Angelus News | April 10-17, 2020 | Vol. 5 No. 13

GOD’S
RESCUE
MISSION
ANGELUS
April 10-17, 2020 Vol. 5 No. 13

World
Join the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ Official
Pilgrimage to the Holy Land
11 Days: October 26 to November 5, 2020
Under the Spiritual
Leadership of
Archbishop José H. Gomez
along with:
Pilgrimage to the Holy Land
including Bethlehem, Sea of Galilee,
Nazareth, Jerusalem, and much more!
$4,299 from Los Angeles (LAX)
plus $195 in tips
Bishop
David
O’Connell
Msgr.
Antonio
Cacciapuoti
Space is limited – sign up today!
Fr.
James
Anguiano
Fr.
Parker
Sandoval
Download a brochure and registration form today at
GoCatholicTravel.com/20033
Contact: Mrs. Judy Brooks, Director
Archbishop’s Office for Special Services
(213) 637-7551 or pilgrimage@la-archdiocese.org
CST#: 2018667–40

Contents
Pope Watch 2, 22
Archbishop Gomez 3
World, Nation, and Local News 4-6
Scott Hahn on Scripture 8
Father Rolheiser 9
Catholic partnership steps up for LA’s most vulnerable amid pandemic 20
No classroom, no problem for local Catholic schools 24
John Allen: The hard choices and real heroes of Church’s pandemic response 28
What does the body of Christ look like when temples are closed? 30
Dr. Grazie Christie makes the case for the comeback of romance 32
Can God be found in a nonbeliever’s classic book on a pandemic? 34
Heather King finds an Easter message in an urban garden 36
ON THE COVER
t
3
Detail of “Descent into Limbo” (1365-1367), fresco by Italian artist Andrea di Bonaiuto
in the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Thanks to the coronavirus (COVID-19)
pandemic of 2020, this Easter will be unlike anything Catholics have ever experienced. On
Page 10, Mike Aquilina explains how The Four Nights of Passover in the ancient Jewish
tradition can help us live this Easter at a deeper level. On Page 13, Kathryn Jean Lopez
reflects on the significance of “God’s rescue mission” in these strange, seemingly silent
times. And on Page 16, editor-in-chief Pablo Kay shares how tragedy in his own family
this year has prepared them for an Easter like no other.
IMAGE:
Archbishop José H. Gomez carries a palm branch at
the April 5 Palm Sunday Mass at the Cathedral of
Our Lady of the Angels. The Mass was closed to the
public but livestreamed for LA Catholics to follow
online. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles invited faithful
to place a branch on their door or in their home last
weekend as a sign of welcoming Christ the King into
their homes.
SHUTTERSTOCK
VICTOR ALEMÁN
April 10-17, 2020 • ANGELUS • 1

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April 10-17, 2020
Vol. 5 • No. 13
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POPE WATCH
Antibodies for adversity
Editor’s Note: The following is the full
text of the meditation delivered by Pope
Francis in an empty St. Peter’s Square
during the March 27 “Urbi et Orbi”
prayer service transmitted live around
the world to pray for an end to the coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic.
“When evening had come” (Mark
4:35). The Gospel passage we have just
heard begins like this. For weeks now it
has been evening. Thick darkness has
gathered over our squares, our streets,
and our cities; it has taken over our
lives, filling everything with a deafening
silence and a distressing void, that
stops everything as it passes by; we feel
it in the air, we notice it in people’s
gestures, their glances give them away.
We find ourselves afraid and lost. Like
the disciples in the Gospel we were
caught off guard by an unexpected,
turbulent storm. 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, each of us in
need of comforting the other.
On this boat … are all of us. Just like
those disciples, who spoke anxiously
with one voice, saying, “We are
perishing” (v. 38), so we, too, have
realized that we cannot go on thinking
of ourselves, but only together can we
do this.
It is easy to recognize ourselves in this
story. What is harder to understand is
Jesus’ attitude. While his disciples are
quite naturally alarmed and desperate,
he stands in the stern, in the part of the
boat that sinks first. And what does he
do? In spite of the tempest, he sleeps
on soundly, trusting in the Father; this
is the only time in the Gospels we see
Jesus sleeping.
When he wakes up, after calming the
wind and the waters, he turns to the
disciples in a reproaching voice: “Why
are you afraid? Have you no faith?”
(v. 40).
Let us try to understand. In what does
the lack of the disciples’ faith consist,
as contrasted with Jesus’ trust? They
had not stopped believing in him; in
fact, they called on him. But we see
how they call on him: “Teacher, do
you not care if we perish?” (v. 38). Do
you not care: They think that Jesus is
not interested in them, does not care
about them. One of the things that
hurts us and our families most when
we hear it said is: “Do you not care
about me?”
It is a phrase that wounds and unleashes
storms in our hearts. It would have
shaken Jesus, too. Because he, more
than anyone, cares about us. Indeed,
once they have called on him, he saves
his disciples from their discouragement.
The storm exposes our vulnerability
and uncovers those false and superfluous
certainties around which we
have constructed our daily schedules,
our projects, our habits, and priorities.
It shows us how we have [been]
allowed to become dull and feeble
[about] the very things that nourish,
sustain, and strengthen our lives and
our communities.
The tempest lays bare all our prepackaged
ideas and forgetfulness of
what nourishes our people’s souls;
all those attempts that anesthetize us
with ways of thinking and acting that
supposedly “save” us, but instead prove
incapable of putting us in touch with
our roots and keeping alive the memory
of those who have gone before us.
We deprive ourselves of the antibodies
we need to confront adversity.
In this storm, the facade of those
stereotypes with which we camouflaged
our egos, always worrying about
Continued on page 22
2 • ANGELUS • April 10-17, 2020

NEW WORLD
OF FAITH
BY ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ
Easter in an epidemic
Our Lord’s tomb in Jerusalem is
sealed shut. For the first time since
the black plague of the 14th century,
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
built above Jesus’ tomb, is closed.
This time because of the coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic.
I thought about that on Palm Sunday,
when the Gospel recalls how
Pilate ordered the soldiers to seal the
rock of his tomb and set a guard.
The sealed tomb could not hold
Jesus; his disciples found the stone
rolled away on Easter morning. And
because Jesus died and rose again, no
grave will ever hold our bodies down.
This is the glorious promise of the
Resurrection. And God does not
withdraw his promise, even when the
shadow of death seems to hang over
the world, even when Easter comes
during an epidemic.
It is thrilling to read the first disciples’
writings about the resurrection
of the dead.
St. Paul said the angel’s trumpet will
sound and the dead in Christ will rise
first, and then those who are still alive
will be caught up together with them
in the middle of the air. “So we shall
always be with the Lord,” he wrote.
“Therefore, comfort one another with
these words.”
The coronavirus has forced all of us
to confront the reality that human life
is fragile, precarious, and precious.
Of course, it is true that many people
die every day from many different
causes. But this virus makes death
personal. It reminds us that illness and
death can come for any of us at any
time. It forces us to think about what
really matters, what makes life truly
worth living.
Easter testifies that God’s love is
stronger than death.
Death has been conquered. In a way,
there should be nothing more to say
after that. By Christ’s life, death, and
resurrection, our sins are forgiven, we
are brought back into union with our
heavenly Father, and the Holy Spirit
fills our hearts with the certainty that
we are children of God. And eternal
life in heaven is now the destination
of our earthly lives.
But in this time of the coronavirus,
our Lord is allowing us to be stripped
of all the things that we rely on — all
our securities, our routines, and expected
ways of doing things, our priorities.
In some cases, he is taking away our
schools, our jobs, our livelihoods, even
our physical connections with our
loved ones.
These are the crosses that he is
calling us to carry, just as he carried
his cross for us. We are all hurting, we
are all mourning. So, we need to carry
our crosses together, with Jesus. He
removes what we rely upon, so that we
rely only on him.
During this long Lent, I have found
the words of the psalms striking me
with greater intensity: “You will not
fear the terror of the night … nor the
plague that prowls in the darkness. …
A thousand may fall at your side …
you it will never approach.”
God is our stronghold and our
refuge. But he works through us. He
is calling us now to love and serve our
neighbors who are suffering in this
plague.
Out of this pandemic, we need to recover
and deepen our belief in God’s
Providence and the mysteries of the
communion of saints and the Mystical
Body of Christ. In the Eucharist, we
are united with the angels and saints,
but we are also joined in a profound
spiritual solidarity with our brothers
and sisters.
That means when one of us is suffering,
we all suffer. That means we
need to join our sacrifices to his, we
need to offer our sufferings and sorrows
for one another, just as he offered
his life for us on the cross.
We are never alone. We have one
another, in spirit if not in body. And
our Lord is never far from us. He will
never leave us. Even in our loneliness,
he goes before us, carrying his cross.
And God is in charge, even in times
like this, when we see trouble in the
world and we are afraid for the future.
God is still carrying out his plan in
history and in creation. And it is a
plan of love.
We worship the God who raised
Jesus Christ from the dead on Easter
morning! So we know that the sorrows
of this present moment will pass. He
will bring good out of this evil, and
life out of this death.
As the saints teach us, nothing can
separate us from the love of God, not
persecution, famine, pestilence, or
plague. And not this pandemic.
Pray for me and I will pray for you.
And as this long Lent opens into
Easter, let us stay close to our Blessed
Mother Mary. May she help us to
carry our crosses with Jesus, so that we
will share in his resurrection.
To read more columns by Archbishop José H. Gomez or to subscribe, visit www.angelusnews.com.
April 10-17, 2020 • ANGELUS • 3

WORLD
VATICAN MEDIA
A miraculous crucifix’s
latest wonder
When Pope Francis had no umbrella
to shield him from the rain at the
“urbi et orbi” blessing in St. Peter’s
Square March 27, neither did the
16th-century crucifix hanging behind
him, a fact that led some to fear it had
suffered irreversible damage.
An Italian media report initially
claimed that the cross’ waterlogged
wood had swollen up and burst apart
in areas, and that the stucco coating
Jesus’ body was seriously eroded.
But on April 1, Father Enrico Casini,
rector of St. Marcellus Church in
Rome, told Crux that despite enduring
two hours of rain, the damage to
the crucifix is “something light that
can be fixed in a short time.”
St. Marcellus is the permanent home
of the crucifix, which has been considered
miraculous since 1519, when
it survived a catastrophic fire. It was
later processed throughout Rome to
end a devastating plague.
The crucifix was also on display at
the April 5 Palm Sunday liturgy in St.
Peter’s Basilica, and will remain there
during the Easter Triduum.
Pope Francis prays before the crucifix at St.
Marcellus Church during the March 27 prayer
service.
Cardinal blasts China government for virus cover-up
As the coronavirus (COVID-19)
has spread, so have questions about
whether the crisis could have been
better contained. According to Cardinal
Charles Maung Bo of Yongan,
Myanmar, the Chinese government
has the most to answer for.
Cardinal Bo, the president of the
Asian bishops’ conference, charged
that the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) is “morally culpable” for
covering up the seriousness of the
coronavirus when it first appeared in
Wuhan, China. Myanmar shares a
border with China.
“Lies and propaganda have put
millions of lives around the world
in danger,” he wrote in an April 1
statement. The cardinal added that
the regime suppressed doctors and
journalists from addressing and
A free man: Cardinal Pell exonerated
Australian Cardinal George Pell is a
free man after Australia’s High Court
unanimously overturned his conviction
on sexual abuse charges.
The April 7 decision effectively
exonerates the former prefect of the
Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy
and archbishop emeritus of Sydney
after an appeals court last year upheld
his criminal conviction for child sexual
abuse against two choirboys while
he was the archbishop of Melbourne
from 1996 to 2001.
CELAM bishops announce Marian consecration
As the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic
expands into the Americas, the
bishops’ conference of Latin America
and the Caribbean (known as CEL-
AM) has announced a consecration of
its region to Our Lady of Guadalupe
on Easter Sunday.
“We trust that as we contemplate
the mother of the true God, through
whom we live, we will strengthen our
faith, nourish our hopes, and commit
ourselves with solidarity and love to
Cardinal Charles Maung Bo.
alerting others to the crisis.
Cardinal Bo clarified that his
accusation applied only to the government,
not citizens. “Indeed, the
Chinese people were the first victims
of this virus and have long been the
primary victims of their repressive
regime,” he wrote. “They deserve
our sympathy, our solidarity, and our
support.”
In its decision, the seven-member
panel of justices criticized the appeals
court for failing to assess whether
there was a reasonable doubt as to
whether he could have committed
the crime, and wrote that “the unchallenged
evidence of the opportunity
witnesses was inconsistent with
the complainant’s account.”
The 78-year-old had repeatedly
denied the charges throughout the
ordeal and had served one year of his
six-year prison sentence.
those who are experiencing illness,
pain, poverty, loneliness, fear, and
worry,” read the CELAM statement.
The consecration, followed by Mass
and the rosary, will take place at noon
on April 12 in the Basilica of Our
Lady of Guadalupe and be broadcast
online.
Churches in the region are asked to
ring their bells 12 times during the
ceremony as a call to prayer to end
the pandemic.
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/SOE ZEYA TUN, REUTERS
4 • ANGELUS • April 10-17, 2020

