By Alex Fogleman
Here’s another recent article, published on Church Life Journal, about Cyprian’s response to a devastating plague—not unlike the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in its potential to incite fear among the faithful. Cyprian is often thought to be something of a “practical” or pastoral theologian, which is contrasted with the speculative theology of his near-contemporary Origen. I think this underestimates both theologians and shows a typically modern prejudgment about the nature of theology, but that’s a subject for another time. Also in the background, more or less obviously, is the various responses among Christian public intellectuals about faithful Christian responses to cultural shut down. Does donning a mask and staying home represent fear or charity? When such a question even becomes plausible, as it apparently has, it’s time for pre-modern wisdom. Most of all, though, it’s a piece about Easter and the way in which Christian feasting is a spiritual discipline—one that, you guessed it, requires catechesis.
If Lent is an annual memento mori—a memory of death—Eastertide is an extended memento vitae—a memory of life. As John Paul II so aptly put it: Christians are an Easter people, and Hallelujah is our song. This year, however, as Christians around the world read daily reports of mounting death tolls, the Hallelujahs will likely sound less like Handel and more like Jeff Buckley’s take on Leonard Cohen—a cold and broken Hallelujah.
This year, the world joined Christians in the Lenten fast. Everyone, no matter their faith or religious background stopped, fasted, and watched. Many prayed. We thought of little else but death. It is doubtful, however, that so many will join Christians in the unabashed celebration of life over death in Easter. What could seem more futile or foolish right now—indeed, insensitive and unloving in the face of such great sorrow—than to announce that the Lord has risen? But, then, what else could we say?
Thoughtful observers have commented that a global pandemic makes visible what is in fact always true—that we are going to die. No matter how much money or technology we throw at the problem, we are at best only delaying that most empirical reality of death. But if Christians have been so unprepared to reckon with their mortality, as Carl Trueman has noted, will they be as unprepared for life? Will we celebrate life in the midst of daily reports of mounting death tolls? Will we sing Hallelujah—even a cold and broken one—in the midst of death?
To rejoice amidst death is native to the Christian experience, but it is not something that comes naturally. It is something learned. Throughout the ages, Christians have recognized that learning to die as well as learning to live is just that—something learned. Just as we need to be taught to look clear-eyed upon death at Lent, so too we must learn to raise a glass Deo Gratias at Easter, even when all around seems bleak.
To live—to live well—is an act of supernatural grace. In order to embrace both Lent and Easter, then, we need a deep habituation in the Church’s way of being, a way infused with sacramental grace through the sacraments, even if received spiritually. Though most of us are, for the time being, cut off directly from participation in the life-giving sacraments, that does not stop the church from being herself—in her members—a sacrament of Christ, formed from the bleeding side of the New Adam during the sleep of his passion. We celebrate life amidst death, then, because we have been catechized into Christian existence. To be an Easter people and to sing Hallelujah, we must have our entire frame of reference aligned towards a transcendent order, the supernatural mystery of Christ our creator and redeemer.
Read the rest here.