That's the headline that appeared in today's Buffalo News. I know that this might be discouraging news to many, but I would like to offer a few brief reflections on why we need to continue to be patient and be absolutely sure that it is safe before we reopen our churches to large gatherings. These reflections are not "practical" - they are theological, which is how we are called to address issues as Catholics. Once we have the theology correct we can talk about practical ways to implement it.
1. Just this past weekend we heard Jesus, in the Gospel of John, remind us that if we love him we will keep his commandments. And just earlier in that same "farewell discourse", Jesus told his disciples that he has given us a "new commandment - love one another as I have loved you". That kind of love that we are commanded to is self-sacrificing. And a self-sacrificing love means that we must remove the "I" from what we need to have happen. If any of us are insistent that we reopen churches because "I" need to go back, or "I" need to receive Communion, we are not participating in the self-sacrificing love that Jesus calls us to.
2. Another aspect of the love commandment is that of the core teaching of the Church of the "common good". Following Vatican II and Pope John XXIII's Mater et Magister, the Catechism notes three essential
elements of the common good: respect for the individual, the social well-being and development of the group, and peace. If we reopen too soon and have to turn people away, or find ourselves closing again as a result of a spike in COVID-19 cases, or - worse yet! - if our opening causes the sickness or death of any one person, how are we living the call to the common good. The elderly, who are some of the most vulnerable, includes so many of our faithful parishioners. How can we expose them to this risk, or tell them to stay away while others who are "safer" can return to church?
3. Finally, it seems to me that gathering too soon is an exact counter-sign to what the Eucharist is to be about. When he established the Eucharist, Jesus said, "Do this in memory of me" and he was not just talking about breaking bread. The "this" he asks us to remember is also to be a community of disciples who puts each other and the welfare of the entire community first, just as he did. In that same reading from this past Sunday, Jesus promised to send us the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth. Jesus is with us - always and everywhere. We gather not to make Jesus *appear*, but to celebrate his presence among us and within us. He is already here. He is already present. If we cannot celebrate that reality sacramentally for a little while, perhaps we should be recognizing and celebrating all the other and varied ways that he is, in fact, with us. We are the Body of Christ even when we are unable to receive it sacramentally - let's be the Body of Christ for each other in the meantime.
I can certainly understand the desire to return to our celebration of the Eucharist. (And, by the way, this experience of the longing for the Eucharist should give us compassion and empathy for those who live this separation from the sacrament on a regular basis - many in Latin America, and the Amazonian region, for example.) But each time we have to wait until another time to celebrate sacramentally, let's rejoice for all the ways that Jesus is with us. Let's celebrate the goodness and mercy of our God. Let's recognize our hunger for wholeness and for community - and then when we return, let's be a people of compassion and oneness, and love - and greet each other with a renewed dedication to being the self-sacrificing, other-centered disciples we are called to be.
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