NATION
REGIS HIGH SCHOOL
The Jesuit roots of America’s
coronavirus doctor
Dr. Anthony Fauci has quickly become a household
name in the U.S. thanks to his frequent, no-nonsense
updates alongside President Trump during the coronavirus
(COVID-19) crisis. The director of the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who advised
six presidents, owes much to his Catholic education.
Fauci is a 1958 graduate of Regis High School, a
renowned Jesuit boys school in New York City. In a
meeting with alumni last May, he described his time at
Regis as “the best educational period I could ever have
imagined having.”
“I know that we have also been grounded by fellow
Regian Dr. Anthony Fauci ’58 as he helps lead our
country’s efforts in this fight,” wrote Regis’ president,
Father Daniel Lahart, SJ, in a March 19 letter to alumni
encouraging graduates to support Fauci and all those
impacted by the coronavirus with “the charity of our
prayers.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci meets with Regis High School students and the
school’s president, Father Daniel Lahart, in 2019.
Death penalty abolished in Colorado
Colorado became the latest state to abolish the death
penalty in the U.S., sparking a wave of celebration among
Catholic leaders.
“Alleluia! I’m celebrating the citizen activists of Colorado
who … steadily changed hearts and minds to arrive at this
life-affirming day,” tweeted anti-death penalty activist Sister
Helen Prejean after Gov. Jared Polis signed the bill into law
March 23.
Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of the
Catholic Mobilizing Network, praised Colorado for taking
“a critical step toward respecting the dignity of human life.”
Colorado is the 22nd state to abolish the death penalty,
and the third to do so since Pope Francis, in 2018, officially
modified the Catechism of the Catholic Church to declare
the death penalty “inadmissable” in all circumstances.
Gray Lady gives shoutout to nuns of 1918
When searching for guidance on how to respond to the
coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, journalist Kiley Bense
recommends looking back 100 years.
In a March 20 op-ed in The New York Times, Bense referenced
an army of Catholic nuns who cared for the hundreds
of thousands of Americans afflicted by the Spanish flu
in 1918.
“The sisters’ quiet, determined selflessness is what is needed
now,” wrote Bense.
Records indicate that thousands of religious sisters risked
their lives by entering the homes of the ill and providing
unceasing care and comfort.
“One hundred years on,” wrote Bense, “the work of the
sisters provides us a model to follow and aspire to in this
uncommon time.” That model, she added, “presses us to
look for ways to support our neighbors rather than shrinking
from them … and ultimately to put others before self.”
Pope Francis cites Sin City photo
In his livestreamed daily Mass April 2, Pope Francis
referenced a photo of “homeless people lying in a parking
lot under observation” and prayed that the coronavirus
(COVID-19) crisis raises awareness of their suffering and
prompts a response.
The photo, published in a local Italian newspaper that
same day, highlights a temporary homeless shelter in Las
Vegas. According to a New York Times report, people have
resided there since the local Catholic Charities shelter
closed after a resident tested positive for the virus.
Using the photo as an example, the pope encouraged the
faithful to exercise compassion toward those in need. “We
ask St. Teresa of Kolkata,” he said, “to awaken in us a sense
of closeness to so many people in society who, in everyday
life, live hidden but, like the homeless, in the moment of
the crisis, are living in this way.”
A picture from the same Las Vegas parking lot mentioned by the pope,
where homeless people are practicing social distancing.
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/STEVE MARCUS, REUTERS
April 10-17, 2020 • ANGELUS • 5

LOCAL
WORTH A THOUSAND PICTURES — Msgr. Richard Martini, pastor of St. Joseph Church
in Carpinteria, poses with pictures of his parishioners taped to pews in the church in
late March. First done by a pastor in Italy during the onset of the coronavirus (COVID-19)
pandemic, the gesture is meant to show solidarity with parish communities at a time when
many churches are shuttered to help “flatten the curve” of the coronavirus outbreak, but
priests continue to celebrate private, often livestreamed Masses.
Can a shuttered Catholic hospital be
providential for the pandemic?
The recently shuttered St. Vincent’s
Medical Center could be brought
back to life by a local billionaire who
wants to use it to combat the coronavirus
(COVID-19).
According to an April 2 report from
the Los Angeles Times, a family
foundation controlled by Dr. Patrick
Soon-Shiong has offered to purchase
the hospital, which for decades was
operated by the Daughters of Charity,
out of bankruptcy for $135 million.
Soon-Shiong’s goal is “to create a
‘central command’ center that would
attract doctors and experts on the
virus, and relieve pressure on other
hospitals,” according to the Times,
which itself is owned by Soon-Shiong.
The Times reported that Soon-
Shiong’s plan would involve the state
being in charge of staffing the hospital,
and that the state would pay $2.6
million a month to lease the hospital.
The bid must get through multiple
court hearings in April for the deal to
go through.
Manhattan Beach
pastor recovering from
coronavirus
Msgr. John F.
Barry, the longtime
pastor of
American Martyrs
Church
in Manhattan
Beach, is
recovering
and resting at
home after hospital treatment for the
coronavirus (COVID-19).
Msgr. Barry told parishioners he had
tested positive for the virus on March
26 but had suffered “no life-threatening
incidents” and was not using
a ventilator. He was admitted to the
hospital on his doctor’s advice for a
few days before being released.
Associate Pastor Father Rick Pringle
told parishioners via livestream Mass
on Palm Sunday that the 82-year-old
Msgr. Barry was doing much better
and thanked the parish for offering
prayers of healing for him.
“My challenge is still real but please
God I will soon have some more
freedom of movement,” said Msgr.
Barry in a social media post April
5. He thanked parishioners for all
their prayers (including Zoom rosary
sessions by parishioners), and added
that he hoped to get his social media
“minute messages” back online “very
soon.”
JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL —
Parishioners at St. Jerome
Church in Westchester
participate in drive-thru
eucharistic adoration from their
cars in the church parking lot
in late March. Despite church
closures and canceled public
liturgies around the country,
priests are finding creative
ways to encourage prayer and
worship that take into account
social-distancing measures
mandated by public health
officials and local dioceses.
ST. JOSEPH CHURCH, CARPINTERIA
6 • ANGELUS • April 10-17, 2020

During this time of high alert for local
citizens, Angelus readers are invited
to visit LACatholics.org/Emergency for:
U
U
U
Prayer and livestreamed liturgy resources
Coronavirus-related measures and
guidelines in the Archdiocese of
Los Angeles
News updates on the Church’s response
to the pandemic from AngelusNews.com
Prayer in the Time of the Coronavirus
Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles
Holy Virgin of Guadalupe,
Queen of the Angels and Mother of the Americas.
We fly to you today as your beloved children.
We ask you to intercede for us with your Son,
as you did at the wedding in Cana.
Pray for us, loving Mother,
and gain for our nation and world,
and for all our families and loved ones,
the protection of your holy angels,
that we may be spared the worst of this illness.
For those already afflicted,
we ask you to obtain the grace of healing and deliverance.
Hear the cries of those who are vulnerable and fearful,
wipe away their tears and help them to trust.
In this time of trial and testing,
teach all of us in the Church to love one another and to be patient
and kind. Help us to bring the peace of Jesus to our land and
to our hearts.
We come to you with confidence,
knowing that you truly are our compassionate mother,
health of the sick and cause of our joy.
Shelter us under the mantle of your protection,
keep us in the embrace of your arms,
help us always to know the love of your Son, Jesus.
A PRAYER OF SPIRITUAL COMMUNION
My Jesus, I believe you are really here in
the Blessed Sacrament. I love you more
than anything in the world, and I hunger
to receive you. But since I cannot receive
Communion at this moment, feed my soul at
least spiritually. I unite myself to you now as
I do when I actually receive you.
ST. ALPHONSUS LIGOURI
Amen.
April 10-17, 2020 •• ANGELUS • 7

SUNDAY
READINGS
BY SCOTT HAHN
Acts 10:34, 37–43 / Ps. 118:1–2, 16–17, 22–23 / Col. 3:1–4 / Jn. 20:1–9
Jesus is nowhere visible. Yet
today’s Gospel tells us that Peter
and John “saw and believed.”
What did they see? Burial
shrouds lying on the floor of
an empty tomb. Maybe that
convinced them that he hadn’t
been carted off by grave robbers,
who usually stole the expensive
burial linens and left the corpses
behind.
But notice the repetition of the
word “tomb” — seven times in
nine verses. They saw the empty
tomb and they believed what he
had promised: that God would
raise him on the third day.
Chosen to be his “witnesses,”
today’s First Reading tells us, the
apostles were “commissioned
… to preach … and testify” to
all that they had seen, from his
anointing with the Holy Spirit at
the Jordan to the empty tomb.
More than their own experience,
they were instructed in the
mysteries of the divine economy,
God’s saving plan, to know how
“all the prophets bear witness” to
him (see Luke 24:27, 44).
Now they could “understand the
Scripture,” could teach us what he
had told them, that he was “the Stone
which the builders rejected,” which
today’s Psalm prophesies his resurrection
and exaltation (see Luke 20:17;
Matthew 21:42; Acts 4:11).
We are the children of the apostolic
witnesses. That is why we still gather
early in the morning on the first day
of every week to celebrate this feast
of the empty tomb, give thanks for
“Christ our life,” as today’s Epistle
“Resurrection of Christ,” by Juan Correa de Vivar,
1550, Spanish.
calls him.
Baptized into his death and resurrection,
we live the heavenly life of the
risen Christ, our lives “hidden with
Christ in God.” We are now his witnesses,
too. But we testify to things we
cannot see but only believe; we seek
in earthly things what is above.
We live in memory of the apostles’
witness, like them eating and drinking
with the risen Lord at the altar. And
we wait in hope for what the apostles
told us would come, the day when we,
too, “will appear with Him in glory.”
Scott Scott Hahn is is founder of of the the St. St. Paul Paul Center for for Biblical Theology, stpaulcenter.com.
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
8 • ANGELUS • April August 10-17, 16-23-30, 2020 2019

