Month: April 2020

None of us likes celebrating the Easter Triduum liturgical celebrations by watching them on a phone or computer screen. While viewing the live stream of the Easter Vigil liturgy, not only did I sorely miss receiving Jesus in the Eucharist on this holiest of nights, but when after the Renewal of Our Baptismal Vows the priest blessed us with holy water, he sprinkled it in the direction of the camera. I could see the water coming towards me, but obviously felt nothing, although in my imagination, I did experience it in some way.

If one positive thing did come out of my only being able to live stream the Triduum services, was the fact that I was able to celebrate with my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ from all over the world. The fact that the Triduum services, at least for Holy Thursday and Holy Saturday, are celebrated at night coupled with the time zone differences between Kenya and the United States, meant that liturgies from the US would be lived streamed during the middle of the night here in Kenya. I opted instead to participate in liturgies from other countries around the world. For the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday I worshipped with Holy Rosary Parish in Ireland, for the Good Friday service with St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, and for the Easter Vigil with the Archdiocese of Kuching in Malaysia. Although nowhere as good as the real thing, this was actually turned out to be, under the circumstances, a very nice and much different way for me to spend the three days leading up to Easter. Celebrating with people from different parts of the world renewed my appreciation of the universality of our Catholic faith. I love the fact I can walk into any church in the world (or in this case stream the Mass from any church in the world) and fit right in. I love the fact that we have a common liturgy grounded in the Last Supper and the Word of God. I think it is true that at any moment in the day, there is a Mass being celebrated someplace in the world. The whole world comes together in faith to worship our God in the sacrifice of the Mass continually at all times. Our world certainly does a lot of things wrong, but how great is it that we can offer to God at all times what is most pleasing to him. We at least have one thing, maybe the most important thing, right.

One of the most beautiful parts of the Easter Vigil celebration is the welcoming of new members into our Church. Obviously, this year there were no baptisms during the liturgy due to the lockdowns. I felt especially sad for the Catechumens, the Elect who were supposed to be baptized and make their sacraments, but were unable to do so due to the coronavirus restrictions. During the Easter Vigil Mass that I watched, the Archbishop of Kuching, Malaysia reached out to the Catechumens in a special way during his homily. He talked about the fact that he prayed that the they would be able to be baptized sacramentally into the Church very soon, but that in the interim they are assured salvation through a Baptism of Desire. In this time of crisis, there are so many people who need our prayers – the sick, the needy, the vulnerable, those at risk of contracting the virus, medical professionals and others who put their lives at risk for the sake of others, those who have lost loved ones, and those who have died. However, let us not forget those who struggle spiritually and are deprived of spiritual needs. I will be praying especially for those who so much desire to be part of the Body of Christ and have prepared to do so, but are prohibited from doing so during the lockdowns.

One of my favorite prayers from the wealth of liturgical prayers we enjoy as Catholics is the Easter Proclamation or Exsultet. We only hear it recited once a year at the Easter Vigil Mass. I guess we can classify this under the category that less is more. Although I love the words of the Exsultet so much and would be happy to hear them more often, it is so special to only hear them proclaimed at the Easter Vigil celebration, especially after the darkness of Good Friday. These words stuck with me from the reciting of the Exsultet at this year’s Easter Vigil.

This is the night when Christians everywhere, washed clean of sin and freed from all defilement,are restored to grace and grow together in holiness.

I can’t help of thinking of these lines in light of the current coronavirus crisis. For some reason, God has allowed the pandemic to occur and perhaps there is also a reason that he has allowed the pandemic to peak during the Easter Triduum. As I’ve written about many times previously, I believe that everything God does is for a purpose. During the pandemic, we in a sense die with Christ, but now are raised up with him in the glory of his resurrection on Easter. The line from the Exsultet says that we are restored to grace so that we can grow together in holiness. Our God, who brings good out of evil, is presenting us with a not so subtle opportunity to grow in holiness together. The pandemic has forced us all to stop what we were doing, stand back from the rat race, and reassess everything. I view this as a grace and a gift. I know that God doesn’t will the death of anyone because of the virus, but in the midst of all the tragedy and suffering, he is right here with us. But more than that, he is using what is happening for a greater good. I firmly believe this.

