The Pope’s opinion piece in the “NY Times” about what a crisis reveals
There was just published an opinion piece in the New York Times called “Pope Francis: A Crisis Reveals What Is in Our Hearts”. Before going into the message, here is some context.
First, the COVID-19 pandemic rages for a new wave across the world as winter comes. Though, multiple effective vaccines are on the horizon.
Second, the US Supreme Court, led by a majority of Catholic members including the new justice Amy Coney Barrett, voted 5–4 to prevent New York from imposing COVID-19-related size limits on church meetings.
Third, much of this opinion piece is taken from Pope Francis’s new book, Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future.
Sometimes, when you think globally, you can be paralyzed: There are so many places of apparently ceaseless conflict; there’s so much suffering and need. I find it helps to focus on concrete situations: You see faces looking for life and love… So rather than overwhelm you, it invites you to ponder and to respond with hope.
These are moments in life that can be ripe for change and conversion. Each of us has had our own “stoppage,” or if we haven’t yet, we will someday: illness, the failure of a marriage or a business, some great disappointment or betrayal. As in the Covid-19 lockdown, those moments generate a tension, a crisis that reveals what is in our hearts.
In every personal “Covid,” so to speak, in every “stoppage,” what is revealed is what needs to change: our lack of internal freedom, the idols we have been serving, the ideologies we have tried to live by, the relationships we have neglected.
This is a moment to dream big, to rethink our priorities — what we value, what we want, what we seek — and to commit to act in our daily life on what we have dreamed of.
The pandemic has exposed the paradox that while we are more connected, we are also more divided. Feverish consumerism breaks the bonds of belonging. It causes us to focus on our self-preservation and makes us anxious.
To come out of this crisis better, we have to recover the knowledge that as a people we have a shared destination. The pandemic has reminded us that no one is saved alone. What ties us to one another is what we commonly call solidarity. Solidarity is more than acts of generosity, important as they are; it is the call to embrace the reality that we are bound by bonds of reciprocity. On this solid foundation we can build a better, different, human future.
