The 2020 leap year that began on Wednesday will be set to fire in human history by the uncontainable transmission, to the five continents, of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, a spread initiated in China during 2019.
Covid-19 has claimed many lives and tested, in crisis management, very diverse governments and states of societies: from the most democratic and open, to the most authoritarian and closed.
But it has also tested us, that we are living an uneedited, unimagined experience, and we do not know exactly when or how this nightmare will end. Nor what will come after it’s over.
Much has been speculated about it, to the point of reaching the (almost) saturation of the subject, but not by looking the pandemic the pandemic will no longer be there, like the dinosaur of Monterroso. Every day we get up and lie by his shadow.
As other publications have done, we wanted to consult the opinion of a group of intellectuals, to which we decided to add the opinion of some Catholics, including priests, religious, religious and young lay people, to inquire about their particular experiences during all this time, to know how they have used it, how their days have elapsed, what they think about this present and what they expect from the future , how you imagine it.
SAINTS NEXT DOOR
Padre Ariel Suárez Jáuregui
Father, how have you lived these months of confinement? Did you make the most of it?
“I want to make it clear that I haven’t felt locked up. I’ve felt protected, safe, but not locked up. There are those who have had to take to the streets much more than I have, because of essential labor obligations, to seek the food, medicine or other things necessary for their home; or go to care for or assist a sick family member. There are also those who have had to leave their home to be hospitalized, because they were infected by Covid 19 or another illness that required being admitted to a hospital or health center. Fortunately, I have come out the essentials, to put some ation to the sick, to visit a priest friend, to buy something very punctual or to help some less likely family, to bring wages every month to the employees of the parish. I have been communicating very often with my parishioners, with other priests and religious over the phone and from WhatsApp groups that have proliferated considerably in these particular circumstances. The same fact of seeing the Holy Mass with the faithful on television every Sunday from the Sanctuary of El Cobre at 7:30 a.m. and then listening to at 10:00 a.m. our Cardinal Archbishop in his catechetical radio interventions, has mitigated as much as possible, the feeling of isolation. I would even say that we have experienced a singular harmony and communion, different from what we usually did, but just for this, more desired and grateful than in times of normality.
“Since 25 March last we decided to close the Diocesan Shrine and Minor Basilica of our Lady of Charity. Being such a regularly crowded temple, it lent itself to agglomerations, which was what the health authorities continually asked us to avoid. To keep a temple this open, we need collaboration from employees, many of whom live far away and are at risk ages. When we later found that public transport was paralyzed and that the cases of contagion in Centro Habana were particularly numerous, we thought we did the right thing to protect people’s lives. We have learned of the contagion of parishioners and of friends and family members of our parishioners. It has been nice to see the immense flow of solidarity, affection and prayers with which the parish has truly proved to be a family of brothers and sisters. For all that, I can only be very grateful to the Lord.
“You also ask me if I’ve taken advantage of the experience. I suppose in some things I did, for example, bring my mother with me from the beginning of the isolation period so that we could be mutually accompanied at this time. That’s been a new learning and enrichment. During my nearly twenty-one years of priesthood, it has been a peace of mind for me to know that my parents were accompanying and caring for each other. Not that I was totally away from them and their reality, but they were quite autonomous and I felt very free and serene to give myself fully to pastoral work. My father nearly three years ago set out to meet the Lord and my mother was widowed, after forty-eight years of marriage. It is true that my older brother accompanies her, but he has a wife, children and his own responsibilities. Living with Mommy after all these years has been a grace of the Lord. We pray together, she accompanies me every day in the celebration of the Eucharist, helps me to call on the phone and encourage parishioners, especially the elderly alone, widows like her, the sick. And we split the tasks of a house: washing, cleaning, cooking, scrubbing. We watch TV together, share books or articles we’re reading, and discuss them later.
“I have had time to read, to pray slowly. I’ve also tried to do some sport. And I have been able to meditate, think, value much more what life means, faith, family, friendship, the Christian community, the strength of prayer and love, my own priestly vocation, the reality of my people. My faithful have been well aware of everything I might need. And they have shown their fraternal affection and closeness of dissimilar ways.”
Some significant experience experienced during this stage
“I do not know if you know that for several years I have been in charge of ecumenical service by the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba. Well, on 14 May, Pope Francis, adhering to a proposal from the High Committee for Human Fraternity, convened all Catholics on a day of prayer and fasting for humanity, the end of the pandemic, etc. The Catholic Bishops of Cuba endorsed this invitation of the Pope and it was my turn, by the Episcopal Conference, to contact other leaders of Churches and Christian communities to convene this initiative. For the previous ecumenical work, he already had contacts with the leaders of the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches, and the leaders of the main evangelical communities in Cuba. Contact was easy and quick with them, but the invitation, on this occasion, included all the great religions of the world. I have to tell you that we were able to establish communication, for the first time officially, with the Hebrew Community of Cuba, the Cuban Islamic League and the Interreligious Platform, with a cordial and fraternal welcome from all the leaders of these instances. That is one of the profitable and beautiful experiences of this period of Covid 19.”
Are there any conclusions you have made, in existential terms, that you wish to share?