I came across this quote the other day which puts the resurrection of Jesus in a somewhat different light. In the midst of all the current suffering in world, I found it comforting to focus on the victorious aspect of Jesus’s resurrection.

He took all of our sins, brought them down, and buried them himself. Nobody could understand that. Even the devil didn’t know what was going on! God tricked him! Right when the devil thought he was defeating God, God defeated him.

Steve Ray from Stations of the Cross

Some people have so much trouble processing the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. And from a purely human perspective, it indeed makes no sense. Even the devil couldn’t understand what was going on. As devil was doing what the devil does, that is trying to separate us from God, he was falling right into the trap that God had set for him. The devil, the father of lies, who tempted Judas and hardened the hearts of the the Jewish leaders, thought that he had the upper hand, but as with all sin, the goodness we think we see in it is all an illusion, a lie. Like satan, if we are not humble, God allows us to think that we are getting away with something when we do what we want rather than what God wants, when if fact we are not. This is why I believe that humility is so important to our spiritual life. Who was more humble that Jesus – the creator of all that is who came down into his creation to live among us?   When we are humble, we become more like Christ. When we are humble we are able to love more like Christ.

The devil thought that he had foiled God’s plans, when in fact what was going down was the greatest thing that ever happened to humanity (and that will ever happen). The devil, who Jesus tell us was a murder from the beginning, is in fact the one whose lies led to the redemption of the world.  The Church Fathers even talk about the devil in mocking terms saying that Jesus has tied up and defeated the devil, thereby freeing us from the one who held us for ransom. Or as St. Paul addresses the lord of darkness who brought death into the world by tempting Adam and Eve, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1Corinthians 15:55). St. Paul also gives the answer. “Death is swallowed up in victory.” (1Corinthians 15:54) We need to celebrate as this is our victory in Christ. In Jesus, death has no more power over us.

I also came across this quote from Bishop Barron this week.

The power that has held us ransom has been overthrown; the dark cloud that has brooded over our lives, turning us in on ourselves and outward in violence, has been removed.

Bishop Robert Barron

Again, these words also speak to me in the context of the current coronavirus crisis. The dark clouds that have brooded over our lives and turned us in on ourselves – fame, fortune, power, or whatever it is we may have been chasing – have been overthrown. They have been overturned by the current reality of the coronavirus crisis in which we live, but also overthrown in the light of Christ’s resurrection.  God is giving us the chance to start anew. As is stated in the book of Revelation, “Behold, I am making all things new.” The power that has held us ransom has been overthrown. It is now up to us what we do with this opportunity. As the profession of faith response from the Eucharistic Prayers from the Mass states and which the Archbishop of Kuching, Malaysia quoted several time in his Easter Vigil homily, let us pray “Save us, Savior of the world, for by your Cross and Resurrection you have set us free.”

Mungu ni mwema. God is good.

Please consider donating to my HOPE ministry project, which provides educational assistance to orphans and other vulnerable children, particularly those impacted by AIDS, in Mombasa, Kenya. Although schools are currently closed during the coronavirus crisis, many of our HOPE families urgently need assistance with food and other basic necessities. With the lockdowns in place to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, these families have no means to earn money to buy food and pay expenses. They need our help.

https://www.mklm.org/RTarro

You can learn more about the HOPE project on our website.

