***
One of the worst parts about being sick is the sense of loneliness or isolation that sets in.
Despite the care of family, doctors, and nurses, our world becomes increasingly small; we’re confined to our own room, to our own bed, to our own thoughts and feelings.
No one can take the illness from us. We simply have to push through it.
***
Images of those hospitals in Italy immediately come to mind. Patients infected with the Coronavirus are so isolated their family can’t even visit them.
They’re quarantined; many stuck inside tents.
But the ironic thing about Covid-19 is that it’s quarantined all of us. Even if we’re perfectly healthy, we still have to stay inside because our state is on lockdown.
***
In the Gospel, Jesus heals a boy who’s deathly ill, maybe with something like the Coronavirus. As a result of being healed, the boy becomes doubly blessed.
He’s not only blessed because he’s been physically healed; he’s also blessed because he’s been freed from his social isolation.
That’s that blessing we’re all praying for.
***
Standing here in an empty church, it’s devastatingly clear how important you are.
We learned the same lesson when Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was nearly burnt to the ground. As bystanders stood and watched, the world was reminded that the Church is not a physical building.
The Church is you. The Church is me.
Saint Catherine’s is not the composite of brick and mortar that surrounds us tonight; it’s us.
How important it is, then, that you’re tuning into Mass, praying with us, even from a distance.
We know the day will come when we’ll be freed from this imposed self-isolation.
But may we never forget how beautiful it is to stand shoulder to shoulder, hand-in-hand, worshiping our God together as one family of faith.