration into an opportunity to be transformed more and more into the likeness of Christ? For holiness is what the world needs most from Christians. And holiness is just another name for the life of Christ in us.
The shutdown is an opportunity to more closely resemble Christ, don’t miss it.
Andrew +