IN EXILE
BY FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI
The dispelling of an illusion
We don’t much like the word disillusionment.
Normally we think of it as
a negative, something pejorative, and
not as something that does us a favor.
And yet it is a positive, it means the
dispelling of an illusion, and illusions,
unless we need one as a temporary
tonic, are not good for us. They keep
us from the truth, from reality.
There are many, many negatives to
the current coronavirus (COVID-19)
pandemic that’s wreaking a deadly
havoc across the planet. But there’s
one positive: Against every form of resistance
we can muster, it’s dispelling
the illusion that we are in control of
our lives and that, by our own efforts,
we can make ourselves invulnerable.
That lesson has come upon us uninvited.
This unforeseen and unwelcome
virus is teaching us that, no matter
our sophistication, intelligence,
wealth, health, or status, we’re all
vulnerable, we’re all at the mercy of
a thousand contingencies over which
we have little control. No amount of
denial will change that.
Granted, at one level of our consciousness
we’re always aware of our
vulnerability. But sometimes after we
have walked a dangerous ledge for a
long time, we forget the peril and are
no longer aware of the narrowness of
the plank upon which we’re walking.
Then, too, our sense of our vulnerability
to millions of dangers is, like
our sense of mortality, normally pretty
abstract and not very real. We all know
that like everyone else we are going to
die; but normally this doesn’t weigh
very heavily on our consciousness.
We live instead with the sense that
we’re not going to die just yet. Our
own deaths aren’t really real to us.
They are not yet an imminent threat
but only a distant, abstract reality.
Generally, such too is the vagueness
of our sense of vulnerability. Yes, we
know abstractly that we are vulnerable,
but generally we feel secure. But
as this virus spreads, consumes our
newscasts, and brings our normal lives
to a halt, our sense of vulnerability is
no longer a vague, abstract threat.
We’re now much more aware that
we all live at the mercies of a million
contingencies, most over which we
have little control.
However, to our defense, our innate
sense that we’re in control and can
safeguard our own safety and security
should not be too hastily and too
harshly judged. We can’t help it. It’s
the way we’re built.
We’re instinctually geared to hate
our weaknesses, our vulnerability, our
limitations, and our awareness of our
own poverty, and are instinctually
geared to want to feel secure, in control,
independent, invulnerable, and
self-sufficient. That’s a mercy of grace
and nature because it helps save us
from despondency and helps us to live
with a (needed) healthy pride.
But it’s also an illusion; perhaps one
that we need for long periods in our
lives but also one that in moments
of clarity and lucidity we’re meant to
dispel so as to acknowledge before
God and to ourselves that we’re interdependent,
not self-sufficient, and not
ultimately in control.
Whatever else about this virus,
it’s bringing us a moment of clarity
and lucidity, even if this is far from
welcome.
We were given the same lesson, in
effect, with the downing of the Twin
Towers in New York City on Sept. 11,
2001. A lot of people relearned the
meaning of prayer that day. A lot of us
are relearning the meaning of prayer
as we sit quarantined at home during
the coronavirus pandemic.
Author Father Richard Rohr,
OFM, suggests that the passage from
childhood to adulthood requires an
initiation into a number of necessary
life-truths. One of these can be
summarized this way: You are not in
control! If that is true, and it is, then
this coronavirus is helping initiate us
all into a more mature adulthood.
We are becoming more conscious of
an important truth. However, we may
not see any divine intent in this. Every
fundamentalist voice that suggests that
God sent this virus to each of us as a
lesson is dangerously wrong and is an
insult to true faith.
Still, we need to hear God’s voice
inside of it. God is speaking all the
time, but mostly we aren’t listening;
this sort of thing helps serve as God’s
microphone to a deaf world.
Illusions aren’t easy to dispel, and
for good reasons. We cling to them by
instinct and we generally need them
to get through life. For this reason,
Socrates, in his wisdom, once wrote
that “there is nothing that requires as
gentle a treatment as the removal of
an illusion.” Anything other than gentleness
only makes us more resistant.
The coronavirus is anything but
gentle. But inside all of its harshness
perhaps we might feel a gentle nudge
that will help us dispel the illusion
that we are in control.
Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher, award-winning author, and president of the Oblate School of Theology
in San Antonio, Texas. Find him online at www.ronrolheiser.com and www.facebook.com/ronrolheiser.
April 10-17, 2020 • ANGELUS • 9

“The Creation,” by James Tissot, 1896-1902.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
The poem God wrote
in creation
The story of ‘The Four Nights’ of Passover
BY MIKE AQUILINA / ANGELUS
“We overcame Pharaoh …
we will overcome the
coronavirus with God’s
help.” So said Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu at a press conference
in Tel Aviv March 25.
Remembrance is a distinguishing
mark of biblical religion. It is the
reason for our holy books. It is the
reason for our rituals. It is the reason
we consider the preservation of history
to be a sacred task.
“Remember the marvels the Lord
has done!” (Psalm 105:5). So we say
in our responsorial psalm, as we recall
the events of the Passover and Exodus,
Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt.
So have our spiritual ancestors done for
millennia. It is what Jesus learned to do
as a child.
We remember not because we are
stuck in the past, but because memory
gives us wisdom and strength for facing
the future. When we remember the
extraordinary manifestations of God’s
power, we go forward with confidence,
even in weakness and fear.
• • •
English is one of the few languages
that assign different names to the Jewish
Passover and the Christian Easter.
In Albanian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish,
Greek, Icelandic, Italian, Kazakh,
Spanish, Swahili, Tajik, and Uzbek, the
word for both is the same. It is some
derivation of the Hebrew “Pesach” (for
example: “Pascua” in Spanish, “Pasqua”
in Italian).
For the first Christians the feast was
the same. They were Jews, like Jesus.
The holiday they had celebrated as
children was now transfigured and
fulfilled. The mystery of Jesus was
the mystery of Passover, completely
revealed in the Messiah’s suffering,
death, resurrection, and ascension into
glory. Even today we refer to this core
of our faith as “the Paschal Mystery.”
The Jews of Jesus’ time saw the mystery
not only as a national holiday. It
was something woven into the fabric of
the universe. It had been there, hidden
in plain sight, since the Big Bang. And
God had marked the Passover twice,
even before the Exodus.
10 • ANGELUS • April 10-17, 2020

SHUTTERSTOCK
“Abraham and Isaac,” by Jan van de Kerkhove.
On Passover in the first century, the
Jews in Palestine commemorated the
Exodus, but not only the Exodus. They
praised God for his power evident in
“The Four Nights,” four distinct events
separated by hundreds and even thousands
of years.
“The Poem of the Four Nights” appears
in the first-century books known
as the Targums. These were paraphrases
of the Hebrew Bible, rendered in the
Aramaic language in those years when
few Jews could speak or read classical
Hebrew. The Targums were the way
ordinary people kept memory alive, the
way they remembered the marvels the
Lord had done.
The “Poem” first appears as an insertion
in the text of the Book of Exodus.
It intrudes in the midst of the instructions
for the celebration of Passover
(12:42). The biblical text reports:
“This was a night of vigil for the LORD,
when he brought them out of the land
of Egypt; so on this night all Israelites
must keep a vigil for the LORD
throughout their generations.”
And then comes the “Poem.”
There are, it states, “four nights that
are written in the Book of Memories.”
There are four key turns in God’s story,
states the poem, and each takes place
on the date of the Passover, the 14th
day in the Hebrew month of Nisan.
“The First Night” is the night of
creation, when God revealed himself
as hovering over the darkness of the waters.
Thus, the event of Passover began
at the beginning of everything.
“The Second Night” is the night of
Abraham’s testing at Mount Moriah,
when he bound his son Isaac and
offered him as a sacrifice.
“The Third Night” is the night of
Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, the
moment traditionally associated with
Passover.
And “The Fourth Night” was — in
the early first century, when the Targums
were written — still to come. It
was the night of the Messiah, “when
“Passaggio del Mar Rosso,” by Luca Giordano, 1681.
SHUTTERSTOCK
the world will reach its fixed time to
be redeemed; the iron yokes will be
broken, and the evil generations will be
destroyed.”
The Christians of the first generation
bore witness to that moment, and it
took place, as predicted, on Passover,
the 14th of Nisan. It was as if they had
been rehearsing for it all their lives. It
was as if their families had been expecting
it for centuries. And then it came,
exactly according to plan.
The newborn Church continued to
keep its Passover in Jerusalem. But now
the people of God saw the moment fulfilled
in new signs: the bread and wine
offered by Jesus as his body and blood.
They observed the meal, as before,
by telling the story of their salvation.
But now the narrative, the Haggadah,
reached its climax in the Gospel — as
did each of the “Nights” in the poem.
First came the creation of the world,
which found a reprise in the life of
Christ. He has brought about a new
creation (Galatians 6:15; 2 Corinthians
5:17). He is the new Adam (Romans
5:19–21; 1 Corinthians 15:22, 45).
Then came the binding of Isaac,
which the early Christians unanimously
saw as a foreshadowing of the
crucifixion of Jesus. Both were “only
sons” offered in sacrifice on the hill of
Moriah; both carried the wood to the
place of sacrifice; both were willing
victims; and both were given back to
April 10-17, 2020 • ANGELUS • 11

their fathers.
Third came the deliverance from slavery.
Throughout the New Testament,
but especially in St. Matthew’s Gospel,
Jesus is presented as the fulfillment
of Moses’ prophecy: “The LORD your
God will raise up for you a prophet like
me from among you” (Deuteronomy
18:15).
Indeed, Jesus is greater than Moses
(Hebrews 3:3). Both were pursued by
a wicked king, and both went into hiding.
Both left Egypt for the Promised
Land. Both fasted for 40 days before
giving the law. Both redeemed their
people, Moses from slavery, Jesus from
sin.
Finally came the night of the Messiah.
Jesus fulfilled this as he instituted
the Eucharist at the Last Supper,
which was a Passover Seder meal.
This would be his perpetual memorial
(Luke 22:19), established “for the
forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28). At
every Passover, the primitive Church
presented the night of the Messiah as
the culmination of all sacred history.
The ancient sources suggest that the
Church’s first paschal liturgy developed
directly from the common paschal
Haggadah of the Jews.
The Jerusalem Easter Vigil is preserved
in an Armenian translation from
the first millennium, and in it we find
“The Four Nights” unfolding pretty
much as they did in the Targums.
In the paschal liturgy of St. Melito of
Sardis, composed around A.D. 160, we
also find the same sequence of events.
Like St. Paul, St. Melito understands
Jesus to be “our paschal lamb,” who
“has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians
5:7).
The development of the Easter Vigil
has continued through the ages, and
it underwent a great revival during
the 20th century. But the core of it
is the same now as it was in the early
Church, the same today as it was in
Jerusalem during Jesus’ boyhood.
In those days, the Jews kept Passover
as one of the three “pilgrim feasts,”
the holy days that all adult males were
required by law to observe in Jerusalem.
In the year A.D. 70, however, the
temple was destroyed and the Jews
dispersed into foreign lands. Afterward,
in their exile, they still anticipated the
restoration of all Israel, which would
take place on the night of Passover.
So they ended their observance (and
still do) with the hope, “Next year in
Jerusalem.”
Christians, however, believe that the
gathering of the scattered has taken
place in the Church of Jesus Christ.
So what are we to do this year, when
we cannot gather for an Easter Vigil
liturgy? What can Passover mean for us
who are separated from our own holy
city, which is embodied in the Eucharist?
It must mean what it has always
meant. And we must keep the vigil as
so many saints, throughout history,
have kept it in times of stress, in danger,
in persecution, in isolation, and in
banishment.
We must remember the marvels the
Lord has done. We must never forget,
for God’s arm has not been shortened
since the dawn of creation. He seeks
the redemption we desire, and the
evidence is in the readings of the Easter
Vigil, which we can read in our home
(or watch on a screen).
The first three of those readings, in
fact, are the first three “Nights” of
God’s poem, and the Easter Vigil Mass
itself is the fourth.
The Lord God has come to meet us
again and again. Let us go to meet him,
then, at the appointed hour.
Mike Aquilina is a contributing editor
to Angelus and the author of many
books, including “How Christianity
Saved Civilization … And Must Do So
Again” (Sophia Institute Press, $18.95).
A
“Adoration of the Mystic Lamb,” by Jan van Eyck, 1425-1432.
SHUTTERSTOCK
12 • ANGELUS • April 10-17, 2020