https://hopegiveshope.com

Being isolated at home alone presents some challenges. While everyone should be isolating at home to protect themselves and prevent the spread of the coronavirus, some of us have to do it alone.  In order to not go crazy, I have had to come up with ways to fill up my days and keep some sense of structure.  I’ve been doing this by taking a number of online classes, reading, continuing in my struggle to learn Kiswahili, and praying. Given that this is Holy Week, I’ve also been streaming the Easter Triduum liturgies and have downloaded and watched several videos reflecting on the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. I’ve been pretty disciplined and regimented in my activities. I don’t spend time just laying around or sleeping for hours on end. I think this type of regiment is the best way for me to not only survive, but thrive during this crisis. The other thing I’ve obviously been doing is writing these blog posts. I’m not sure who actually reads my blog, but I will continue posting to it in any event, as the process of writing it helps me a lot. My blog provides a mechanism for me to reflect on various things and put my thoughts down on paper so to speak. Thinking of things in your head is one thing. Actually having to formulate ideas enough to be able to express them coherently in a written reflection is another. Whether I succeed or not is another question, but the process helps me cope with things and that is good enough for me. I would love it if others get some benefit from my blog posts, or at least get to keep up with what I’m doing and thinking, but the process of writing the posts in itself is important to me right now.

While I have always tried to include some sort of religious or spiritual reflection in my blog posts in the past, the primary focus of my posts was to share my mission experiences with my family, friends, and anyone else who cared to know about my life and work here in Kenya. Given that I’m pretty much confined to my house, there just really isn’t a lot of experiences I can share at this particular point in time. I wish things were different and I could go back to working in my ministry, but our Lord has other plans. I trust in him and try to do the best I can under the circumstances. Being alone at home has given me a lot more time to think and reflect on things – my life, the world around me, my faith, and my relationship with God – and my blog posts, not surprisingly, have turned in this direction.  I have no formal theology training so to speak, so what I say is just the work of a poor sinner trying to make sense of what I believe and why in the midst of what  is going on in the world around us.

As yesterday was Good Friday, I streamed and watched the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion.  As I don’t have wi-fi, I had to stream the liturgy from my cell phone (I actually used my phone as a hot spot and watched the live stream on my laptop). The live stream that I watched was from St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Yes, the Mass was in English. I chose this liturgy as I wanted one that was around 3 PM local time, the time that we believe Jesus died.

I love the Easter Triduum liturgies and the Good Friday liturgy is no exception. The readings are so powerful, beginning with the first reading’s account of the prophet Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. The parallels between the Suffering Servant and Jesus are hard to miss and it is therefore no wonder that the Church sees Jesus as fulfilling the prophesy of the Suffering Servant. The Responsorial Psalm contains, what is for me, one of the most heartbreaking  verses in all of scripture – “I am forgotten like the unremembered dead; I am like a dish that is broken.” When I want to contemplate what Jesus must have felt like hanging there on the Cross, rejected by his own people and abandoned by his friends, I need to go no further than this verse.  In the second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, St. Paul tells us “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way”. All I can say is lucky for me or else I wouldn’t stand a chance.  My mode of operation is more often than not “For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate.”, a great line from St. Paul’s Letter to Roman’s which I have quoted many times in the past and probably will continue to quote many times in the future as it perfectly encapsulates for me my struggles to love as God loves us.

While the readings and responsorial psalm provided me with a lot to contemplate, the Good Friday Liturgy is centered around St. John’s Passion Narrative. There is enough in the few pages of this narrative to contemplate for the rest of my life. However, one thing that struck me from yesterday’s reading of the passion narrative, which I’d like to explore is that of five figures who appear in the narrative and played a role in the events surrounding the passion and death of Jesus. Those five figures being St. Peter, the centurion, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus and St. John. For those of you paying close attention and who are really on the ball, will say “Hey wait a minute. There is no centurion mentioned in the St. John’s Good Friday Passion Narrative.” And you would be correct. However, the centurion appears in St. Matthew’s Passion Narrative, which is read on Palm Sunday. Since these are just two different accounts of what happened on that day almost 2000 years ago, I’d like to include the centurion also.

