By Abbot Tryphon, April 26, 2020
Let us allow this pandemic to be the force that transforms the world
Entertainment has come to take on a central role in many people’s lives, becoming so important as to have replaced personal interaction with neighbors and friends. I’m old enough to remember the day when neighborhoods were filled with homes sporting large front porches. On hot summer nights families would be sitting on their porches, sipping lemonade and waving at passing neighbors who were actually out for a stroll. Now we all have air conditioners, and front porches have been replaced with private back patios, where no one can see us. Gone are the days of neighborliness.
Even in our spiritual lives we have tended to live in isolation. Many Christians have chosen to reserve their prayers to issues revolving around finances, or regarding health matters, or that of a family member. Yet we rarely think of the importance of corporate prayer with family and friends, apart from the Sunday Liturgy. Prayer has become a private matter, rarely shared with others.
So, now that we’ve collectively created an age of self-exile, we enter into a pandemic, where we are forced into an extreme exile, living alone in our homes and apartments, forced to distance ourselves even from our closest friends and relatives. Perhaps this forced exile should be seen as a wakeup call, even allowed by God for our ultimate spiritual benefit, for it has gifted us with the challenge of reaching out to those very people we’ve been too busy to acknowledge.
Now we have the God-given opportunity to reach out to the elderly neighbor, who because of the danger of the COVID-19 virus, dare not shop at the grocery store, and who is deprived of spending a Sunday with their friends in the parish, or an afternoon with their grandchildren.
The little neighborhood children who have been deprived by the pandemic from playing with other neighborhood children, stuck in apartments with parents who are often on edge with worry about the future, and, sometimes, given over to domestic violence.
So, what can we do? We can offer to shop for the elderly couple, for whom an outing to the grocery store could put them in danger of getting the coronavirus. We can organize a distancing block party for the children of the neighborhood, leading them with songs and laughter, all from a safe distance. We can encourage our church community, with an online fundraiser to sustain the parish during a time of greatly reduced financial support, given the fact that people are not purchasing candles, or dropping money in the collection plate.
We can make a special effort, each and every day, to call someone we know is likely all along, and suffering from depression because of forced isolation. We can even put aside our own sadness, and send a friend a YouTube comedy that would lift their spirits, or a video of a favorite musical group that would bring a smile to their face. We can FaceTime a friend or neighbor, giving them the opportunity to visually see someone who loves them.
Perhaps best of all, we can seriously start praying for an end to the suffering of so many people around the world, and ask God to use this pandemic as the vehicle by which we see real change in our own heart, so that we come out of this isolation with a renewed commitment to making a difference in our world, spreading the joy of Christ to our family, our neighbors, our community, and even into all the world.
Now is possibly the best opportunity most of us will ever have to become true, Christ-centered, individuals, who really care for others, and truly love God. By looking beyond our own fear, our own loneliness, and our own despair, we can become agents for ushering in the Kingdom of God. Like Saint Seraphim of Sarov, by acquiring inner peace, a thousand around us will be saved.
With love and blessings,
Abbot Tryphon
~Abbot Tryphon, A Morning Meditation, https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/morningoffering/2020/04/the-spiritual-benefits-of-the-pandemic/
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