fr. arnaldo pangrazzi m.i.

The tiniest guest called Covid -19 entered our homes, took possession of our streets, stripped the great metropolises, stripped the theatres and stadiums, brought businesses to their knees, emptied churches, and rewrote social and behavioral geometries.

The coronavirus has prevented people from working, children from playing in parks, young people from meeting friends, teachers from meeting their pupils, elderly and disabled people from being visited by volunteers, lovers from getting married, dying people from saying goodbye to their loved ones, deceased people from receiving a dignified burial.

Its devastating presence has forced the governments of the world to run for cover, issuing decrees to limit the contagion, it has committed doctors and nurses to undergo massacring shifts of service, law enforcement agencies to watch over and fine those who violate the provisions, priests to bless the faithful from the rooftops, companies to close their doors, restaurants, and pizzerias to interrupt services, the population to give up the pleasure of recreational, cultural and social activities, the elderly to prematurely end their earthly pilgrimage in residences transformed into death cages.

In its race without barriers and boundaries, Covid-19 has swept away certainties, upset habits and lifestyles, deprived individual freedoms and social rights, increased intimacy and family conflict, mortified community expressions of faith, humiliated the pride of science, penalized the power of productivity, paralyzed travel agencies, stifled human planning.

Hospitals, pharmacies, and supermarkets have become the new centers of humanity; masks, suits, gloves, and fans are the most sought after and profitable products in the industry.

The coronavirus that hovers everywhere and has produced a long international curfew is an arbiter who sends warnings, a university that imparts teachings, a field strewn with precious seeds of truth to bear fruit to draw the birth of a new humanity.

Somehow the tsunami has turned into a masked benefactor, an instrument of revolution for a new scale of values where science combines with consciousness, and the “I” gives more space to the “we” in view of a renewed way of being and behaving.

Kairos for a human and global renaissance

            From this traumatic time that has shaken the world, from this cold shower that has frozen history, from this unexpected baptism of blood, humanity can come out renewed, converted, transformed.

It is of fundamental importance to grasp the kairos, that is, the opportune moment, the potential hidden in the shadow of the catastrophe suffered, knowing how to intuit the latent promises in this unexpected pregnancy, so that from the troubled Caesarean section of the birth personal and collective wisdom for tomorrow’s agenda will come to light.

Now the past, as it was, is no longer ours nor will it be the same; the future remains uncertain, but its form and content will depend on the lessons learned from the visit of this rigorous and demanding teacher called Covid-19.

The task of learning belongs to the various social tissues: from personal to family, from school to work, from health to religion, from community to national, from continental to global.   Everyone, through their commitment, responsibility, and collaboration, contributes to rewriting the journey towards tomorrow.

A Decalogue to Humanize Humanity

The kairos challenges to leave the certainties of the past for a rebirth shaped by the sensibility, wisdom, and spirituality matured; everyone is architect and protagonist in the gestation of the future.

I would like to enclose in a decalogue the paths to follow: a sort of Easter journey from the tomb to the light, from death to resurrection, from the old man to the new man.

The Decalogue aims to “decipher the signs of the times,” to grasp the call to conversion and transformation to rebuild the common house of the future.

These ten paths I present them in their essentiality, “naked and raw,” leaving to each one the task of developing their implications, testimonies, and implications through examples or personal and social x-rays.

Ten paths from darkness to light: 

1. from omnipotence to fragility
2. from self-referentiality to solidarity
3. from certainties to temporariness
4. from arrogance to humility
5. from freedom to discipline
6. from assembly to isolation
7. from comfort to sacrifice
8. from habits to creativity
9. from materialism to spirituality
10. from fear to hope.

Creators of our future

The current revolution has bent us but not broken, troubled but not afflicted, confined but not annulled. Creativity is helping us to manage our limits, humor to relieve tension, love to overcome contrasts, hope to overcome discomfort, faith to believe in the future.

We are obstetricians of our future, artists of our destiny.

We are living a favorable time, a golden opportunity to humanize humanity, to refine our hearts, to educate our minds, to nourish our spirit in view of the new times brought about by the storm we are going through.

The sleep of activity has offered a precious opportunity to recarburize our interiority and make the expectation fruitful; the prolonged experience of isolation has been an opportunity to reflect on transience, on the sharing of goods and fragility, on our relationship with the transcendent and with creation.

As the fog clears and normality returns, each person will gradually try to heal their wounds, mend relationships, return to the parks, greet freedom.  What happened may have purified our gaze on things, strengthened our bonds, reclaimed our souls.   

Everyone is called to be the godfather at the baptism of a new spirit of brotherhood, becoming a carrier of hope, a nursery of increased humanity in view of the world to come.