Love is Everything
Being one global family means we are “us”; there is no “them”.
1 Corinthians 13 reveals the key ingredient that our global family needs now more than ever.
I don’t know if there has ever been a year that more people have wished was over than 2020. If you’re like me, you spent most of it under the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic. Whether or not the disease affected you or your loved ones personally, most surely the “dis-ease” it unleashed touched your life significantly, either through social isolation, job changes or losses, health or financial concerns, travel restrictions, or all of the above and more. And its impact will undoubtedly persist for some time to come.
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired. Weary. When the seriousness of the novel coronavirus first came to light, I was glued to the daily virus updates and watched with alarm as the red circles on the global COVID-19 tracker exploded in size and quantity. As the number of COVID-19 cases escalated in my city and quarantine and social-distance rules grew stricter, I began reflecting on how to find peace amidst a pandemic. Although I had supported humanitarian efforts mitigating the tenth Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo the previous year, this was a more direct, protracted, and personal pandemic—one that has affected the whole world to varying degrees.
Yet, as often happens in crises, I also drew closer to God. I seemed led to St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises. As we learned how to protect ourselves outdoors, I began to enjoy close encounters with more wildlife than ever before in our eerily quiet urban spaces. I was inspired by the selfless sacrifices of frontline workers, who put their own lives at risk to help others, and how people reached out to neighbors and strangers to deliver groceries and other practical necessities.
