Reflection on the pandemic by a Providence Associate

Julio César Romero, a Providence Associate since 1983, is a teacher who, with his wife, Providence Associate Maria Angélica Coñuecar, live in Caleta Olivia, Santa Cruz, Argentina (Bernarda Morin Province).The work of the Caleta Olivia Associate group is carried out in the San Juan Bosco Parish of that city.

“Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”  (Mark 4:40).

 The pandemic in Caleta Olivia puts us in quarantine! The official campaign #”Don’t  Leave Home” forces us not to move from our homes. We can only go out for health reasons or to buy groceries, and we must keep a distance of one to two metres between people. Furthermore, the Providence Associates of Caleta Olivia are part of the group at risk of contagion because of their age or their health issues…  “Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves”, as we read in Matthew 8:24. In his Urbi et Orbi address of March 27, 2020, our Pope Francis tells us: ” We have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, but at the same time important and needed, all of us called to row together, “

I stand in line to buy at the grocery store, in line with those of us who are afraid of running out of food for the next few days, and I think about those of us who don’t have enough to support themselves for these next few days, and it comes to my mind: “Why are you terrified?  Do you not yet have faith?”  (Mark 4:40).

I remind you that what distinguishes those who do not have faith from believers who trust in Providence is that Christian prepares for the future by living today in the light of the Holy Spirit.  Then our Provident God will – in his due time – put the solutions in place, perhaps in the long term. This is where our faith comes into play.

I ask myself, “Do I have faith if I’m afraid?”… the situation that urged the disciples to wake up the Lord was fear… fear of the storm. Pope Francis, in his homily of July 2, 2013, in the church of St. Martha, tells us that fear (in the reading from St. Mark) is a temptation: fear of going forward on the path of the Lord. I believe that we are tempted to stay on safe ground.

“… all of us are called to row together,” says the Pope.  That is to say, called to be in solidarity with the weak, the fragile and the disoriented. Called to be in solidarity as providers in a scenario where the only certainty is uncertainty.

We are living through a storm that reveals our vulnerabilities and exposes the false security that we have built. In the end, as at the beginning of human history, our strength is in our unity, because only together can we move forward, since individualism does not go hand in hand with our human species.

Let us row together among the vulnerable, let us stand in solidarity to overcome this pandemic; let us pray together and together we will overcome fear and reappropriate our forgotten faith.

Julio C. Romero, PA /April, 2020