Inseparable

"Run for the forest!" the priest shouted from the pulpit. 

Nothing more need be said. The congregation of farming villagers raced for the exits. The Nazis were coming. It was a Sunday Mass service in Eastern Poland during World War II. The pastor had just learned of impending retribution. My 91-year-old mother recently shared this story from her childhood. Whenever the Polish underground succeeded in an ambush, their occupiers would make the nearby civilian community pay a deadly price. In great numbers that significantly exceeded the military casualties.

No place was safe. Not even church. My mother and father and their families endured the diabolical trauma of war, attempting to live in fleeting moments between the battles and brutality. Nazi troops frequently counted the occupied and looked for the missing and the hiding by stabbing pitchforks into haystacks.

This week, I was reminded of that horrifying, historic episode in a house of worship -- as I scrolled through comments on social media from 21st century believers. They shared a mixture of emotions about returning to church services amidst the coronavirus pandemic.

"I can't wait!" one woman said.  She was anticipating services this weekend after staying home on Sundays for two months. 

Another shared her pain and anxiety about her child who was afflicted with a disease. He hadn't been able to attend Mass for a year because he was vulnerable to attack by infection. His plight began long before the pandemic and it would continue long after. But he had found peace in uniting with God in his heart. 

On Facebook, one compassionate believer expressed her confidence, while consoling others who were at risk due to health complications and afraid to go to church. 

For hundreds of years, early Christians in Rome buried their dead in underground caves and caverns beneath the city. Jews also interred their dead there. In these catacombs, believers were safe from religious persecution to visit family graves and paint murals depicting their spiritual beliefs. These days, those who are forced to worship  from the safety of their homes are not unlike those who gathered in secret to meet in hidden catacombs. Or perhaps they're like the Jewish nation after the Babylonians destroyed King Solomon's great temple. Later Roman conquerers toppled a second temple that King Herod had renovated. The Holy of Holies was desecrated.

Yet, faith lived on in homes and hearts across the globe. And it was passed on to hundreds of generations through thousands of years, wars and plagues. 

Pope Francis has described the Internet as a miracle. During the current pandemic, he offered prayers from the Vatican before a vast empty outdoor space, normally jammed with faithful pilgrims. The electronic Web connects us in spiritual gatherings spanning the world. My wife and I have virtually joined Masses in Chicago, Boston Toronto and Detroit as we prayed this Easter season at our dining table on Sunday mornings. A practice that helps us realize we are part of a global church community; the body of a universal Christ made of billions of cells and parts. Each one a single human life united in a spiritual communion of compassion. We all celebrate and suffer together in a love that we pray transforms us by the grace of God. So, we are one with a stranger in the third world, as well as the nurse who races from the chapel in a U.S. hospital to care for her terrified patient. Or we gather with families at gravesides mourning those lost, who we cannot touch with our hands but can embrace with our hearts. Because we aspire to love everyone as our Creator does. Whether they live thousands of miles away among refugees traumatized by war -- or just around the corner in the lap of luxury. 

As St. Paul said: "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God ..." (Romans 8:35, 38-39).

Shalom. Salaam. Peace be with you.