These days, it is hard to escape the impact of the coronavirus. No one is immune to the physical, psychological, emotional, social, and economic effects of this pandemic. But is it all bad? In this week’s episode of By Your Life, we explore other possibilities.

Mass Readings Audio
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/2020/20_03_15.mp3

Third Sunday of Lent – March 15, 2020

Welcome to the one hundred and third episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life.

My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular, business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.

In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Third Sunday of Lent. I wanted to make this episode of By Your Life, a coronavirus-free zone. But over the course of the past week, it has taken on an entirely new life. No one is immune to the physical, psychological, emotional, social, and economic effects of this pandemic.  As more testing is done, more cases are found. I’m already wondering when this will be over. I feel like the Israelites who have been wandering in the desert. “Is the LORD in our midst or not?” (Ex 17:7) I’ve had enough already.

It’s like the sex abuse scandals that have filled the news. I’ve had enough of that too. But, in a way, just like the coronavirus, it is good that we are constantly hearing about it so people will take action to stop it. Most recently, I heard about the case of sexual abuse that involves Jean Vanier, the Catholic philosopher and theologian, and the founder of L’Arche, an international federation of communities where persons with and without intellectual disabilities live together in a model of Christian community. I had heard of Jean Vanier only because I’ve been recently consuming Henri Nouwen’s books, one after another. Henri Nouwen, if you haven’t heard of him, was a Catholic priest, professor, writer and theologian, who left his academic career and went to live and work at the L’Arche Daybreak community in Ontario.

Among others, Nouwen was heavily influenced by Jean Vanier, and I’ve been recently influenced by Nouwen, so I was especially saddened to hear about the credible and consistent testimonies from six women whom Jean Vanier sexually and emotionally abused. This was a man who was esteemed as a “Mother Teresa-like” figure by many around the world, so I’m not alone in feeling sickened and saddened by these revelations.

On the Word on Fire Show, Bishop Barron talked about the Jean Vanier scandal and more generally, the issue of When Church Leaders Fail. How do we make sense of the positive fruit and all the good works that came out of this man and others, who are later revealed to have been deeply dysfunctional, sociopathic, and perhaps narcissistic, if not criminal?

Bishop Barron’s thoughts on this subject were helpful to me in trying to process this. He said that Jean Vanier was in some ways a very good man and he did bear good fruit in many ways. At the same time, he fell from a graced relationship with God. Both are true. Saying this neither exculpates him nor does it say that he was nothing but depraved. He was at the same time, a good man who suffered from the effects of sin. This was true of Jean Vanier, and it is true of us.

What does it have to do with our Scripture readings from this week? In our Gospel, Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well. Simply by the fact that she was a Samaritan, she would have been regarded by Jews as ritually impure, and therefore, as a Jew, Jesus would have been forbidden from drinking from any vessel she had handled. In addition to this general Samaritan exclusion, Jesus also knew that she was an adulteress who had five husbands, and the one she had now was not her husband. (Jn 4:18) According to the law and custom of the time, Jesus would have been right to avoid her altogether. He could have judged her a sinner and dismissed her. But he didn’t. Instead, he engaged her in conversation, and he offered her salvation.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot this week. I’ve been reflecting on how my tendency is to put people into categories, good/bad, smart/stupid, useful/useless, saint/sinner. Just last weekend, I was at a podcasters’ conference and I found myself doing this all the time. One of the speakers was a self-proclaimed psychic and I immediately thought “She can’t possibly have anything to say that would be of value to me.” Because I don’t believe in psychics and I consider engaging with someone in her line of work to be a violation of the first commandment, I assumed that this woman couldn’t possibly have anything to say that I needed to hear. I had put her in a good/bad category and was ready to move on to another session.

And then, because I had been thinking about our capacity to be both sinner and potential saint, I caught myself. Even though it is wrong to consult a psychic to discover the future, it is okay to get advice about podcasting. In the end, I’m glad I didn’t write her off. She shared one of the best tips of the entire weekend that has the potential to pay for more than the cost of the conference!

If you are honest, you will admit that like me, you do this too, all the time. We quickly judge people and try to fit them into a category so we can deal with them efficiently. But people are more complicated than that. We also do this with ideas and events, at least I know that I do. I’ll quickly decide if it is good or bad. Most ideas and events are more complicated than that too. I miss out on a lot of possibilities when I am quick to judge them as good or bad and dismiss the potential that the opposite may also be true.

And that brings me back to the coronavirus pandemic. It has and will continue to cause significant disruption to our lives. But is it all bad? When things like this happen, it is important to ask, “How can God use this for good?” And more importantly, “How must I cooperate with God to bring peace in a time of panic?”

The year I was diagnosed with cancer was a year of disruption for me. I didn’t want to accept that, so I was determined to stay in control and minimize the impact on our day-to-day lives. I planned my surgery around a speaking engagement and my daughters’ lacrosse games. I scheduled my chemotherapy on Fridays so it would be least disruptive to my work. I even asked for my first treatment to be delayed a week so the 3-week regimen wouldn’t interrupt Easter, my birthday, and my daughter’s graduation. I was determined to minimize the negative impact on our lives.

But I never planned for how blessed I could possibly be by having cancer. I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and prayers. People sent me cards and flowers. They brought dinner and paid for my house to be cleaned. It was humbling because I knew that all the people who were reaching out to me had their own “stuff” that they were dealing with. I didn’t deserve the attention. I thanked God for them every day and asked that he bless them abundantly.

But the greatest blessings of that year of cancer treatment were the lessons I learned like living one day at a time, enjoying the good days without worry for what was to come. I learned that “offer it up” wasn’t just something your mom said to get you to stop complaining. I offered up the bad days uniting my suffering with Jesus on the Cross. And I learned that as much as I liked to control things, they really turned out better when I accepted things I could not change and let God take control.

I am always telling people that if you offered me that year back and I could do it over without cancer, I’d say “No way!”, because that would mean I’d have to give back the blessings, and I’m keeping them.

That brings me back to Sunday’s Gospel. The Samaritan woman was just going about her daily tasks, going to the well to draw water, when Jesus disrupted her routine. What if she had had enough of Jews treatment of Samaritans? What if she had not been willing to open herself up to what he had to offer? She never would have known the Messiah.

So, when you think you’ve had enough of the coronavirus, stop and think about the blessings you may be missing. As I look forward to the days ahead, days filled with uncertainty about where the virus will spread next, I know one thing is certain: there will be more disruption in our lives. But I’m choosing to follow the advice from St. Paul in our second reading from his letter to the Romans. St. Paul wrote, “We boast in hope of the glory of God.” (Rom 5:2) “And hope does not disappoint.” (Rom 5:5) I am certain that the glory of God will not disappoint if we open ourselves up to what he has to offer.

I’d like to close with the Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr as it is especially fitting for times like these.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace. Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it, trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen.

May you live each day this week, one day at a time, and glorify the Lord by your lives.

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