We hear people talk about “getting back to normal” after the pandemic subsides. I hope we don’t, for what was normal before COVID-19 was a time that did not treasure the poor, the homeless, Indigenous, Black and Brown people, people fleeing from persecution of all kinds. The wealthy kept growing richer. The middle class, found itself in free-fall.
What the new normal needs is a miracle of love and unselfishness.
That’s a phrase I borrowed from Walter Munk, one of today’s great oceanographers. Munk coined that phrase to describe the only way he knew to overcome global warming. That phrase also describes what we must do to emerge from this this pandemic time as well. “A miracle of love and unselfishness” needs to root itself in our lives if we and our communities are to be made whole as waves of the coronavirus, sweeping with stealth across our planet, threaten us.
On this Good Shepherd Sunday, we celebrate the one who stands with us in all we suffer. It’s well known that sheep recognize the voice of the shepherd. When someone other than their true shepherd calls, the sheep simply don’t respond.
We hear the undeniably repeated call in the 10th Chapter of John’s Gospel, “the sheep hear his voice as he calls his sheep by name and leads them out {of the sheepfold}. (John 10.3)…I have other sheep that do not belong to his fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice and there will be one flock and one shepherd (John 10.16)…My sheep hear my voice; I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they shall never perish. (John 10.27-28).” Even though, as largely urban people, we have no daily familiarity with sheep, we are moved by the image of a shepherd loving his sheep so ardently.
In Pope Francis, the world has found a contemporary shepherd who speaks with the voice of the Risen Lord – a profound leader who urges the world and not just the church to live out the love and unselfishness that the Risen Jesus calls us to if only we hear his voice. Francis, in his letter on the need to save the earth, (Laudato Si’) affirms that the planet is a single homeland that calls for “one world with a common plan.” That calls for us to shake ourselves free of being grasping, selfish and self-centered and instead, make common efforts toward shaping the common good of our planet. As the virus crossed boundaries without seeing them, people in the new normal need to cross boundaries of state, class, gender and race in support of one another.
Francis is a shepherd in the image of the Good Shepherd. He urges us to be that too.
During this painful time, we find people stretching out to help one another. Let’s not stop once the immediate worst is over. Let us be changed in heart and mind and spirit, generous beyond anything we have done in the past. The new normal will take effort on everyone’s part, a miracle of love and selflessness.
~Sister Joan Sobala