Exterior mosaic
of Jesus the King
in heaven, with
Mary and St. John
the Baptist in the
main portal of St.
Mark Cathedral
in Venice, Italy.
SHUTTERSTOCK
A victory worth suffering for
Making sense of this year’s strange, stay-at-home Easter
BY KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ / ANGELUS
A
priest friend of mine always
likes to remind himself that
Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection
are all one event. Perhaps
that’s why we seem to celebrate them
so relatively quickly together, going
from Palm Sunday, to the Triduum,
to singing “Alleluia!” once again.
This year, Easter has me almost
constantly thinking about Christmas.
For a number of years now, some of
my favorite images of Jesus involve
him as an infant holding the banner
of victory.
It’s another reminder that not only
should we not be thinking about
Jesus’ passion and death without the
resurrection, but that we shouldn’t
cordon off the incarnation either: It’s
all one event, all one story, the big
picture that makes our lives make
sense!
And so, I was grateful on the approach
to Holy Week the other day
when I unexpectedly found some
pine needles left over from Christ-
mas! A small thing (they were literally
quite tiny) but one that seemed no
accident.
As we suffer from the coronavirus
(COVID-19) agony — which,
depending on where you are, almost
certainly means going without the reception
of the Eucharist, and limited
or no opportunities for confession or
adoration of the Blessed Sacrament
in the ways we are accustomed to —
it’s more important than ever to have
confidence in the whole story of our
redemption.
It’s been striking that all of these
coronavirus-related changes to our
lives have come during Lent, a season
of penance and sacrifice. But we
cannot survive the Passion without a
deep knowledge of the Resurrection,
because with it comes a confidence
in the truth of it all that will keep us
moving forward with an ever-deeper
faith in the Lord.
Remember the prayer, I must
decrease, God must increase? This, I
believe, is what this time is all about.
Choosing to sit and be anxious at
every new televised press conference,
or boldly insisting trust in God is the
only way to fly. The other options
won’t help anyone and certainly
won’t show the light of Christ in a
world desperately longing for it.
Some crucifixes depict the risen
Lord, rather than the body of a broken
man, even on the cross. Sometimes
they are done well, other times
maybe not so much. In any case,
they convey a message to treasure,
a herald, a beacon to show the way.
The big picture is essential. It’s the
game-changer. It’s transformational,
even when we experience Easter in a
whole new, even brutal, way.
This year, I wonder, too, in a new
way: Is this the entry way for many?
To see the suffering but to be able to
have a view of the victory at the end
of the agony? As the suffering and
agony is inescapable in the world,
could even a basket full of Easter eggs
April 10-17, 2020 • ANGELUS • 13

Pope Francis leads a prayer service in an empty St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican March 27. At the conclusion of the livestreamed service, the pope
held the Eucharist as he gave an extraordinary “urbi et orbi” (“to the city and the world”) blessing.
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/VATICAN MEDIA
be an opening to salvation, a ticket to
eternal life with God?
It’s probably more important than
ever in our lives to share the Easter
joy, in whatever ways to begin —
or continue — the conversation.
However you open the door at a time
of social distancing, with prayer and
perseverance in charity, God will
make himself known in the confusion
of these days.
I keep hearing the words of Pope
Francis at his Lenten “urbi et orbi”
(“to the city and the world”) meditation
and prayer service held March 27
amid the growing pandemic, watched
live by an estimated 11 million
people around the world. “What are
you afraid of?” Pope Francis asked repeatedly,
echoing the words of Jesus.
I take that and think in reply: When
I really am honest, especially in the
time of the coronavirus, the question
becomes, “What am I not afraid of?”
The message here is clear: Offer
it all to the Lord — the fear, the
anxiety, the wounds life has inflicted
and continues to. Nail it all to the
foot of the cross. See in the Easter
morning light that you are free! Fear
can’t destroy you. Death can’t destroy
you. Don’t let yourself be robbed of
Easter joy.
Before we get to Easter morning,
though, there is always Holy Saturday.
And Holy Saturday, every year, seems
more and more difficult to me. Some
years, I’ve been known to just wander
around Good Friday night and some
of Saturday. Nothing seems right.
Sometimes, in Manhattan, churches
will be open. One year, I encountered
a Dominican parish that had Christ
laid out in a tomb. I got on my knees
and wept. I know God is present, but
he seems distant, too painfully distant.
It feels as if he has abandoned us and
the thought can make one inconsolable.
And this is a feeling that is not all
that unfamiliar to many of us right
now.
There’s an ancient homily by an
unknown author that is read every
year in the Liturgy of the Hours on
Holy Saturday that I’ve been thinking
about on a daily basis lately. It begins
addressing the obvious: the strangeness.
The homilist names the “great
silence on earth” and stillness that
marks the period between Christ’s
death and resurrection, an unfamiliar
state that perhaps has suddenly eerily
become too familiar, with our empty
streets, 6-foot distances, and the suspicion
that greets even an approaching
delivery worker these days.
“The whole earth keeps silence because
the King is asleep,” the homily
reads. And hasn’t that been a real
temptation lately? To believe God
has taken one long nap, to leave us to
fend for ourselves for a while?
So how do we move from this frankly
traumatic Lent into Easter? How
do we experience Easter joy when
we are all worried about an invisible
menace?
Some of the answer is in that ancient
Holy Saturday homily. God, first of
all, hasn’t abandoned us. He’s getting
souls who would otherwise be lost
out of the pits of hell. Maybe he’s
doing just the same thing at this time
that has thrown us all off our regular
routines, suddenly not able to pretend
that we have forever.
It’s beautiful how the homily puts it:
“The earth trembled and is still
because God has fallen asleep in the
flesh and has raised up all who have
slept ever since the world began. God
has died in the flesh and Hell trembles
with fear. He has gone to search for
our first parent, as for a lost sheep.
Greatly desiring to visit those who
live in darkness and in the shadow of
death, he has gone to free from sorrow
the captives Adam and Eve, He who
is both God and Son of Eve. The Lord
approached them bearing the Cross,
the weapon that had won him the
victory. At the sight of him, Adam, the
first man he had created, struck his
breast in terror and cried out to everyone,
‘My Lord be with you all.’ Christ
14 • ANGELUS • April 10-17, 2020

answered him: ‘And with your spirit.’
He took him by the hand and raised
him up, saying, ‘Awake, O sleeper, and
rise from the dead, and Christ will give
you light.’ ”
Every Easter is about this, but now
more than ever: Easter will set people
free. We are not bound to sin and
death. Let him release you. From the
Annunciation to Christmas to Easter,
this has been a rescue mission!
It may seem a tricky thing, when
maybe it’s hard or impossible to get
yourself to confession this year. And
maybe this year was going to be the
first time in a long time. If confession
isn’t available where you are, go to
the Lord, as Pope Francis recently
reminded us how to do.
Baptism means that he lives in you
and you live in him. Some of this
“awakening” that the coronavirus is
forcing is an opportunity before it is
too late for many of us to see what the
implications are for our lives when we
say we are Christian.
Lukewarm doesn’t cut it. Box-checking
Mass attendance doesn’t cut it.
Love is the mission, as the theme of
Pope Francis’ visit to the U.S. in 2015
put it. It’s a radical love. It’s the whole
story of salvation history. It’s Jesus
Christ. True God and true man so
that evil may not win.
That’s got to be what Easter is about
for us. Waving the banner of his love
as we continue to see fear and death.
There’s so much more to see. Our
year, as always, began in the octave of
Christmas. And on Easter morning we
see just how splendid that holy night
was, seeing the face of the Father who
loves us every day of the struggle.
And we can even struggle with joy
because, alleluia, not only is Jesus
risen, but we rise with him, every day
we let him be the Lord of our hearts
for real.
Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow
at the National Review Institute,
editor-at-large of National Review
magazine, and author of the new book,
“A Year with the Mystics: Visionary
Wisdom for Daily Living” (Tan Books,
$44.95).
April 10-17, 2020 • ANGELUS • 15
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Archbishop José H. Gomez greets the Kay family before the funeral Mass for his niece Maria de los Ángeles at Holy Cross Cemetery in January.
PABLO KAY
Better than OK
An Easter reflection on my family’s long Lent
BY PABLO KAY / ANGELUS
As the coronavirus (COVID-19)
continues spreading, infecting,
and killing thousands of
people all over the world, many have
taken to assuring themselves, and one
another, saying things like “It will be
OK,” and “We’re going to get through
this.”
But with thousands, perhaps hundreds
of thousands, expected to die
before civilization turns the metaphorical
corner in combating this
plague, what does “OK” really mean?
Is this something that we human
beings blindly tell ourselves to avoid
falling into despair? Or do we really
believe that no amount of physical
death — especially involving the loss
of loved ones — can get in the way of
things someday being OK?
For a Christian with faith, the final
outcome is assured. And it will be
far greater than OK. We have the
certainty of the resurrection, the victory
of Christ over death, the pledge
of eternal life in heaven with God
himself.
These things have been on my mind
over the last several weeks, since I
saw a picture of a sign posted outside
a house in pandemic-ravaged Italy
that read, “Andrà tutto bene,” which
translates roughly to “Everything’s
going to be OK.”
As editor-in-chief of Angelus, the last
thing I would have planned for the
Easter issue was a first-person essay
with details of my personal life. But
planning, it seems, is a pretty useless
venture in 2020.
As every day brings more stories of
tragedy, unimaginable suffering, and
prayers that seem unanswered, I can
say that my experience has been one
of hope, even though I’ve experienced
my own share of tragedy and
loss.
For me, this difficult year started
before the arrival of the coronavirus.
The day before New Year’s Eve, my
sister delivered her second child, a
beautiful girl named Maria de los
Ángeles, stillborn at 38 weeks. It was a
shock to everyone. No health problems
were detected during pregnancy
and, to this day, after a battery of tests,
we don’t know why Maria’s heart
stopped beating in the womb two
days earlier on Dec. 28, the day the
Catholic Church celebrates the feast
16 • ANGELUS • April 10-17, 2020

