May the Lord send us his healing Spirit. Amen
The Gospel today is the discourse between a scribe and Jesus about what is the most important law. Jesus replies by quoting Deuteronomy and Leviticus and is basically saying that we must love God and love our neighbor. These two are like the two sides of a coin, you can’t have one without the other.
The guidelines of social distancing and staying in our homes seem to be rather unnatural to us; we like to greet each other with a hand shake or a kiss or a hug and to get out and about. If however we see these rules as a way of loving our neighbor then we can handle the tension they may cause. Keeping distance means we love the other because we want them to be well and not get infected … and vice versa too!
Since we are not allowed to assemble for Mass and have to worship God in our homes and/or via Livestream from the church, we need perhaps to focus on the “love of neighbor” part of Jesus’ reply to the scribe with seriousness through observance of this social distancing and home based life style that we must adopt.
No doubt these restrictions mean we have more time on our hands. So to balance the love of neighbor we could set aside more time for God. Reading scripture, praying as a couple or family, attending Mass on our Livestream, using familiar devotions such as Stations of the Cross, the Rosary, the Divine Mercy devotion and others will help us be united in prayer. Above all pray daily for our doctors and nurses and caregivers who are our frontline in this battle with an unseen enemy.
God bless you and your loved ones, keep safe, and weirdly, keep your distance !
Fr Aidan-Peter CJ and the Josephite team at SLDM