A parishioner recently sent me this quote from C.S. Lewis.
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
Excerpt from Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays by C.S. Lewis, first published by Fount Paperbooks, London, UK in 1986, (c) 1986 by C.S. Lewis PTE Ltd.
As this pandemic goes on and on and on, and as the Delta variant makes us feel like we are backsliding away from progress or normalcy, this struck me as incredibly good advice. Essentially, let’s not worry about the things we cannot change. Let’s, instead, do everything we can to continue to be human (or, dare we say, Christian). Within the constraints given to us by the law or society or our health, how might we show love? How might we continue to support our families and friends? How might we worship God and be concerned about our neighbor? If we can retain our humanity and our faith, we will have retained our focus on the most important things. Let everything else fall where it may.
Fr. Moore 