I know many people question why Catholics pray to saints when we can just go directly to the big guy. While this is certainly true, as I’ve expressed many times, I firmly believe that God wills that we all work together for the salvation of all. This includes those who have died and those of us still on the battlefield fighting the good fight. For me, saints also serve as models for how to live my lives in union with God and how to confront the challenges that I encounter in living out my faith. We are blessed to have two millennia of saints to learn from, saints who come in all different shapes and sizes. Saints are not porcelain figures who lived in some sort of perfect universe, but rather are real people with real struggles, problems, and temptations like you and me. Some saints did a better job than others from beginning to end. However, in the end, all that matters is where we end up. We need to run the race and fight the good fight, but there will always be struggles along the way. What matters is how we react to these challenges. The saints that I relate best to are those who struggled along the way, like I do. That’s why the saints I relate best to are those like St. Paul, St. Augustine, and yes, St. Peter. While St. Peter didn’t necessarily have the sordid pasts of St. Paul and St. Augustine, he obviously was a flawed person like all of us. And yet, Jesus chose Peter as the rock on which to build his Church. While St. Paul and St. Augustine did not live exemplary lives as young men, they are now not only saints, but two of the most important figures in the history of the Church.

Peter was the type of person who often seemed to operate in the mode of open mouth and insert foot into mouth. I lived in the Boston area for many years and for much of that time my bishop was Cardinal Sean O’Malley.  Cardinal O’Malley described St. Peter as a cross between Archie Bunker and Ralph Kramden (for those of us old enough remember these television characters). At one point, Jesus said to Peter “Get behind me Satan. You are a stumbling block to me.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement. St. Peter, the rock on which Jesus will build his church, denies he even knows Jesus and completely abandons him when the going gets tough. He is no where to be found at the crucifixion. And yet despite his shortcomings, Peter really loved Jesus. He just wasn’t perfect and struggled with things as we struggle with things. In the end, Peter gave up his life for Jesus, by crucifixion, like Jesus. I relate so much to St. Peter especially because of his shortcomings, but pray through his intercession that I may love Jesus as he did.

When Jesus expired on the cross and he saw the earthquake and all that was happening, the centurion exclaimed, “Truly, this was the Son of God!” Here you have a pagan and a Roman official, who was expected to worship the emperor as a living god, making this heartfelt confession of faith. I view the centurion as representative of those of us who at times stray down the wrong path and away from God due to addictions or being caught up in sin, but who keep their hearts open to the inflowing of grace that God so much wants to lavish on each one of us. When touched by God, the centurion responded in faith. I have no doubt that I will continue at times to go off the track, but if I am receptive to God’s grace, God will draw me back.

In the Passion Narrative, we are told that Joseph of Arimathea was a rich man and secretly a disciple of Jesus for fear of the Jews. Joseph took Jesus’s body, wrapped it in clean linen and laid it in his new tomb.  In the Gospels of Mark and Luke, we also learn that Jospeh of Arimathea was a virtuous and righteous man who was looking for the kingdom of God. He was a respected member of the council, but had not consented to their decision and action. I see in Joseph of Arimathea someone who authentically loved Jesus, but did so from from the shadows out of fear of retribution. Joseph of Arimathea is venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church. I look to him for the strength and guidance to boldly proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ even in difficult times. Being a Christian, much less a Catholic, is extremely difficult in today’s culture. We face many of the same challenges that Joseph of Arimathea faced in proclaiming the faith. I pray for his help to be the witness that Jesus calls me to be.

