Life and Death Under Lockdown

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This is the first Sunday with no public Masses. The new Archbishop of Southwark, the Right Reverend John Wilson, wrote on Wednesday: 

A major change is the cessation of public celebrations of the Mass and the dispensation of the Obligation to attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days. We will, however, endeavour to keep our churches open wherever possible so that those who wish can visit to pray before the Blessed Sacrament.[1]

Bishop John Wilson

Bishop John Wilson

I had the honour of meeting His Excellency last October when he visited our parish – English Martyrs, Streatham – on the very Sunday that our Legion of Mary happened to be giving out Rosary beads and leaflets. As he made his way in before the 9:30 am Mass, our spiritual director, Sr. Christiana of the Daughters of the Divine Love (an order founded in Nigeria in 1969) gave the archbishop blue Rosary beads. Lo and behold, the beads emerged from his pocket during the homily: holding the beads aloft, His Excellency encouraged all present to have Rosary beads by the bed, so that they can be taken in hand, when, like him, one awakens in the night and is beset by worries. Can hardly attribute to those beads the inclusion, in the same pastoral letter, of the following:

To continue to mark the significance of Sunday as the Lord’s Day, I would encourage all those who are able to read the Scripture readings of the Sunday Mass and to pray the rosary."

But then again, that little gift of string and plastic just keeps on giving. Mass from St. Anselm’s, Tooting Bec, streamed at 9 am. I put on my suit, determined to establish a solid routine and maintain solid decorum for what may be a long isolation and cessation. The loneliness of the long-distance priest makes the Mass so solemn and beautiful. That holy workman is free at last to go about his holy work without the noisy, fraternal tyranny of an unruly self-satisfied flock. Can it be that the Good Lord is tired of the lethal casualness of our attendance at Mass? Enough of the gleeful idle chatter, so drearily inevitable before the Mass even starts. Enough of the slovenly slouching into the pews, the showy attention to children masking the inability of the assuredly child-centred parents to impose any kind of control on their self-satisfied, track-suited boys and mini-skirted, sequin t-shirted girls. Enough of the muddled, half-kneeling, half-hearted acknowledgement of the consecration. Enough – it is the Lord Who speaks? – of the bedraggled, self-aggrandizing parade to the sanctuary to receive into ungrateful hands, the body and blood of the God-man. Surely, He has allowed the coronavirus to roam abroad in order to keep his unruly children isolated and attentive at home. 

Drove to do my regular Sunday scout of the abortion centre, not intending to stay as this Sunday is not on our bi-monthly Sunday vigil schedule. Continued the Sorrowful Mysteries walking towards the side entrance. A troubled looking couple stood at the gate. Took off my hat and prayed a Hail Mary, feigning unawareness of their presence. Turning, said "Good morning" and "God bless" afraid to offer the leaflet and Rosary beads: Lord, forgive my cold and cowardly heart. Must order surgical gloves on Amazon. 

I decided to stay on anyway. Got the two pro-life placards from the car and crossed Leigham Ct. Road, placing the two boards in the usual place and continued the prayers, marking off the spot with holy water. This is the right place to be. If anyone complains I will tell them that babies are being killed in there. Clarity of intent is all.

A woman cycles by and calls, “People are dying of Coronavirus and you’re protesting about abortion.’’ I felt a solid sense of peace that someone saw things so plainly. Another woman called from across the road “Haven’t you got something better to do on a Sunday?” Not the best line of attack on this of all Sundays – don’t you know that everywhere is closed except this place? Well, apart from parks and shops and libraries and playgrounds and outdoor gyms. 

[…]

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Footnotes:

  1. Archdiocese of Southwark Pastoral Letter Concerning the Measures to be put in place Regarding Public Worship and the Celebration of the Sacraments in Relation to the COVID-19, (Coronavirus) Pandemic 18th March 2020 

  2. Haffner, P. (2010). Consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the English tradition and the title of “Our Lady’s dowry”. Alpha Omega, 13(3), 431-454. Recuperato da https://ojs.upra.org/index.php/ao/article/view/1650

  3. Ibid, p430 

  4. Ibid, p430

  5. Ibid, p437

  6. Ibid, p440

  7. Ibid, p445

  8. Cardinal Wiseman’s Prayer for England

  9. US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17542834

  10. Statement of the Archbishop of Southwark, To the Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Southwark following the Prime Minister’s Address to the Nation concerning the Coronavirus, The Most Reverend John Wilson Archbishop of Southwark Given at Archbishop’s House, Southwark, 23 March 2020

  11. Melanie McDonagh, 24th March, 2020 https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/don-t-close-the-churches-because-of-coronavirus 

  12. ibid

  13. Southwark Pastoral Letter, 25th March, 2020