This identified and previously unknown infectious agent has been able to cause public health problems globally. We have seen and continue to see thousands of coffins brought to cemeteries and crematoriums. Few people accompany them. The dead are never numbers. They are people with names, biographies, families. They are children of God. All this is frightening. Civilization and our very existence that collapse like a house of cards.
“It's been a few weeks since it seems that everything's become dark ... We find ourselves scared and lost. Like the disciples of the Gospel, we've been involved in an unexpected and furious storm. We realized that we were in the same boat, all fragile and disoriented,” said Pope Francis.
Covid-19 reminds us of how vulnerable we are. It puts us in extreme situations: illness, pain, failure, death. Similarly, fear highlights our selfishness to a greater or lesser extent. Accumulation of products, rising prices, dismissal of workers, irresponsible exposure to infection. Coronavirus not only infected us; it also closed us off from each other.
Social isolation has forced us to carry out many activities at a distance, thus professional teleworking activities, as well as school and university learning processes in e-learning.
“I'm not afraid of getting sick. Of what then? Of everything that contagion can change. To discover that the scaffolding of civilization I know is a house of cards. I'm afraid of annulling myself, but also of its opposite: that fear passes in vain, without leaving a change behind.” Thus wrote Paolo Giordano in his latest book Nel Contagio.
God does not send suffering to the world. To believe this is to assume that if He can avoid it, He does not. Following the words of the Franciscan theologian Michael Patrick Moore, God is present, suffering and also saving. He suffers with pain and anguish, for our selfishness, discrimination, lack of empathy for the pain of others, arrogance and irresponsibility. He saves through those who risk their lives so others may live.
The God to whom we often turn to does not abandon us, because He is not only the God of life, but is the GOD IN LIFE. Only, we need to know how to recognize Him in life and, now, in this pandemic.
Claudio Jorquera, Liza Muñoz, Gustavo Cano y Lorena Jiménez