In the passion account, Nicodemus brings a mixture of myrrh and aloes, which weighed about one hundred pounds, and assists Joseph of Arimathea to prepare the body of Jesus for burial. From earlier in John’s Gospel, we know that Nicodemus was not only a Pharisee, but a member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of the Jews. Nicodemus is the one who came to Jesus at night to discuss his teachings. In this discussion, we hear perhaps the most quoted words that Jesus ever spoke, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. (John 3:16) Later on in John’s Gospel, Nicodemus defends Jesus by telling the Pharisees that the law requires that a person be heard before being judged. To me, Nicodemus represents those challenging time when our job or position brings us face to face with situations where they may have to make difficult decisions between what our job is asking do and what they know to be right. In today’s world, many people face these types of challenges with real consequences on their ability to provide for themselves and their families. As seen by his discussion with Jesus, Nicodemus also represents a sincere desire to accept and understand Jesus’s teachings.  Not that we can always completely understand why some things are the way they are, but because we love God and know that everything he does for us is for our benefit, we accept in faith and love what Jesus taught and continues to teach us through the Church. We see from Nicodemus that the more we know Jesus, the more we love him. Nicodemus is also proclaimed a saint by the Catholic Church. I pray to Nicodemus that I may continue my lifelong journey to know Jesus better and in doing so grow ever closer to him.

Finally we come to St. John, who tradition holds to be the beloved disciple, the one who Jesus loved. John is not only one of the twelve, but part of Jesus’s inner circle so to speak, who was selected to witness the most important events in the life of Jesus, such as the transfiguration. John is the only apostle who remained with Jesus to the end, standing by the cross as Jesus hung dying. John is the one who took Mary into his home after Jesus’s death. However, John is also the one who in Mark’s Gospel, along with his brother James, asks Jesus to sit one on his right and the other on is left in his glory. In other words, they are angling for the best spots in heaven. In Matthew’s Gospel it is their mother who makes the request. I see John as someone who in all respects seems to be the perfect disciple, but yet was tempted by the lure of glory and honor. We all in some way look for approval and recognition for what we do, but Jesus warns “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.” (Matthew 6:16) I pray to St. John for his help to always act out pure giving of myself and not what I will get out of it. As the devil tempted Jesus with power and glory, it is a certainty that he will tempt us in the same way.

Jesus’s mission here on earth comes to its fulfillment in the events recalled in the Passion Narrative. Jesus’s death and the resurrection, which we look forward to on Easter Sunday, are at the core of our faith and without which our faith makes no sense. The events of these few days changed everything. They changed our world. In the midst of the evil we recall in Jesus’s passion and death as well as the challenging events that we are currently undergoing here in the world today, we can gain insight into our own struggles and how to overcome them by looking at the lives of the saints. Saints are persons just like us, with the same imperfections and hangups that we do. Saints are persons who at times struggled to live the kind of life that Jesus asks us to live, but persevered until they got it right by fixing their eyes on Jesus. Most importantly, saints are what we are called to be. It is why God created us in the first place.

Before I came to Kenya, I would often listen to Relevant Radio, a Catholic radio station, while driving or stuck in traffic. One program that I would sometimes catch is called Busted Halo. I always thought that was a perfect name for a show that focuses the reality of living out our faith in the real world. As the show states, “we are all saints in the making yet our life’s journey is fraught with imperfections, struggles, and mistakes. Each of us sports a Halo that is either dented, scratched, tarnished… in some way Busted. God loves us despite this and continually calls us to polish our halos up to a nice golden shine.” Nicely said.

Mungu ni mwema. God is good.

Please consider donating to my HOPE ministry project, which provides educational assistance to orphans and other vulnerable children, particularly those impacted by AIDS, in Mombasa, Kenya. Although schools are currently closed during the coronavirus crisis, many of our HOPE families urgently need assistance with food and other basic necessities. With the lockdowns in place to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, these families have no means to earn money to buy food and pay expenses. They need our help.

https://www.mklm.org/RTarro

You can learn more about the HOPE project on our website.