of the Holy Innocents.
I was blessed to hold little Maria for
the few hours we got to spend with
her that night at the hospital, to kiss
her, to laugh and cry with her parents
and grandparents.
We proclaimed the Scriptures and
prayed the prayers the Church provides
for cases when children do not
live outside the womb, and thus are
unable to be baptized.
Several days later, we celebrated a
funeral Mass for Maria at Holy Cross
Cemetery in Culver City, not so
much to pray for her soul — which
we are assured is in heaven — but to
ask for the strength to truly offer her
back to God, to thank him for sending
her, and to accept the painfully
short duration of the earthly mission
that God entrusted to her.
Guests remarked to me afterward
how moved they were to see the chapel
filled with families, young and old,
singing and celebrating little Maria’s
brief life.
My boss, Archbishop José H.
Gomez, just happened to be celebrating
a funeral for a priest in the same
mortuary chapel immediately before
our service for Maria. He greeted
our family, encouraged us, and gave
us a blessing. “She’s an angel!” he
reminded us.
For my family, Maria’s death was
the first call to “wake up,” to invoke
the image Pope Francis used in his
March 27 “urbi et orbi” reflection,
praying for an end to this pandemic.
Reflecting on the passage in Mark’s
Gospel of the disciples panicking in
the boat while Jesus slept during a
dangerous storm, the Holy Father
said, “Like the disciples, we will experience
that with him on board there
will be no shipwreck. Because this is
God’s strength: turning to the good
everything that happens to us, even
the bad things. He brings serenity
into our storms, because with God
life never dies.”
After all the tears and “what ifs,”
especially for my sister and brother-inlaw,
whose excited anticipation for a
new baby have faded to the reality of
missing their daughter every day, the
Holy Father’s words rang true to me.
As I watched the prayer service in
Rome from my couch in Los Angeles,
I thought: This is faith. It does not
mean knowing every detail of doctrine,
or following a long list of rules,
or saying the right prayers.
Rather, it is the certainty that with
God, life truly never dies, that he
wants to take human tragedies like
Maria’s death and everything that
happens in our lives and use them for
our good and the good of others, even
if we have to wait years to understand
the “why.”
Little did we know that the Lord was
preparing still another cross for my
family to carry.
In early March, as cases of the coronavirus
began to spread in Europe,
Pablo Kay with his grandmother Amparo during
a visit to the Basílica de la Sagrada Família
in Barcelona, Spain, in August 2019.
we learned that the virus had entered
the house of my aunt and uncle in
Madrid, where their five daughters
and grandmother also lived. The
whole household experienced the
symptoms associated with the virus,
but my “abuela” Amparo and “tío”
Pedro were most affected. They were
taken to separate hospitals, both with
respiratory problems.
Here in LA, waiting for the next
Whatsapp message, the next phone
PABLO KAY
call, was agonizing. It was unthinkably
harder for my aunt and cousins
quarantined in their house back in
Spain. Under hospital protocol, my
grandmother and uncle were not
allowed visitors, under any circumstance.
News on their respective conditions
was delivered once a day via a phone
call from hospital staff. Depending
on the day, we received messages
that gave us hope, or indicators of
grave concern, and requests for more
urgent prayers.
The lack of personal contact, the
long delays between updates, all
made it impossible to know how
either was really doing.
In what can only be described as
a miracle, my aunt was able to see
my grandmother twice in the hospital.
In the first visit, she was able to
“smuggle” a rosary to her and speak
to her for five minutes. In the second,
she was able to say goodbye as my
grandma, sedated in the hospital bed,
underwent her final agonies.
On March 20, my mother’s mother,
who bore seven children and was
grandmother of 56, and great-grandmother
of 16, died at age 91.
While we mourned her passing, we
spent that weekend praying more intensely
for my 61-year-old “tío” Pedro,
a retired military officer, father of six,
with his first grandson on the way, a
man with a faith even stronger than
his no-nonsense personality.
We were consoled to learn that
a priest had been allowed to visit
Pedro in the hospital and give him
the anointing of the sick. But we also
knew that didn’t bode well for his
chances of survival. On the morning
of March 24, as my aunt and her
children were returning from burying
my grandmother — she was laid to
rest with my grandfather, who died
20 years ago — they received the call
that Pedro had died.
The days that followed involved a lot
of tears. Two people who had taught
us what true love and true faith
looked like, were suddenly gone. And
here we were, stuck in our homes
in different parts of the world. We
never got to say goodbye and now we
could not even console one another
in person.
April 10-17, 2020 • ANGELUS • 17

Pablo Kay with his uncle Pedro and aunt (also named Amparo) in San Francisco in 2017.
These days also involved some
laughter, memories we shared with
them, funny things they said, and so
many long conversations, the best of
which always lasted late into the night
(in true Spanish fashion). One thing
I didn’t expect in these days following
their deaths: an overwhelming sense of
peace.
Where did this tremendous consolation
and serenity come from, not only
for me but for my entire family? Certainly,
we were helped by the flood of
prayers from so many, including people
we’d never met, including entire
convents of cloistered women religious
around Spain who’d benefitted from
my uncle’s quiet generosity.
We received letters, messages, and
phone calls from friends who’d heard
the news. There were Masses offered
for my uncle and grandmother by
priests, bishops, and cardinals that my
extended family has come to know
through their missionary work in
various parts of the world. Even the
Denver Broncos — my uncle and his
only son were dedicated fans — sent
condolences.
I write this to give thanks to God for
his faithfulness to my family, in spite of
my sins and all the imperfections in my
family. I also write because I know that
tragedies like what we suffered may
well befall some of our readers and
their families in the weeks and months
to come, as the coronavirus continues
to ravage the world.
Looking back on our experience of
this trying year, all the prayers and
encouraging words surely helped. But
all this hope has a source, an event that
has changed human history and every
year comes with strength to change our
individual lives: Easter.
On the day of Pedro’s death, my uncle’s
pastor remarked in his homily that
the faith that Pedro had — the faith of
the Church — was not some “consolation
that’s the only thing left to us after
his departure.”
“It is,” he said, “the deep certainty
that illuminates all the situations in
PABLO KAY
our lives, especially the dark tunnel of
death.”
The night of Easter, the much-awaited
fourth night of faith in the ancient
Jewish tradition, testifies that there is
One who has entered death for us and
come out victorious. And his victory
reveals to us that our lives are far more
than the flat, terrestrial spectrum we
make of them, with our fleeting plans,
ideas, and dreams.
The resurrection tells us that we don’t
have to be slaves to sin, that there is
One who offers us new life with him,
not only after our passing from this
world, but before it, too, through the
help of the sacraments and of his word.
Without the experiences of these last
three months, this would sound like
so much pious babble to me, as it may
sound to you.
These deaths came into my life as
“mini-crosses” that I knew I was free to
carry or reject. And through them I’ve
come to realize that life doesn’t end on
the cross.
As Pope Francis said, if we have Jesus
on board the boat of our life, we know
“there will be no shipwreck,” that the
“bad” can be turned to “good,” and if
we stay close to him in his Church,
which is his living body and family,
things will always be much more than
OK.
A sign reading “Everything will be fine” hangs on a statue of Pope John XXIII in Zogno, Italy, near
Bergamo, March 22. Bergamo is one of Italy’s cities worst hit by the coronavirus (COVID-19)
pandemic.
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/FLAVIO LO SCALZO, REUTERS
Pra
than
thro
help
Da
E
1
On
18 • ANGELUS • April 10-17, 2020

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More than
charity
The new ‘Hearts to
Serve’ hotline and
volunteer effort
prepares to step up
for LA’s most vulnerable
during the pandemic
BY R.W. DELLINGER / ANGELUS
ARCHDIOCESE OF LOS ANGELES
Knight of Columbus Jose Escobar purchases food for a homebound senior.
As the human toll of the coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic
grows throughout California, a
partnership between the Archdiocese
of Los Angeles, the St. Vincent de
Paul Society of Los Angeles, and the
Knights of Columbus launched in
mid-March, is playing a vital role in
helping the most vulnerable members
in Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa
Barbara counties.
“We just want everybody to know
that the Church is here for you,” said
Kathleen Domingo, senior director
of the archdiocese’s Office of Life,
Justice and Peace, who is heading up
the emergency partnership.
As of April 6, there were more than
15,200 Californians with confirmed
cases of the coronavirus (the actual
figure is presumed to be around double
the number) and 351 deaths from
the virus.
The program’s emergency one-call
hotline, 855-423-6780, serves as the
front line of the initiative.
Depending on the needs expressed,
callers are directed to parish food
banks and pantries in their neighborhoods,
application-based resources
for financial assistance for families
(namely, the Cardinal McIntyre
Fund and the Catholic Campaign
for Human Development), and — in
the case of homebound elderly and
infirmed — help to get groceries,
medicine, and other basic necessities
delivered to their doors.
But the Hearts to Serve hotline offers
much more to callers during the
state’s “stay at home” order, according
to Domingo.
“This work is not just service, not just
Christian charity. It’s also a form of
evangelization. We’re telling people
that ‘You really matter to us, and we’re
going to do everything that we can do
to help you and your family through
this dark period.’ ”
Domingo said the range of people
who’ve called the hotline for help
“run the gamut.”
“Some are mothers with children
now at home trying to cope, and we
can tell them where the closest graband-go
lunch place is, set up by the
Los Angeles Unified School District.
Some 40 of our Catholic schools are
also involved in that. And we have a
whole group of elderly people calling
us also.”
Others, she said, “have more extensive,
deeper needs.”
“Maybe it’s even just to talk to someone,
and that’s also part of the service:
to listen,” Domingo told Angelus.
“They might be worried about losing
their job or something. So we’re not a
call center of strangers. We have live
people who will answer your call from
your own Catholic community.”
Often, that listening is followed not
just by information, but by praying
with the caller or making sure to ask
about any other needs before the call
ends. “We’re less of a referral service
than we are a family,” she insisted.
Domingo acknowledged the chal-
20 • ANGELUS • April 10-17, 2020

