The Lenten Corona

By Fr K J Antony, SDB –

Flights suspended; hospital staff on duty 24/7; empty roads; empty public halls and theatres. It seems humans have gone into hiding. Even the few seen outside are masked. The reason, it is the season of the so called Corona virus – a virus in the shape of a crown – a crowned evil that threatens our very human existence. How did it all start? We are still in the dark about it. But for us Catholics, its virulent spread has coincided with our season of Lent.

If we would listen intently, God must be telling us something very important through this pandemic. Of course, it is ironical that God has been speaking all the while, but we begin to listen to God’s message only when something affects or threatens us.

Originally, the Biblical human was the crown of creation. Everything that was created was less than the human being. The human being wore the crown of superiority. But suddenly the crown was lost. It was because our first parents had failed to listen to and obey God’s word. So they were chased out from Paradise. Everything else in Paradise, including the tree of knowledge of good and evil could remain there; but not the human beings. We had lost the crown.

The word ‘corona’ simply means ‘crown’ in Latin. The human being, who was to be the crowning glory of the Creator God, was evicted by God himself for disobedience. The first-born Cain too was cursed for his murderous intents and deeds. Both God and earth cursed him (Evangelium Vitae No 9; Gen 4:11-12). Adam, Eve, and Cain – all were seeking the undue crown of glory, power, prestige, wealth, and appreciation. Instead they lost even what they had had. The human being was trying to infect God with the Corona of selfishness, pride, and disobedience. Consequently, the human being was ‘quarantined.’

When self-seeking overtakes us, we become drowned in self-glory and become deaf to God’s Word. We hear God’s Word no more. What happened to our first parents thus can continue to happen to us too. Yet, God does not abandon us.

Lent is a time God gives us to seek what we had lost. What we had lost was his presence and his countenance. What we had lost in the Garden of Eden, God makes it available to us here and now. God wants us to be with us. He wants us to enjoy his reassuring presence. Since God desires to be with the human being, God too had to leave Paradise, humble himself and become one like us (Phil 2:7) and be present with us as Emmanuel (Mt 1:23).

Once out of Eden, Adam had to find his own life by the sweat of his brow. But Jesus the Second Adam, came to make us live not by the mere sweat of his brow, but by sweating his blood. He had to drink the cup of suffering, be scourged, spat at, wear the crown of thorns and be stripped and humiliated, and had to be crucified on the tree of death (Mk 14:32-15:41).

Jesus the Second Adam thus regained for God the lost crown, by redeeming us. He opened for us the way to be at the pinnacle of creation once again and today invites us to crown our lives with love and sacrifice. Jesus is our model. The blood he poured out for us now washes us whiter than snow. His cup of suffering has become for us the cup of joy and of salvation. His wounds from scourging have become our healing. His crown of thorns has become our crown of glory. His tree of death has become for us the tree of life. His humiliation has regained our dignity as sons and daughters of God. Jesus has crowned us once again the heirs of God’s promise.

The name Corona virus may only be coincidental and may even be insignificant in the scientific circle. But the name can point to us the crowns that we seek, and the Coronas that infect our human life. The lethality of ‘Selfish-Coronas’ and their consequences may be much more than that of an infesting microbe. Even factually the very origin and spread of the Corona virus may point itself out to be the result of human experiments gone wrong – of experiments with biological agents of warfare that arose from greed, power politics, and selfishness.

We need to differentiate between Coronas that can kill us and the Crowns that lead us to life. God’s Word and our Lenten spirituality can help us identify the evil of selfishness that keeps growing within us. Shall we not stop a moment during this season of Lent and ask ourselves, which are the Coronas that infest our life, disorient us from God, intimidate us socially, and force us into evil? And shall we not ask Jesus the Lamb of God to identify for us the true Crown of Glory that we need to seek?

Blessed Lent!

Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive Power, and Riches, and Wisdom, and Strength, and Honour, and Glory, and Blessing (Rev 5:12).

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Fr. K. J. Antony is a Salesian of Don Bosco of the Shillong province. He is a teacher of Theology at the Sacred Heart Theological College and had taught in the Sacred Heart Seminary, Poonamallee, Chennai He guides seminarians as Counsellor and Dean of Studies. He holds a Masters in Psychology, and a Masters in Missiology. He is also a research scholar at the Assam Don Bosco University working on the theme “Symbolism in Religion: Its Origin and Importance in Theologizing.”