https://hopegiveshope.com

I’m sure we will all remember this Palm Sunday for the rest of our lives. With our churches closed because of the lockdown, the best we could do was stream Mass on our computers or phones. As my home parish, as well as any of the parishes that I’ve belonged to in Rhode Island and Massachusetts over the course of my life, were not streaming masses, I decided to virtually participate in the Mass being celebrated in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. I decided on St. Patrick’s given the fact that NYC is now the epicenter of the global coronavirus outbreak and that Cardinal Dolan, who I always enjoy listening to, was the main celebrant for the Mass. While participating in the Mass virtually was somewhat satisfying, it just didn’t feel completely right, even though I know it’s the best we can do under the circumstances. Upon further reflection, I know I should feel blessed that I had the opportunity to stream the Mass, as many Kenyans with whom I live and work don’t have the means to do this. As a Catholic, I firmly believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. As the Eucharist is the “source and summit of our Christian lives”, as Vatican II tells us and as many of us feel in our bones, not having access to Communion is difficult. We miss uniting with Jesus in this most intimate way. Catholicism is a sacramental religion in which visible realities, such as the bread and wine, are in fact invisible realities, the body and blood of Jesus. Unfortunately, when experiencing Mass over an internet connection, we miss out on these realities. While we can make a spiritual communion during online Masses, streaming the Mass just does not allow us to receive Jesus sacramentally. It’s just the reality of the current times in which we are living.

I love that my Catholic faith is filled with Sacramentals, such as holy water, and particularly relevant for Palm Sunday, palms. As I watched a small number of participants in the Mass streamed from St. Patrick’s Cathedral holding palms, I so much wanted to hold my own palm. I’ve been able to hold a palm on Palm Sunday for every year of my life up until now. I especially missed having a palm during the reading of the Passion Narrative. This whole experience has made me even more appreciative of how holistic our Catholic faith is. We praise God not only with our hearts and minds, but with our whole bodies. We experience God’s love for us and the outpouring of his grace on us spiritually, but also physically.  During this time of crisis, I miss being sprinkled with holy water, smelling incense and burning candles, and yes, palms. I’m sure many of my fellow Catholics feel the same way.

None of us knows why God is leading us through these challenging times. What makes matters worse is that at a time where we long to be closer to God and be comforted by him, the circumstances (lockdowns, social distancing) make it difficult to do so in the manner that we are accustomed to and desire. What immediately comes to mind for me when I think about the lockdown and its impact on our spiritual lives, are the number of saints who experienced a “dark night of the soul”. Great saints, such as St. John of the Cross, St. Therese of Lisieux and Mother Theresa among others, experienced feeling of abandonment by God for long stretches of time.  In some mysterious way, God uses a sense of absence, abandonment, and even despair to strengthen our resolve to believe and bring us even closer to him. At least for me, the current lockdown has given me a greater appreciation of how much I have to be thankful for – both in my spiritual life and my life in general. We have no choice but to contemplate what we have when the things we previously all took for granted have been taken away. However, as we now hopefully all more clearly see, everything in our lives and everything we have is a gift from God – unmerited and undeserved. As St. Therese famously said – “Everything is grace.” We who thought we controlled and provided for ourselves are now faced with the stark reality that this is not the case. We, in fact, do not control anything – even though our current culture and many times, we ourselves, think that we do. We are completely dependent on him who created us and holds us in existence.

In the beginning of the reading from the Palm Sunday Mass (Matthew 21:1-11), during the blessing of the palms, we hear how Jesus sent two of his disciples into the village where they would find an ass tethered and a colt with her. Jesus instructed the disciples to untie the ass and the colt and return with them. Jesus told them that if anyone should say anything, simply reply that “the master has need of them.”. Although I love the reading of the Passion Narrative, this passage is what most stood out for me from Sunday’s Mass. In this passage I hear Jesus calling out to us – “the master has need of you”. Although God is all-powerful and could end the coronavirus crisis in an instant, I believe that he wills that we all participate in a resolution and work together to get through the crisis. God wants us to help each other and give of ourselves as best we can under the circumstances. God did not cause the current pandemic, for God is love and can never create evil, but for some mysterious reason, which we may never understand in this lifetime, he permits it. As St. Thomas Aquinas explains, “God allows evil only so as to make something better result from it.” Do I completely understand why God works this way? No, but I trust in him. As the prophet Isaiah tells us “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9) God is in control, not us. God just asks that we place our trust in him. Our job is to do the best we can to help each other get through this crisis and leave the rest to God.