lenges that have come with rising to
meet people’s needs at a time when
church buildings and offices are
closed. Nevertheless, she’s impressed
by the number of people who’ve
volunteered to help, whether from the
archdiocese, St. Vincent de Paul, or
the Knights.
Tasks include running the hotline,
stocking parish food pantries, delivering
to the homebound, and calling to
stay updated about which (and when
and where) community resources are
open.
“We are not abandoning you just
because we’ve had to lock our doors,”
said Domingo, describing the message
the initiative is trying to get across.
“We’ve kind of gone underground,
and we’re a much stronger network
with our partners because of it.”
BUILT-IN EXPERTISE
“Hectic, hectic, hectic,” replied
David Garcia, executive director of
one of those partners, the St. Vincent
de Paul Society of Los Angeles, when
asked how things on his end have
been going in light of the new initiative.
“But that’s OK,” he was quick to
add.
If any social-service agency in the
three-county Archdiocese of Los
Angeles is in a good position to help
some of the most vulnerable people
— especially the elderly and homeless
— concerning the coronavirus
pandemic, it’s the local St. Vincent de
Paul Society.
The organization’s Conferences of
Charity are already in many local
parishes, and home visits are a regular
part of the society’s mission to serve
the poor and homeless of any religion.
And it already has a solid base of more
than 2,000 Vincentian volunteers.
“To be honest, we still really don’t
know what to expect with the coronavirus,”
Garcia admitted. “But we’re
sure that as time goes by, it’s going to
increase. So at some point, we may
need even more volunteers to help
us and the partnership answer the
phones, more people to run to the
grocery stores, drugstores, and more
people to make deliveries. Everything
is going to be case by case.”
For clients who can’t pay for the
delivered groceries, funds from Hearts
A Hearts to Serve client receives a food donation.
to Serve will be used to help, Garcia
said.
One challenge is that many of the
Vincentian volunteers are seniors
themselves, putting them at a higher
risk for complications from the coronavirus.
As a result, Garcia said the organization
will have to get “creative.”
“We’re doing home visits over the
phone. At our food pantries, where
people usually line up, we’re doing
social distancing. And if we do home
deliveries, maybe we’ll leave the package
outside.”
The society has had to close its
two thrift stores in Los Angeles and
Long Beach, one of the several local
measures that ultimately hurt the
working poor, who rely on the stores
for furnishing their apartments and
buying their clothes. And on LA’s Skid
Row, the walk-in part of the society’s
Cardinal Manning Center is now
closed. But the residential, live-in
program continues, housing 65 men
trying to turn around their lives.
“Absolutely stores will open up
again,” said Garcia. “But I won’t open
them until I have the support of the
ARCHDIOCESE OF LOS ANGELES
governor and the mayor. The society
is here to serve the most vulnerable
people. So we’re going to continue to
do that the best we can. And it makes
sense to be in a partnership with the
archdiocese and Knights instead of
them just referring people to us.”
HELP FOR IMMIGRANTS
Not only is Isaac Cuevas the director
of immigration and public affairs in
the Office of Life, Justice and Peace,
but he’s also a chairman of public
relations for the Knights of Columbus
in California and a Knight himself. To
him, the Hearts to Serve partnership is
one that makes perfect sense.
“The Knights have been working
with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles
for many years,” he told Angelus. “So
when the coronavirus happened and
we got a call from the archdiocese asking
for volunteers … it was a no-brainer
for us to just wholeheartedly help
out in any way we could.”
The order is aiming to help in two
main areas: Knights over the age of 60
are being encouraged to man the hotline
for calls coming in, while those
under 60 and “mobile” are making
deliveries to the homebound.
Cuevas said partnering with the archdiocese
also enables better outreach to
immigrants who are typically wary of
receiving help from the government
but feel safer seeking assistance from
the Catholic Church.
“We don’t ask about anyone’s legal
status,” he said. “That’s not our role.
If people are calling and they need
help and we can offer that help, we
definitely will.”
Ultimately, the initiative is about
“saving lives and helping people do
well in moments of trial,” Domingo
said.
“It’s about … putting your faith in action.
I think that’s the most important
thing. It’s the heart of what it means to
be the family of God. And so Hearts to
Serve is our response to that. It comes
from the heart.”
To find out how you can help or
request assistance, call the Hearts to
Serve hotline at 855-423-6780.
R.W. Dellinger is the features editor
of Angelus.
April 10-17, 2020 • ANGELUS • 21

Pope Watch, continued from page 2
our image, has fallen away, uncovering
once more that (blessed) common
belonging, of which we cannot be
deprived: our belonging as brothers
and sisters.
“Why are you afraid? Have you no
faith?” Lord, your word this evening
strikes us and regards us, all of us. In
this world, that you love more than we
do, we have gone ahead at breakneck
speed, feeling powerful and able to
do anything. Greedy for profit, we let
ourselves get caught up in things, and
lured away by haste.
We did not stop at your reproach
to us, we were not shaken awake by
wars or injustice across the world, nor
did we listen to the cry of the poor or
of our ailing planet. We carried on
regardless, thinking we would stay
healthy in a world that was sick. Now
that we are in a stormy sea, we implore
you, “Wake up, Lord!”
“Why are you afraid? Have you no
faith?” Lord, you are calling to us, calling
us to faith. Which is not so much
believing that you exist, but coming
to you and trusting in you. This Lent
your call reverberates urgently: “Be
converted!” “Return to me with all
your heart” (Joel 2:12). You are calling
on us to seize this time of trial as a
time of choosing.
It is not the time of your judgment,
but of our judgment: a time to choose
what matters and what passes away, a
time to separate what is necessary from
what is not. It is a time to get our lives
back on track with regard to you, Lord,
and to others.
We can look to so many exemplary
companions for the journey, who,
even though fearful, have reacted by
giving their lives. This is the force of
the Spirit poured out and fashioned in
courageous and generous self-denial.
It is the life in the Spirit that can
redeem, value, and demonstrate how
our lives are woven together and
sustained by ordinary people — often
forgotten people — who do not appear
in newspaper and magazine headlines
or on the grand catwalks of the latest
show, but who without any doubt are
in these very days writing the decisive
events of our time: doctors, nurses,
supermarket employees, cleaners,
caregivers, providers of transport, law
and order forces, volunteers, priests,
religious men and women, and so very
many others who have understood that
no one reaches salvation by them- selves.
In the face of so much suffering,
where the authentic development of
our peoples is assessed, we experience
the priestly prayer of Jesus: “That they
may all be one” (John 17:21). How
many people every day are exercising
patience and offering hope, taking
care to sow not panic but a shared
responsibility.
How many fathers, mothers, grandparents,
and teachers are showing our
children, in small everyday gestures,
how to face up to and navigate a crisis
by adjusting their routines, lifting their
gaze, and fostering prayer. How many
are praying, offering, and interceding
for the good of all. Prayer and quiet
service: These are our victorious
weapons.
“Why are you afraid? Have you no
faith?” Faith begins when we realize
we are in need of salvation. We are
not self-sufficient; by ourselves we
flounder: We need the Lord, like
ancient navigators needed the stars.
Let us invite Jesus into the boats of our
lives. Let us hand over our fears to him
so that he can conquer them.
Like the disciples, we will experience
that with him on board there will be
no shipwreck. Because this is God’s
strength: turning to the good everything
that happens to us, even the bad
things. He brings serenity into our
storms, because with God life never
dies.
The Lord asks us and, in the midst
of our tempest, invites us to reawaken
and put into practice that solidarity
and hope capable of giving strength,
support, and meaning to these hours
when everything seems to be floundering.
The Lord awakens so as to reawaken
and revive our Easter faith. We have
an anchor: By his cross we have been
saved. We have a rudder: By his cross
we have been redeemed. We have
a hope: By his cross we have been
healed and embraced so that nothing
and no one can separate us from his
redeeming love.
In the midst of isolation when we are
suffering from a lack of tenderness and
chances to meet up, and we experience
the loss of so many things, let us
once again listen to the proclamation
that saves us: He is risen and is living
by our side.
The Lord asks us from his cross to
rediscover the life that awaits us, to
look toward those who look to us, to
strengthen, recognize, and foster the
grace that lives within us. Let us not
quench the wavering flame (cf. Isaiah
42:3) that never falters, and let us allow
hope to be rekindled.
Embracing his cross means finding
the courage to embrace all the hardships
of the present time, abandoning
for a moment our eagerness for power
and possessions in order to make room
for the creativity that only the Spirit is
capable of inspiring.
It means finding the courage to create
spaces where everyone can recognize
that they are called, and to allow new
forms of hospitality, fraternity, and
solidarity. By his cross we have been
saved in order to embrace hope and let
it strengthen and sustain all measures
and all possible avenues for helping us
protect ourselves and others. Embracing
the Lord in order to embrace
hope: That is the strength of faith,
which frees us from fear and gives us
hope.
“Why are you afraid? Have you no
faith?” Dear brothers and sisters, from
this place that tells of Peter’s rock-solid
faith, I would like this evening to
entrust all of you to the Lord, through
the intercession of Mary, Health of the
People and Star of the stormy Sea.
From this colonnade that embraces
Rome and the whole world, may
God’s blessing come down upon you
as a consoling embrace. Lord, may
you bless the world, give health to our
bodies and comfort our hearts. You ask
us not to be afraid. Yet our faith is weak
and we are fearful. But you, Lord, will
not leave us at the mercy of the storm.
Tell us again: “Do not be afraid”
(Matthew 28:5). And we, together
with Peter, “cast all our anxieties onto
you, for you care about us” (cf. 1 Peter
5:7).
22 • ANGELUS • April 10-17, 2020

New school
methods
Riley (first grade) and Ruby
(third grade), students
at St. Andrew’s School
in Pasadena, work on
assignments at their home.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE MILLER FAMILY
LA’s Catholic schools are discovering the lessons learned
in ‘remote learning’will last long after quarantine ends
BY TOM HOFFARTH / ANGELUS
At St. John Bosco High School
in Bellflower, the posts on
Facebook, Twitter, and
Instagram pump up the student
body about the “Virtual Spirit
Week” activities, with the hashtag
“BraveTogether.” It includes “Tik
Tok Tuesday” to post best dance
moves, and a “Thankful Thursday” to
encourage tagging someone who you
are thankful for.
At St. Joseph’s Catholic Elementary
School in Hawthorne, a Twitter post
shows off its “new white board,” an
arithmetic lesson on one side of
the video screen, and the other side
captures students working on the
subtraction problems.
At All Souls World Language
Catholic School in Alhambra, an
Instagram post shows a teacher
introducing her dog to her class at the
end of a Spanish math lesson.
Since the traditional in-classroom
structure was suspended in mid-
March in the wake of the coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic, the pivot to
“distance learning” has become the
mantra for the Archdiocese of Los
Angeles’ Department of Catholic
Schools.
The adjustments and trial-and-error
for some are smoothing out when
it comes to the best ways to educate
from a physical distance. But a key
discovery for many is how this new
normal based in technology and
adaptability is not so much about
detachment and isolation, but how it
has brought more students, teachers,
principals, and leaders closer together.
“The grit and perseverance of our
parishes continue to represent the
best of a Catholic education,” said
Paul Escala, the superintendent of
Catholic Schools in the Archdiocese
of Los Angeles, which includes more
than 200 elementary schools and high
schools covering more than 78,000
students in LA, Ventura, and Santa
Barbara counties.
Escala sees it first hand: His two
young sons, elementary students at
St. Joseph Catholic School in Long
Beach, stay engaged with online
platforms for not just core classes
but also music, art, and physical
education.
Escala has also experienced the
product of the activation of the
24 • ANGELUS • April 10-17, 2020

