Hope, Not Fear. Care for Others beyond Ourselves.
The enemy of darkness prefers darkness, falsehood and gossip; the Lord loves sunlight, truth and sincere transparency. God’s voice never promises cheap joy. It invites us to go beyond our ego, to find that true good, peace. – Pope Francis offered mass intentions for >100 pastors who gave their lives to the faithful, and have died in Italy; and to >154 doctors who have died on the job.
There are other voices not to be followed: those of strangers, thieves and brigands who want to harm the sheep. These voices resonate within us. There’s God’s voice which speaks kindly to the conscience and there’s the tempting voice that leads to evil. These are 2 languages: God’s inspiration distinct from the insinuation of the evil one; 2 opposite ways of knocking on the doors of our hearts. God proposes, does not impose Himself. Voice of the enemy distracts us from the present and wants us to focus on fears of the future or sadness about the past.
Pope Francis, Source: Vatican News
Fr. John Cordero of Holy Family Artesia shared a metaphor, “I am the gate, I am the password,” to illustrate the Lord is the ultimate source of goodness, with our capacities to discern, to judge what is right, “what feels right in our hearts, with switches on in our heads, with ears if our hearts attuned to the voice of God, we sift out the voices of complainers and instead, focus on life is a value and care for the life of a breathing human being. Lord wants life, and wants it abundantly. Does the message conform to/ congruent (swak na swak) to the message, love one another? We have the ability to discern. That password, the access, is the teaching and example of the great sheperd, Jesus Christ.”
Open our hearts that He might fill us with joy, peace, light and grace.
Sr. Bernadette from the Vatican prayed
My sources of inspiration are multiple. It starts with masses at the Holy Family Catholic Church, Artesia and Pope Francis’ inspired homilies, which lay out the two paths in life, one of righteousness and another straying from it. I love how he posits it in a highly respectful manner, with a deep reverence and appreciation for the goodness of God, and the goodness of man, His creation, His hard work. In that reverence, he speaks of what separates man from his dignity, how he offends himself as he unjustly treat others.
I often wonder how much do we think of other folks daily? Like putting on a face mask?
It’s not about your life. You don’t have the right to risk someone else’s life. And you don’t have the right, frankly, to take a health care staff and people who are literally putting their lives on the line, and be cavalier or reckless with them.
Governor Andrew Cuomo, 2020
For the month of April, Vatican News reported, that in the United States, one person died every 44 seconds.
In a span of 103 days, while the world had 3,502,126 cases and 247, 306 deaths in 187 out of 195 countries/regions.
The United States, once looked up to, disdained and respected by the world is now pitied, according to a foreign news outlet, as of yesterday’s John Hopkins’ dashboard, has 1, 157, 687 cases and 67, 674 deaths, deaths which exceeded nearly 60, 000 who lost their lives in Vietnam from 1964 to 1975.
34% of COVID-19 deaths in the US are African Americans, while fatality rates are:
US has 20 deaths per 100,000
UK has 42 deaths per 100,000
France has 36.97 per 100,000
Italy has 47.51/100,000
Spain has 53.72/100,000
Belgium has 67.98/100,000
Portugal has 9.95 /100,000
South Korea with 250 deaths out of 10, 793 cases has 0.57/100,000
While with increasing deaths in several countries, the good news is described by Mary McNamara of the LA Times, a rewilding of our environment, an interview with Allan Weisman, author of “A World Without Us,” and a resonating “clear skies and the cacophony of birdsong.”
As hope resonates in our hearts and minds, flowers rise through the cracks in the pavement, the fragrant colorful blooms of spring abound and at 3am this morning, a bright waxing gibbous moon. I had to double back – was that the sun, or was that the moon, quite serene and perhaps, a new #CoronaVirus free dawn is coming?