I do want to also point out that when Jesus said “the master has need of them”, the them referred to an ass and a colt, not some stately horse or other more prestigious or intelligent animal or thing. Jesus chose a lowly donkey to fulfill his mission. I feel comforted in the fact that if God can work through a donkey, he can hopefully also work through me. We don’t accomplish things, rather God accomplishes things through us. God just asks that we be willing participants and cooperate with him. How blest the donkey was to be part of Jesus’s mission, but we are all given the same opportunity. Jesus constantly calls us to to work with him, all we need to do is consent.

So, what is God calling us to do? Each of us can only answer that for ourselves. We need to each discern what God is asking of us during this difficult time. It’s not as if most of us don’t now have more free time, given the lockdown, in which to think and discern. The increased frequency of my blog posts being a case in point. :0) Believe me, I know how hard it is to step back from the never ending to-do list. Before coming to Kenya, I naively thought that the proverbial to-do list would go away once I was in mission. I’d be living the simple life of a missioner after all. Unfortunately, that has not been my experience, which may have more to do with my personality than mission life. You get what you make of things. Life is a never-ending learning process and I’m still learning how to let go.

In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul tells us that “faith comes from hearing” (Romans 5:17). That is, we need to listen – listen with our ears, listen with our minds, and listen with our hearts. I struggle with this as much as anyone. My mind is always going in one hundred different directions. This is my favorite quote, which has been floating around on the internet and captures exactly how I so often feel.

“My mind is like my internet browser. 19 tabs open with 3 of them frozen & I have no idea where the music is coming from.”

I’m guessing many others can relate to this also. One of the things that I’m trying to work on during the lockdown is to disconnect and try to hear better – to better listen to what others are telling me, listen to what my body is telling me, and most importantly to listen to what God is saying to me. Only in solitude can this truly happen and I have plenty of that at the present time while being locked up alone in my apartment for weeks on end. Now if I can only find which browser tab the music is coming from so I can close it!

I framed most of this reflection in religious terms. It is Holy Week after all. However, I’d like to end with a quote from Winston Churchill. Although the quote is from the dark days of World War II, I think it also has great applicability to the current pandemic crises and what we need to do as a country and as a world. The world has had many dark days across the span of time and will undoubtedly have many more in the future. Dark days are inevitable. What matters is how we react to them and what we do to help each other get through them. God is giving us the opportunity to come together and change our world, to bring something good out of this great evil. We all have a part to play – some big and some small. There are so many heroic medical professionals on the front line, but also many people in the background struggling to keep food and other necessities accessible so that we can live. Everyone matters and everyone’s response is crucial. I believe this is the way God wants it. We just need to stop, listen, and accept our part.

Do not let us speak of darker days; let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days: these are great days– the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.”

Winston Churchill

―

P.S. I was going to entitle this blog post “I’m an Ass” as I’m sure it would entice more people to actually click on the blog link and read it. While it would certainly be an appropriate title for the post given the content, I decided that anyone who cares about me and what I have to say would read the post without the click bait.

Mungu ni mwema. God is good.

Please consider donating to my HOPE ministry project, which provides educational assistance to orphans and other vulnerable children, particularly those impacted by AIDS, in Mombasa, Kenya. Although schools are currently closed during the coronavirus crisis, many of our HOPE families urgently need assistance with food and other basic necessities. With the lockdowns in place to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, these families have no means to earn money to buy food and pay expenses. They need our help.

https://www.mklm.org/RTarro

You can learn more about the HOPE project on our website.

https://hopegiveshope.com