ST. JOHN BOSCO HIGH SCHOOL
Department of Catholic Schools’
Academic Excellence Team that
has been sharing best practices with
prekindergarten through 12th-grade
schools.
The core values of the Catholic
faith are an integral part of how this
learning lesson stays beyond just a
teachable moment in time.
“Our faith is the essential difference
between success and failure, because
even if some of our schools are
struggling with the transition, not
everything is perfect, it’s a belief that
we’re guided by a higher calling, and
we’re here not just to educate the
students but minster to the families,”
said Escala.
“The community bands together,
when faith is most tested and
actualized. Not just during the good
times, but also during the hard ones.”
The examples are plentiful.
Lilliam Paetzold, the head of school/
president at Notre Dame Academy
Schools of Los Angeles, relayed an
email that was sent to one of her
teachers, Raynelle Duronslet. It was
from the mother of a senior who was
involved in dance, expressing sadness
by the thought the last recital at the
high school might not happen now.
“But I have noticed [my daughter]
has been spending a lot of time doing
dance at home, around her room,
the living room, planning and being
creative. … It’s so important in these
uncertain times that they maintain
A social media post by St. Joseph’s School in Hawthorne shows
off its “new white board” during an arithmetic lesson via video
conference, with students working on subtraction problems.
a goal and purpose. When I see [my
daughter] dancing, I see a group of
people acting with hope, which is
what we all need right now!”
Paetzold credits the Notre Dame
Academy pre-K-through-12th-grade
schools’ “21st-century mindset”
with establishing a tone of what
can be done to move forward and
advance communication, creativity,
and ingenuity in a time like this. It’s
finding a balance between screen
time and work time, keeping structure
as before, but also embracing a new
schedule.
“We feel like this experience has to
be holistic,” said Paetzold, who has
some 600 students on campus, almost
St. John Bosco High School in Bellflower encourages the student body with “Virtual Spirit Week”
activities.
split between the co-ed elementary
level and the all-girls high school
level, with a diverse student body
covering more than 40 zipcodes in
Southern California.
“In this moment, you don’t need
bells and whistles, or a swimming pool
or a football stadium, or all the fancy
things a school has, or doesn’t have. I
think this puts us on the same playing
field in many ways.
“A lot of this has brought back a joy
of learning. When you get to connect
with the teacher on a more human
level — they’re not at the front of the
class and the student is sitting — there
has been a new excitement that’s cool
and refreshing and engaging.”
At Notre Dame Academy, for
example, it’s as much about how the
all-girls swim team connects on a
Zoom meeting in full suits, goggles,
and swim caps. “The process is what
shapes you” read the words on the
screen under their multivideo virtual
“workout.”
Paetzold, a 1984 Notre Dame
Academy graduate who has been at
the schools for 10 years since arriving
from St. Lawrence of Brindisi in
Watts, said the “flip” to this teaching
method has been on her vision board
since she arrived.
Notre Dame Academy was just
named the recipient of the National
Catholic Educational Association’s
Dr. Karen M. Ristau Innovations
Award for furthering the “mission of
Catholic education through an
IMAGE VIA FACEBOOK @SJSHAWTHORNE
April 10-17, 2020 • ANGELUS • 25

innovative program or approach.”
Paetzold was to attend the national
conference in Maryland in March to
accept the honor, but the event was
postponed.
“Another teachable moment,” said
Paetzold.
Escala said a key tool in the
transition has been the
archdiocese’s relationship
with Sprint in providing cell-driven
technology devices that aren’t
necessarily dependent on an internet
connection.
There are common tools for
distance learning with this
Generation Z demographic: the
Google applications for Classroom,
Slides, Docs, G Suite and Hangouts,
plus Zoom, Nearpod and YoTeach!
Parents are connected beyond
regular emails and newsletters, or
website posts. Teachers share best
practices and assessments with
frequent group video conferences.
Aaron De Loera, the second-year
principal at St. Bernard Catholic
Elementary School in Bellflower,
with nearly 190 students from pre-K
to eighth grade, says “it was fun in a
sense going to this new platform and
taking on the challenges that came
with it, but the community has done
very well.
“One of the first victories we’ve
experienced is how parents have
understood the situation and what
they have to undertake, the teachers
have been able to take their lessons
online and the students have
responded. The kids are very selfsufficient
in a lot of this.”
De Loera said
that support from
the Department
of Catholic
Schools has been
key, “working
directly with us
and offering help
from the start
with workshops
on how to do all
this.”
Raquel Cagigas,
the principal
at the 155-girl
San Gabriel
Mission High
Catholic College
Preparatory High
School and a
1996 graduate,
also teaches AP Psychology and AP
Research, and has been able to adjust
lesson plans based on new changes in
college board requirements.
“It feels that we have been thriving
more than just surviving,” said
Cagigas. “In times like this, it could
be hit-and-miss. Making through
this as normal as possible can be
important. We have time to pause,
pray and talk about how we’ve been
able to execute all this. We have also
seen our [Associated Student Body]
student officers step up in leadership
roles to continue with community
learning. Education isn’t just about
teaching but what you can do with
power and responsibility.”
Cagigas also remarked about the
success of the counseling resources
on campus that have been able
to continue planning for next
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A recent tweet shows pictures of remote learning of STEM students at
St. Turibius School in Los Angeles.
year’s classes with students and
“reimagining how to connect” with
students, a majority of whom live in
inner-city LA and “have found being
on campus is a safe place for them.”
Melody Bueno, the director of
activities at San Gabriel Mission
High School as well as a math and
English teacher, said the remote
learning model is challenging her to
be a better teacher, while introducing
her to technology that she’ll be using
with students for years to come.
“My priority is to maintain student
participation and engagement, not
just have me talk to them while they
watch passively. Zoom sessions where
students see my face are important
because it shows that we are here to
support students, and it gives students
a sense of familiarity and stability.”
For high school students, the
“new normal” of remote learning
is in some ways offering a special
preparation for the future: Receiving
a lesson plan at home at the
beginning of the week with a stated
goal and then having the next four
days to complete assigned tasks
mirrors how they will eventually be
taking college courses.
Joey Attanasio, a junior hockey
player at St. John Bosco, admitted
that was one of the upsides of how
this distance learning has worked, as
well as one other key thing.
“I used to have to get up at 6 a.m.
to catch my ride (from Torrance to
SCREENSHOT VIA TWITTER @STEMSCHOOLSLA
24-Hour_insurance_VN_8-2-19_1-8pg_3-89x2_20%rev.indd 1
26 • ANGELUS • April 10-17, 2020
7/17/19 7:47 AM

Bellflower), but now I can get up at
8 for Google Chat, and there are less
distractions that allow me to focus
more and get my own work done,”
the 16-year-old said. “I do miss sports
and hanging out with my friends, but
that’s the only real downside.”
Attanasio’s younger brother,
Jacob, a 12-year-old sixth-grader at
American Martyrs Catholic School in
Manhattan Beach, said he finds he’s
getting his homework done faster, but
“instead of calling this ‘home school,’
it feels more like ‘self school.’ I miss
my friends, too.”
The added ability for schools in the
archdiocese to incorporate prayer has
taken on a new significance as well.
Paetzold notes that at Notre Dame
Academy, the Sisters of Notre Dame
profess “a deep belief in God’s
goodness and provident care,” as well
as responding to the needs of our
time.
“That’s the underlying thing about
all this: In a Catholic school you can
talk about how God is with you,” said
Paetzold. “We will take care of the
students’ social and emotional needs.
In this moment, social and emotion
will trump content any day.”
Escala said he averages a half-dozen
Zoom calls a day to keep track of how
things are progressing. The unity is
something he can’t help but be proud
about.
“It’s not lost on me about how
we are a big church in a large
archdiocese, and we often struggle
to be connected even when we’re
together,” said Escala. “To see how
everyone has rallied over the last
three weeks, with enormous pressure
and circumstances beyond our
control, is overwhelmingly heartening
for me. I see our faith transformative
in the way we have worked together.
“I see us getting smart and good at
the distance-learning platform. We’re
learning in real time how this works.
We need the best ideas. Maybe this
is a new hybrid model for Catholic
schools, how we organize social
development. When we come out of
this, what we gain from this crisis will
be a new way of evangelizing.”
Tom Hoffarth is an award-winning
journalist based in Los Angeles.
April 10-17, 2020 • ANGELUS • 27
DESTINATION: OBERAMMERGAU – THE PASSION PLAY
For the health and security, Oberammergau Passion Play is rescheduled
to the year 2022, premiering on May 21, 2022.
The Coronavirus/COVID 19 at its pandemic stage, forced
countries on lockdown, state of national emergencies and
isolating people. Distancing from social interaction sounds
harsh and severe but the best option we have for precautionary
measure to reduce contagion besides washing hands frequently,
not touching the face and boosting the immune system. While it
seems scary, I see this as an opportunity for people to be alone
with God to reassess the trend of life, its meaning and purpose.
Is it coincidental that this pandemic arises at the year
2020 – the most awaited year for the Oberammergau
Passion Play?
In 1632, a bubonic plague caused thousands of deaths in Europe. Oberammergau
inhabitants prayed and vowed that if they be spared, they would perform the passion
play depicting the life and death of Jesus. Since their vow, inhabitants of Oberammergau
were spared from the plague. As their thanksgiving, they honor their vow and perform
the Passion Play every ten years (a show better than Broadway). Perhaps we get
inspiration from the inhabitants of Oberammergau and do our own pledge by
participating as an audience during Oberammergau Passion Play.
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Flattening the
curve of criticism
Bishop Pierantonio Tremolada of Brescia, Italy, blesses coffins of the coronavirus (COVID-19) victims in the cemetery chapel in Brescia March 24.
FRANCESCA VOLPI/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE, KNA
The debate over
what the Church is
or isn’t doing in the
time of the pandemic
shouldn’t obscure her
real-life heroes
BY JOHN L. ALLEN JR. /
ANGELUS
ROME — Italy’s coronavirus
(COVID-19)-related lockdown
is now in its second month, and
while the curve of the pandemic may
be flattening here, the same cannot
be said for a mounting intra-Catholic
debate over how the Church has
chosen to respond.
While the dispute may be more intense
here than anywhere else, it has
echoes everywhere bishops have to
make hard choices about how much
normal Church life to suspend or
cancel amid the pandemic.
On the one hand are Catholics — a
strong majority here, if recent polling
is to be believed — who support the
bishops’ decision to suspend all public
Masses and the other sacraments,
as a means of combating transmission
of the virus.
If Catholicism is pro-life, the argument
runs, then it can’t knowingly
jeopardize public health, especially
when the highest-risk group, the
elderly, are already often victims
of what Pope Francis has called a
“throwaway culture.”
On the other side are critics who see
the bishops here as essentially caving
in to a secular mentality, one which
holds that grocery stores, pharmacies,
and even tobacco shops and newsstands
are “essential services,” but
religion isn’t and thus is dispensable.
Well-known Italian TV journalist
and fervent Catholic Maurizio Scandurra
recently complained the Italian
bishops have “shut up and laid down
like doormats before the current regulations”
imposed by the government.
It’s a legitimate debate, but by putting
the focus primarily on what the
Church isn’t doing, there’s a risk of
ignoring what it is.
The truth of it is, while the Church’s
public liturgical and sacramental
life may be on hold for a while, that
hardly means Catholicism is out of
business. I’ll speak here of examples
from Italy, which is where I’m riding
out the storm, but similar for-instances
can be adduced from all over the
world.
In the small community of Seriate in
the province of Bergamo, where the
death toll of the coronavirus has been
especially intense, the Church of San
Giuseppe (St. Joseph) removed its
pews in order to provide temporary
storage for coffins of victims slated for
military transport elsewhere because
there’s no longer places to bury them.
28 • ANGELUS • April 10-17, 2020

