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August 7, 2020Do you remember the pole at the playground that had a rope with a ball on the end? This spring felt a lot like being on the losing end of a tetherball game. Things were swinging along fine until part way through the semester. Suddenly, health restrictions got tighter and tighter until eventually, we lost. The seminarians attending Mount St. Mary’s Seminary had to go home and we continued our semester in the Fargo Diocese. But was it really a loss? Naturally, there were some things we did not have, but what did we really lose?
Father Marie-Dominique Philippe writes in The Mystery of St. Joseph:
“In times of crisis-whether personal ones or those of a community—surely a return to the origin is needed, a return to what was chose and desired at the beginning, in order to overcome the crisis with love and intelligence. This is perhaps the ultimate meaning of a crisis and the very reason that God allows it to happen. Thanks to this return to the source, we are able to obtain a clearer vision of the profound intentions and profound finality of our personal vocation or of the vocation of the community” (5).
I want to examine again the results of the spring, but this time in terms of the source. Did we lose? To the contrary! In some sense, the COVID-19 crisis provided a pulling away of what was non-essential, trivial, or even not God’s will. Do we see it this way?
From a cultural standpoint, we saw the country examine what the source was—it seems it was all centered on preservation of my life. Additionally, this extended to others, the preservation of the community as a whole. We saw people unite together and cancel everything, let the economy take a tumble, and focus on what was important to them above all else—being alive.
Yet, this source is insufficient, informed by faith, we know there is life after death, and this is only a passing time. We know that even if it looks like we lose (death in this case), we can still succeed as there is life after death. But we must go further. We know that the source is Jesus Christ, that we are called to enter into the divine life of God through participation in the body of Christ.
Some may be concerned for what we’re missing because of the crisis: children’s education, seminarian formation, cultural activities, economic progress, etc. While we are called to use our natural reason and strive to do the best we can to promote the natural course of events that help us become better, we must also remember to view reality in terms of the source. Our source is God and it is to him that we must return as our final and ultimate end.
God can and does provide. We can trust that despite a strange year of schooling, a child will still successfully achieve their vocation. And similarly, though my upcoming semester will appear different and perhaps not as comprehensive, we can trust that God will provide all that is needed.
I have seen some call 2020 the “worst year ever.” That depends. If you were playing tetherball with the economy, your job, or the perfect vacation, perhaps it was not what you expected. However, I want to argue that, in a sense, little has changed. The source remains the same. Our vocations remain the same. Yes, things are different—and some days I’m a bit grumpy about it—but the essentials are exactly the same.
