Remote Serving

As time elapses one may have a lapse of memory: entering home and forgetting to wash one’s hands first thing. One can forget that inactivity can be life-giving service. Taking to heart past infectious crises, washing hands, physical distance and solitary exercise: these are ways of living that will be in place for some time.

Jesuit Brother Joe Hoover considered our inactivity and new behaviours as he described living Ignatian spirituality in the time of Covid-19:

A Christian deemed “nonessential” has to hand things over to others—even secularists—to do the work of feeding, protecting, consoling, caring for. The police, the E.M.T.s, the doctors, the nurses, the outreach workers, whatever their religio-ethical framework for life, they are on the front lines of this crisis, not you. …you are left with the intense washing of your hands—17, 18, 19 seconds—as your most profound act of personal martyrdom.

Read his “Praise, reverence and serve the God of coronavirus.”

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Wiki-image Social Distance (Illustration) by “Maximilian Schönherr | CC BY-SA 4.0"