A pastor in Dallas has apologized for conducting a Good Friday service with multiple attendees, calling it a “mistake.”
But before you assume that he intentionally disobeyed restrictions on public gatherings, read the rest of the story.
Father Jacek Nowak of St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church
was conducting a private mass for himself, his brother, and a few family
friends. The service was conducted mostly in Polish.
The problem was, the door to the church was left open during the day to allow individuals to pray. When the mass began, there were only five people present. However, others came in during the service. “It was my fault,” the priest said later. “I should have closed the church.”
The fact that people would come in from the street to a
private mass being conducted primarily in Polish speaks to the spiritual hunger
in our hearts during these days of crisis. Easter Sunday services conducted
online and in church parking lots are further examples.
What makes this story different
One way the Lord is redeeming this crisis is by using it to
remind us of our mortality and need for help outside ourselves. This virus
shows us that all our technological sophistication and medical advances
together are not enough to prevent our deaths from coronavirus or something
else. At best, they can only prolong our lives.
But it is still “appointed for man to die once, and
after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).
There is a God-shaped emptiness in each of us, as Pascal
noted. We try to fill this spiritual emptiness with material things, but like
the wrong pieces to a jigsaw puzzle, they don’t fit. Our souls are still hungry
for what we were made to need: “As the deer pants for flowing streams, so
my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God”
(Psalm 42:1–2).
C. S. Lewis: “God made us: invented us as a man invents
an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it…
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