St. Paul: a saint for our times

As the coronavirus continues to impact our lives, I find myself thinking of a man who underwent far greater trials than I ever will, yet never lost his faith in God: St. Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. Now there was a man steeped in suffering, having experienced…

“…imprisonments. countless beatings… often near death. Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people… in toil and hardship… in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure…” (2 Cor. 11:23–27).

And yet it is this same St. Paul who assures us with unwavering serenity:

“We know that in everything God works for good with those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28).

In everything, you say? Even in the coronavirus health crisis? What good could God possibly draw from this present suffering?

Before I share my thoughts on that score, let me try to tackle what we might call The Big Question of COVID-19: As of this writing, over 154,000 have died of the coronavirus in the US alone; thousands have lost their jobs; our children have had to adapt to new ways of schooling at very short notice. This is evil—yet God is good. Where is God in all this?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) quotes another of my favorite saints, St. Augustine of Hippo, in words reminiscent of Rom. 8:28: “…almighty God… because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself” (311).

So yes, God can in fact draw good out of the evil of COVID-19 and all its resultant sufferings, and this is exactly his will, his desire for us. We have only to turn to him with deeper trust and obedience.
As I look around, I think I can already see a kind of first fruits of a great harvest of good, which our faithful God wills to bring about from this crisis for “those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose.”

First, I think I see signs of a deeper conversion among my brothers and sisters—and, please God, within myself. Sadly, for some Catholics the temporary ban on public Masses represented a kind of colossal “non-event of the year,” not even registering on their radar, since they weren’t regularly attending Sunday Mass in the first place. For others, the temporary “Eucharistic fast” they underwent seems to have increased their hunger for the Bread of Angels and their longing for the day when they could once more receive Holy Communion. This is what happened here in Dunseith. When St. Michael the Archangel reopened, the number of daily communicants surpassed that of pre-COVID-19 days.

Secondly, I believe I can see something of the spiritual maturation that only comes through patient, trusting acceptance of the sufferings that God permits in our lives. At St. Ann’s Catholic School in Belcourt where I teach, our Confirmation and First Eucharist students completed both their preparation and retreat by March 12. Confirmation was scheduled for March 22, but it wasn’t until June 20 that they finally received the sacraments. For three months my valiant kids continued studying at home in a far less than ideal situation which none of us could have envisioned. They persevered with their sacramental preparation, helped by family members and my weekly Zoom conferences. When I saw them again on June 20 (the Immaculate Heart of Mary), I could sense a deeper maturity and greater understanding of and desire for the final two Sacraments of Initiation.

Finally, I see with the eyes of faith great good coming out of all the recent appeals to the powerful intercession of the Mother of Christ, beginning with the Holy Father, Pope Francis. Specifically, I see tremendous blessings arising from the May 1 re-consecration of the United States to Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception. At the same time Bishop Folda consecrated the Diocese of Fargo to Our Lady, and pastors of individual parishes followed suit, including our own Father Michael Slovak here at St. Michael’s. The televised ceremony itself was brief and a bit poignant in its stark social distancing setting; but in the invisible spiritual realm, what tremendous shifting was taking place, what channels of grace were being opened?

“If God is for us, who is against us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are conquerors through him who loved us. For I am assured that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come...nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rm. 8:31b, 35, 37–39).

St. Paul, pray for us; St. Augustine of Hippo, pray for us; Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, pray for us. Amen.