LockDOWN GraceUP

“Father! There’s going to be a lockdown!!!” Sam exclaimed.

“Yes, Sam. I read about it too in my Viber group.”

“This is going to be a first for all of us! And I’m afraid it’s going to be quite tough,” Sam lamented.

“People are now panic-buying for food, medications and other supplies. I don’t think this was how the authorities wanted things to turn out,” I commented.

“Moreover, they can’t seem to systematically get their act together. This pandemic is totally beyond their capacity, just imagine how they can’t even provide enough testing kits!”

“We are really doooom!!! It seems like we’re going to live through the Night of the Living Dead!” I said.

“Now, stringent measures to stem the spread of the virus has led to cancelling the celebration of Masses and other religious gatherings.”

“That is very sad, Father. In fact, I read that the lockdown will hit Holy Week and Easter Sunday itself!”

“There are quite a lot of people who are getting anxious and upset about this situation. They are asking how they can go to their daily mass and not attend the usual services before Easter,” I shared.

“I was quite worried too about that, but after praying about it, I thought that Jesus might want all this to turn out into something good,” Sam reflected.

“What good points do you see, Sam?”

“For example, it makes me feel –for one month– how I can live my Christian faith down to its bare essentials. It’s as if I were living during the times of the early persecutions of Christianity in the Roman Empire, the martyrs of Korea, Japan and Africa.”

“I never saw it that way, Sam. But you do have an interesting point there.”

“This lockdown will help us, in some way, to put our faith and practices in a new perspective. Perhaps, we will now appreciate something we had been taking for granted since we could casually go to daily Mass or other gatherings. Now, we will have to content ourselves with watching mass via the Internet or T.V. and receiving communion spiritually. I believe that all this will help us to really thirst for these essential ingredients of our faith more.”

“How true, we are going to live our faith in survival mode like the first Christians or those martyrs who had to go into hiding. Imagine, even with the absence of the mass and the priests, their faith endured for hundreds of years!”

“In some way, people will live these things in a deeper and more personal way. That’s why, I believe that this lockdown will actually be an upgrade of grace for my faith and others.”

Sam noticed that I became suddenly silent.

“So, Father, are you still thinking about buying that bat?” He quipped.

“On second thought, maybe I should buy a chainsaw!”

He laughed out loud and almost fell off his seat.