At the press conference on Friday announcing the New York shutdown, Governor Andrew Cuomo said, “I want to be able to say to the people of New York—I did everything we could do. And if everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.”
This statement reflects a disastrous sentimentalism. Everything for the sake of physical life? What about justice, beauty, and honor? There are many things more precious than life.
And yet we have been whipped into such a frenzy in New York that most family members will forgo visiting sick parents. Clergy won’t visit the sick or console those who mourn. The Eucharist itself is now subordinated to the false god of “saving lives.
What a spectacle. Much of America is quarantined at home, the public is so panicked there’s a run on toilet paper, the country desperately wants reassurance, and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer decide to take a bipartisan rescue bill as a political hostage.
That’s the display of Democratic leadership in a crisis the nation received on Monday as Senate Democrats blocked a $1.8 trillion bill that has urgent money for workers, hospitals, small business and, yes, even larger companies threatened by the forcible shutdown of the U.S. economy. When America most needs bipartisan cooperation, Democrats add to the economic uncertainty by putting their partisan interests above the needs of the country.
“However, it’s not enough to receive the light, one must become light. Every one of us is called to receive the divine light to manifest it with our whole life.”
What is he talking about? To receive it, you have to be it? That so?
Reminds me of what once was said in Vietnam: “It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” Or to update: It’s necessary to destroy America’s economy in order to save the country.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker ordered a statewide disaster proclamation on March 9 — when Illinois had just four confirmed cases of the coronavirus. Since then, he’s evolved into a national leader on the issue.
Some there are who like this govt. taking control idea. Bad cess to them. Woe for all of us.
Some years back I heard a long-ago news woman tossing off this, when the China miracle was in the news and we were struggling thru our new-normal Obama-time doldrums: “What do they have that we don’t have?” she asked at table. I rolled my eyes to another, who smiled.
Saint Charles Borromeo led a procession in prayer to mitigate the plague in Milan in 1576, caring for upwards of seventy thousand dying and starving people. Death meant nothing to him, save an opening to Paradise. For all his mystical intuitions, he also enjoyed playing billiards, and when asked what he would do if he had only fifteen minutes more to live, he responded, “Keep playing billiards.”
One of the Church’s youngest saints, Dominic Savio, told Saint John Bosco that if the Holy Angel blew his trumpet for the end of all things while he was on the playground, he would just keep on playing.
That is how we should want to play each day of our lives, in a friendship with God that will not find Heaven unfamiliar. In 1857, fourteen-year-old Dominic’s last earthly words were: “Oh, what wonderful things I see!”
A saint is one who can stand at the eternal gates and say, “Hello. I am home.”
Blithe Spirit 