Today, amongst the myriad interpretations of our current circumstances and in times where both the soul and the body are tortured, our rulers want to save us from ourselves at all costs. And when they take away our freedom, bestowed by God:
It is time to admit to Christ that we are not worthy of Him, that we are spiritless, and instead of being full of faith, we are full of doubt.
We heard that long time ago, O Lord, that You cast out demons from men. We rejoiced and believed that You were mighty then. We heard that You commanded the storms, winds and other elements, but that was then and we do not know if there are reasons to have hope in You now.
We heard and read that You are The Way, the Truth and the Life, but today everything is upside down. They don’t allow us to journey with You, forbid us from officially glorifying You and offering Your bloodless sacrifice for those for whom Golgotha’s sacrifice was offered.
And we accept this silently, worried not to disturb our already disturbed reality even more. But knowing that You are Life, we still ask for Your protection from those with earthly power. In the end, how can we not appreciate their fervent desire to help us survive? “For without Me, you can do nothing”, You said, but in these current times we accept being without You, and instead we entrust our future and our lives to those who are elected by the people.
And we accept those who we elected cast You out of our lives and our world. They make You unneeded, irrelevant, and disrespected, and we accept that. What is there for us to do? It is not easy to oppose those who are striving to save our earthly lives.
Yes, we know that You said: *“For whoever desires to save his life will lose It, and whoever loses his life for My sake and gospel’s will save it” (Mk. 8,35), but we are hopeful that Your absence from our lives will be just temporary.
Could it be that You, O Lord, have missed something? That You may not have anticipated the arrival of coronavirus? Who could think of everything? So many things You have told us: “That even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (Jn. 21,25).
Who can remember everything? And You gave us freedom to follow You, if we so wish.
But the problem is that the elected guardians of our bodies want to separate us from You, at all costs. They are fearful of Your influence. Have You caused them great harm to make them so resentful? We have always prayed to you: “Heavenly Physician of our body and soul”. We may have overdone it a bit, so these caring people must then take action to save us from Yourself.
Their caring predecessors once asserted that: “The religion is the opium for the people”, therefore we believe this also refers to You. And these democratic successors of theirs wouldn’t say such a thing. They just pat us on our backs and assure us that we are free to worship You, but since they say that this is a serious matter, we cannot be in communion with You. We have to keep our distance from You and each other.
We cannot approach each other. Everything has to be at distance. And what about freedom?
Yes, our freedom is officially still there. She still has not bid us farewell. She creeps around us and wonders what will become of her. We have heard the Apostle Paul, Your passionate advocate, declaring: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free” (Gal. 5,1). But we are doubtful of this too. We are not sure if this Apostle got it right. If we stay with You, we can easily become the victim.
Will You understand us, O Lord? This is not easy for us. Penalties are imposed, we are being threatened with vaccines. We are being told that our liberty is limited. We are being advised that restricting our freedom, protected by the law, is good for us. Perhaps the lawmakers failed to anticipate that coronavirus would emerge. Had they known that, surely they would have determined our freedom to be valid only up until the arrival of the virus.
Maybe it would be sensible, O Christ, to further clarify our situation. We should speak up against our rulers attack on You, but it is not easy. How will others look upon us? And there is no guaranty that we would not suffer. You may ask us: “Have I not suffered for you, why do you expect not to be persecuted?” - and we would readily answer:
Yes, but this is a state of emergency. Nobody amongst us, including You, O Lord, could have anticipated this dangerous enemy. So have mercy on us.
The Lord will have mercy because He is Merciful, but His mercy, o pious people, will not be imposed upon anyone, unlike the mandatory vaccination which we are being threatened with. The Lord’s mercy is the heavenly vaccine, which is given and received voluntarily, by those: “who are not of this world”.
Therefore, forgive us, O Christ, because our faith in Your promise that you will be with us “always, and even until the end of the world”, has greatly diminished. Amen!