The pope and the Duchess of Sussex walk into the offices of the New York Times…. Is this the beginning of a joke or a sermon? Or both? The Op-Ed pages of the New York Times last week brought us insight from these two famous people in two successive days.* Both addressed the challenges of living in this particularly fraught moment, when the Coronavirus pandemic has tested our patience, our political mettle, and our neighborliness, among other things.
On the day before Thanksgiving we heard from Meghan, who shared her feelings after the miscarriage of her second child. She was plainly frank - not the usual attitude of duchesses - about the deep emotional pain and isolation she went through. She reminded us convincingly that the pandemic has left much of the world “feeling more alone than ever.” And she recalled how important it was to her, in her own isolation and grief, when someone bothered with the simple courtesy of asking her, “Are you OK?”
“In places where there was once community,” she writes, “there is now division.” And one way to bridge that division is the simplest thing in the world: to turn toward the other and ask that little question: Are you OK?
Unexpectedly, the gist of her insight was shared by Pope Francis the next day, who also wrote of a time of profound personal challenge, when sickness had brought him near death in his youth. The pope credits two nuns with essentially saving his life when he was suffering a severe pulmonary infection as a young man. It was, he writes, “my first experience of limit, of pain and loneliness. It changed the way I saw life. For months, I didn’t know who I was or whether I would live or die.” The steps those nuns took on his behalf all those decades ago in Argentina - one doubled the dose of antibiotics prescribed by the physician, and another provided “extra doses of painkillers” - would put them in a precarious position today.
But let’s take the pope’s account on its own terms and for its own merits, which he says, taught him “to depend on the goodness and wisdom of others.” He then goes on to reflect on the goodness and wisdom of all the doctors and nurses and others whose selfless service during this pandemic has sometimes cost them their own lives. “So many of the nurses, doctors and caregivers paid that price of love, together with priests, and religious and ordinary people whose vocations were service,” he writes. “Whether or not they were conscious of it, their choice testified to a belief: that it is better to live a shorter life serving others than a longer one resisting that call.”
You don’t hear that sort of thing these days outside of the military, and it’s worth pausing to let it sink in, this outlook on life, and faith, and service, and sacrifice: It is better to live a shorter life serving others than a longer one resisting that call.
Here we are on Advent Sunday. Jesus does not have a feel-good message for us that we might like. Instead, he says this: “It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.” What are we supposed to do with this teaching? Especially coming, as it does, in the context of Jesus’ prediction that the sun and the moon will be darkened, the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven will be shaken? How do we make sense of any of this?
It is like a man going on a journey. And when he goes, he puts his servants in charge, each with his or her work to do. Frustratingly, Jesus is not clear about what it is the servants are waiting for while they work, other than the return of their master. In Mark’s Gospel, this passage is part of an extended response that Jesus gives to a question from his disciples, who ask him to “tell us when this will be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished.” But other than the destruction of the Temple, no other “things” that are about to be accomplished are never really spelled out in any detail. Something has been lost in the transmission of this teaching, or maybe Jesus was never clear about it in the first place. What he is clear about is this: that there is waiting to be done. And while we are waiting, we we could be doing something. And we may not know exactly what we are waiting for, but that is not the point. The point is the waiting.
Don’t we all know right now what it feels like to be waiting for a moment of deliverance that we hope is coming soon, but is taking much, much longer than we would like? Indeed, that deliverance cannot get here fast enough. But these things take time, and we must wait, and the waiting is not pleasant. In the meantime, what are we supposed to do?!?
In his piece in the Times, Pope Francis writes movingly of those doctors, nurses, and medical workers who have been so faithful during these hard days. There are others, I’m sure, who could be counted among them. He calls them “the saints next door, who have awakened something important in our hearts.” And he goes on, in a lovely turn of phrase to say of them, “They are the antibodies to the virus of indifference. They remind us that our lives are a gift and we grow by giving of ourselves, not preserving ourselves, but losing ourselves in service.”
I love the idea of “antibodies to the virus of indifference.” I feel quite sure that the attitude of which he speaks is indifference to one another. Not all of us all called to heroic, life-giving service. But all of us can resist the virus of indifference to one another, even if it’s only by turning toward the other from time to time, when it might be easier to just stay focused on me and what I want, but choosing instead to turn to the other and asking, Are you OK?
The pope and the Duchess of Sussex walk into the offices of the New York Times… and I think it’s possible that both of them have given us meaningful suggestions about what we are supposed to do while we are waiting. More alone than ever, facing division where once there was community, we are, nonetheless, still in charge of so much. Both Francis and Meghan encourage us to remember that we do not actually need to be alone or divided. While we wait for antibodies to the coronavirus, maybe we could be developing these antibodies to the virus of indifference to one another?
It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work. What if the work we do while we wait teaches us not only to turn toward the other and ask, Are you OK? What if while we waited we could also learn that it is better to live a shorter life serving others than a longer one resisting that call?
There have always been saints next door who have shown us the goodness and wisdom of a life serving others. When I think of how I’m waiting, I pray that God will teach me the value and the meaning of such goodness and wisdom. It makes the waiting more than worthwhile.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
29 November 2020
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia
*The articles in question are:
Pope Francis, “A Crisis Reveals What Is In Our Hearts,” in the New York Times, 26 November 2020
Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex, “The Losses We Share,” in The New York Times, 25 November 2020
From Penn Medicine