“There are some things, few perhaps, but they have taken hold of me in this time. First, that the Kingdom and the Church are of God and not of ours. At a time when most temples have been closed through the world and therefore the visibility of sacramental and priestly mediation has been much more discreet, the Church has remained alive, prayerfully, operational in charity and solidarity. They sent a funny cartoon for whatsApp but deep. The devil said to God, “I closed your churches to you.” And God said, “And I opened a Church in every house.” While it is true that we need a concrete, embodied and non-virtual Community Church, we have somehow seen strengthened realities that we did not value so much before: the dimension of the domestic Church, spiritual communion, the strength that comes from reading and meditaating on the Word of God. Those things should not be lost in the future. God has led His Church, also in this time, because He is His and He is more interested in us than ourselves.
“Second, God always works, even where we least imagine him or think he is not. Sometimes our analyses of the world and our contemporaries are often burdened with pessimism, apocalyptic or catastrophic visions. In this time we have seen many but many people dedicated to serving their neighbor, even at the risk of their own lives. Not a few have found contagion and death tending to other sick people. That quality of the human, those high heights of altruism and love, present in men and women today, continue to bring us hope and confidence. There are still, as Pope Francis likes to say, many ‘saints next door’.
“Third, not out of hand, and afraid that this might be a cliché, this pandemic has revealed to us that we are interconnected, that what happens today in one part of the world has implications, for better or worse, throughout the planet. We should be more aware of this, of the potential for human freedom and responsibility. Any evil that breaks in will affect, sooner or later, everyone. And all the good done will also benefit everyone. May we be sensible enough to know that we are not only responsible for our actions, but for their consequences. And that these consequences reach the whole world. Even to the future of our world, to the future inhabitants of the earth.
What teachings could this time of cloisterment leave us, as social beings?
“We must learn to take more care of the quality of human relationships. We have missed in this time the hugs, the kisses. And you know what that means to us Cubans, so expressive and gestural when it comes to communicating with each other. Perhaps now all these gestures will take on more density, they will no longer be given to everyone, but will mean more deeply what they should mean. As if they were purified to return to the original, genuine intuition. Taking care of the quality of human relationships includes caring for the physical gesture, but it does not come down to it. It communicates with silence, with prayer, with presence.
“This period of isolation has strengthened our status as social beings, called to live in communion. A Christian speaks to you, who believes that man is ‘image and likeness of God’. And God is Trinity, Perfect Communion of three different people: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Indissoluble and Eternal Love. We need communion, living with and for others, loving and being loved. We need friendship, community. If we do not experience these realities, we have mutilated the human in us.
“Someone has defined the great cities of the 21st century as a ‘multitude of solitudes’. It’s sad that that’s the case. The worst pandemic that kills the human heart is loneliness. And probably the greatest sadness of this period signed by Covid 19 is that there are many people who have died alone, without the most intimate affections at their side, accompanying them at that crucial moment. This pain has also been strong for the relatives who remained and could not stand with their loved ones when departing for the Lord’s encounter. Living and dying in solitude is the saddest thing that can happen to a human being. I repeat, we are made for communion and love, even if there is a deep level of loneliness in every human being, who only God knows and dwells. I’ve met very poor people, but accompanied. And rich people, but alone. The former tend to be happier. And God wants his sons and daughters to be happy, as He is in intra-State communion”
How does the future post-pandemic live up?
“I don’t have a magic ball to bird the future. I can just dream about it and work for the dream to come true. I do not want to be pessimistic, but history shows that human beings are of fragile memory and as they are popularly said ”the only animal that stumbles several times with the same stone’. By this I mean, that learning and making new habits, and having new values, new convictions and a new way of living and relating to each other, is not magical. It is not produced in us by an external circumstance, call it Sars Cov 2 or Ebola or H1N1. Humanity has experienced incredible wars, catastrophes and sufferings and does not always show that we have learned everything we could and should have from those incredible shocks. We always fall back into the nets of evil, greed, selfishness, sin. And at the same time, people who struggle to improve the world have always coexisted, helping others, willing to suffer for good, truth, justice. There are the ‘next door saints’, which include people of all culture, race, sex, profession, cultural level. Those are the ones that make me, not naively optimistic, but a man of hope. That hope that I found, serene, in that God of Love and Mercy in which I believe, who loves man, who has created us out of love and who keeps loving us even in our frailty and our radical volubility and inconsistency. Letting ourselves be loved by Him, living in wonder and stupor grateful for that Love, is the only guarantee to be able, each in the sphere of action and according to his own responsibilities and competences, to love us as brothers and sisters. And if ever, which is very likely to be so, that love will cool or become cloudy, God’s Mercy warms and purifies it, because compassion and forgiveness are also an essential element of Love. That is the world I dream of, a world full of Compassion and Mercy, because there is so much misery that we have created and distributed. Hasn’t Com-passion been the best response to man’s passion in this period? It will also be in the future. I hope so.”
Father Ariel Suárez Jáuregui, 47.
He was ordained a priest on 7 August 1999. For more than five years he has been the rector and parish priest of the Diocesan Shrine and Minor Basilica of Our Lady of Charity in Havana. Deputy Vice-Secretary of the COCC and head of the Ecumenical Service. He has been Professor of Philosophy at the Seminary San Carlos and San Ambrosio for more than twenty years and is currently also a professor at the Félix Varela Institute.
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