FRANCESCA VOLPI/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE, KNA
The pastor, Father Mario Carminati,
comes down each day to say a prayer
over the remains, and, when possible,
uses WhatsApp to connect the family
at least at a distance.
Also in the Diocese of Bergamo, the
local seminary has opened 50 rooms
for local doctors and nurses who need
a place to get away for a few hours
between shifts as they work around
the clock in an effort to save as many
lives as possible.
At least two cloistered communities
of contemplative nuns, the Oblates of
Avellino and the Benedictine Sisters
of Marcogliano, have taken it upon
themselves to interrupt their normal
activities in order to make by hand
the medical masks that Italians are
required to wear whenever they leave
home, but which have been nearly
impossible to find.
So far the sisters have produced
more than 100,000 masks, donating
them free of charge to the public.
There’s the lay Community of
Sant’Egidio in Rome, that’s opened
a special hotline for the city’s elderly
if they need medical care or someone
to do the shopping, or if they’re
simply alone and need consolation. In
Gaeta, the Monastery of San Magno
has opened its doors to 30 Red Cross
volunteers who are the first responders
of the pandemic.
Polish Cardinal Konrad Krajewski,
the pope’s personal almoner, is
driving 150 miles around Rome every
day collecting food and other supplies
that companies can’t use amid the
crisis, and directing it to the poor,
the homeless, migrants, and refugees,
for whom “lockdown” doesn’t mean
confinement in a personal home and
regular trips to a grocery store.
Incredibly, Cardinal Krajewski actually
published his personal cellphone
number in Vatican News, the Vatican’s
official communications outlet,
inviting anyone in need to call for
help.
There are also stories of priestly heroism,
such as Father Fausto Resmini of
Bergamo. He was a well-known local
figure who for years operated a soup
kitchen and shelter for the poor near
the central train station, often moving
about town collecting food, medicine,
clothing, and sleeping bags when the
April 10-17, 2020 • ANGELUS • 29
weather turned cold.
Father Resmini was also a prison
chaplain convinced that inmates
would be among the most isolated
and vulnerable during the pandemic,
and who refused to stop his normal
round of visits.
Somewhere along the way, Father
Resmini contracted the coronavirus
himself and died of the disease in
the early morning hours of March
23. Today there’s a Facebook group
campaigning to have a new hospital
built in Bergamo to accommodate
the coronavirus patients named after
Father Resmini, in order to “make
known his immense energy and his
life spent on behalf of the least and
the marginalized.”
In the city of Trent there’s Father
Gianpietro Vignandel, a 47-year-old
Capuchin who ran a soup kitchen
for the city’s poor. A big, burly
figure, Father Vignandel was known
affectionately as “Friar Tuck” for his
resemblance to the character from
Robin Hood. He kept serving meals
to the poor, on the grounds that the
coronavirus wouldn’t magically make
sure they had enough to eat, and he,
too, became sick and died March 21.
To make Father Vignandel’s story
even more emblematic of the suffering
caused by the pandemic, his own
family, which lives in the Veneto region,
wasn’t able to attend his funeral
because of the country’s restrictions
on movement as well as the Church’s
restrictions on public funerals.
These are merely a few vignettes
from among countless similar stories
up and down the country, and for that
matter, all around the world.
None of this means the Church has
any monopoly on heroism, especially
given the stunning sacrifices being
made by health care workers, whether
believers or not. However, it is a
reminder that even as some aspects
of the Church’s life are suspended,
its propensity to generate impressive
holiness even — perhaps most of all
— in objectively dismal circumstances
remains undimmed.
John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux.
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INSIDE
THE PAGES
By KRIS MCGREGOR
Faith in the face of panic
In the isolation
of a global
pandemic, how
can Catholics
share in the
body of Christ?
Lent 2020 turned out to be something
we never expected. With
many of us living in quarantine,
or under “shelter in place” and “safer
at home” orders due to the coronavirus
(COVID-19), while nonessential
businesses are shut down or moved
completely to working from home,
we’re having to give up a lot of things
we thought were part of everyday life:
grocery shopping, visits with friends,
and now, the ability to go to Mass.
What’s a Catholic to do in times like
these? I talked to Msgr. John A. Esseff,
a priest in the Diocese of Scranton who
once served as a retreat director and
confessor to Mother Teresa, about his
best tips for staying calm and faithful.
Msgr. John A. Esseff
A family watches Pope
Francis’ “urbi et orbi” (“for
the city and for the world”)
prayer service and blessing
on TV March 27.
MARZIO TONIOLO/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE, REUTERS DISCERNING HEARTS
30 • ANGELUS • April 10-17, 2020

Kris McGregor: The Church went
from offering dispensations from our
Sunday Mass obligations to suspending
public Masses altogether. The health
concern is serious, but this only amplifies
the great danger that the whole
world is facing.
Msgr. John A. Esseff: We Catholics
had prided ourselves that the most
important thing we do on the Sabbath
is worship God, and our central act of
worship is the Mass. But each priest, I
feel pretty sure, will be offering Mass,
maybe privately.
Today we can pray and center our acts
of worship on God, our Father. The
Church is your own home. Jesus says
in the Scriptures that he’s going to tear
down the temple that was built there.
All of the churches all over the world
are going to come down.
But the Church is the body of Christ,
and this same Church continues to exist.
When Jesus said, “I will tear down
this temple,” that was the one in front
of him that took hundreds of years to
build. But he said, “I will raise it up in
three days,” meaning the temple of his
body. And that’s what the Mass is, but
that’s also what you have been baptized
into — the suffering, death, and resurrection
of Christ.
Slow down and take charge of what
that life of Jesus is inside of yourself.
Who am I? I am Jesus in the world
today, not out there in that building
that I go to on Sundays.
McGregor: It seems interesting that
this particular virus affects the old, and
those who are weak, and those who
are strong and young are not as badly
affected, and yet it’s going to have to be
their sacrifice to protect the elders and
the afflicted. The government is telling
them to stand down, they need to protect
others, they need to stay apart.
Many of the people in this country
are going to be laid off, so there’s suffering
that’s not just physical, it’s material,
economic. Natural disasters happen
like a boom, and then we go in and
fix it. But in this particular case, this is
something very different, isn’t it?
Msgr. Esseff: This pandemic is
uniting us in a way that nothing ever
has, and I don’t know, for a long time
— maybe since the flood — when we
have all stopped and said, “This is a
passing world.”
The body of Christ is held together
by love. It’s the spirit of love that unites
the whole body. What a great opportunity
the young have for service to the
elderly.
Do I immediately only think of my
income, my needs, my cares? Or do
I think of those of others? If you’re
young, you’re going to be caring for
your family, for your children. But
everyone also has the obligation of
caring for their parents and their grandparents.
Right now, we can’t visit older
people, but we can call them, see that
their needs are taken care of.
McGregor: The reality is that God
has allowed this. How do we look at
this crisis, knowing that it’s not a punishment
from God?
Msgr. Esseff: This is a tremendous
opportunity for us to serve each other,
and to look out for each other, and
care for one another. That’s God’s
commandment: Love one another as
I have loved you. The love that he has
given to us, he wants us to manifest
to one another. And it’s amazing that
people will step up.
McGregor: This is really an opportunity
if you’re searching for God, too.
Msgr. Esseff: How do you get a madly
extroverted world to introvert? How
do you get people to slow down, and
reflect, and think and pray? We have
such a great gift here, when life just
stops and there’s all this time on our
hands, and we can turn this into the
opportunity to serve, even if we’re not
going to work, or to church, today.
Mother Teresa used to have a way
of offering the sign of peace: May the
Christ in me bless the Christ in you
and greet the Christ in you.
Were a man to look at his wife, and a
wife at her husband, and see that today.
Recognize who you are to each other,
see the children that you took down
to baptize — you are really images of
Jesus in your home.
What a tremendous opportunity
we have to slow down and care for
one another, so that we can love one
another.
Kris McGregor is the founder of Discerninghearts.com,
an online resource
for the best in contemporary Catholic
spirituality.
PILGRIMAGE
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and Notre Dame Cathedral in Montreal.
View the spectacular New England foliage.
September 8,
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The last two nights we will stay at Niagara Falls
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April 10-17, 2020 • ANGELUS • 31
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3/13/20 4:23 PM

WITH GRACE
BY DR. GRAZIE POZO CHRISTIE
A time to recover romance
It’s been a peculiar Lent. The Great
Pandemic of the Year of Our Lord
two thousand and twenty has had
the effect, for most of us, of bringing
our lives to a screeching halt. In
quarantine we’ve been forced to forego
the company of our friends, our
regular paychecks, and even Sunday
Mass. The Lenten sacrifices of sweets
or TV-watching in past years suddenly
seem childish in comparison.
This new perspective touches upon
Good Friday and Easter, too. How
wonderful to “see” the age-old drama
with a freshly purified vision cleared
of all surfeit and excess. Perhaps we
will be struck with the utter romance
of God’s ultimate gesture of love on
the cross, and consider what that
means for our lives, an example we
no longer seem to be able to understand,
much less make any attempt to
follow.
Where has romantic love — that
most distinctively human leap into
complete surrender to the “other” —
gone? It’s hard to find in current culture
as it is reflected back to us. Eros
has been downgraded to mere sex.
The nonstop barrage of “content”
from our computer screens, which
reflects our civilization but also forms
it, presents only the act of sex as uniting
and establishing a relationship
between two people, like two ships
colliding in the night but making
only a ghostly impression on each
other.
SHUTTERSTOCK
The impact is abrupt, self-centered,
emotionally and physically fruitless,
and given its shallowness, almost
immediately unsatisfying. The participants
over and again fail to quench
the loneliness that afflicts their
restless souls, and the saltwater of
carnal pleasure leaves them thirstier,
not less.
There is real sadness in this for
all involved, no matter how thickskinned
constant exposure to a coarsened
culture has made them. The
voluptuary consciously rejects love as
a distraction from sensual gratification,
perhaps. But the common man,
and the common woman, are simply
settling for what they can glean from
the mostly barren ground of postmodern
life.
Raised in the awful cynicism produced
by the collapse of marriage and
the family, “falling in love” appears
nothing more than a mirage, or a
kind of pathetic self-deception. If it
ever really existed, it is hardly to be
expected now, when all vows have
proven breakable and even the most
glorious emotions have been identified
as sudden surges of serotonin in
our heads.
I believe that the idea of romantic
love, with its lofty airs of magnanimity,
chivalry, and total commitment,
has leached out of our culture, just as
our understanding of God has.
We have forgotten that it has been
the particular insistence of God
throughout time that we learn to
love as he loves, with wild abandon,
complete surrender, and perfect
fidelity. The Old Testament is a long,
plaintive love song from God to a
32 • ANGELUS • April 10-17, 2020

capricious people, and Jesus in the
Gospels sings the same melody, rising
to the piercing, utterly shattering note
of his passion on the cross.
Christianity teaches us what love,
loving, looks like. And it also teaches
us that Love himself has acted decisively
to transform each of us, placing
the capacity to love with the same
prodigality in our own natures.
The knowledge of these heavenly
concepts may be missing or incomplete
for many, but the search for
perfect union goes on, fueled by the
inward, unshakable suspicion that
each of us is capable of glorious,
shining Love.
The psalmist’s “I am my beloved’s . . .”
is written not only in the Scriptures
but on our hearts, and by the same
author. We are not creatures of selfish
appetite and satiation, but creatures
capable of magnificent self-gift, able
to ignore the loud clamoring of our
egos in favor of the quietest claim of
the beloved.
And when we do “fall in love”
what then? C.S. Lewis wrote about
that moment: “In one high bound
[romantic love overleaps] the massive
wall of our selfhood: [makes] appetite
itself altruistic, [tosses] personal happiness
aside as a triviality and [plants]
the interests of another in the center
of our being. … It is an image, a
foretaste, of what we must become to
all if Love himself rules in us without
a rival.”
If God on the cross presents us with
the grandeur of passionately selfless
love, his Easter rising and his promise
to have us join him for a joyful
eternity are a model for marriage.
Perfect, indissoluble union is what
God wants with us, and marriage is
the mystical image he chose to help
us understand.
Now, isn’t that romantic?
Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie grew up in
Guadalajara, Mexico, coming to the
U.S. at the age of 11. She has written
for USA TODAY, National Review,
The Washington Post, and The New
York Times, and has appeared on
CNN, Telemundo, Fox News, and
EWTN. She practices radiology in the
Miami area, where she lives with her
husband and five children.
April 10-17, 2020 • ANGELUS • 33
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1/31/2020 4:38:44 PM
Sisters Disciples of the Divine Master
501 N. Beaudry Ave Los Angeles, CA.90012
Tel: 213-250-7962 | Email: 90012lacla@gmail.com

Looking for
God in
‘The Plague’
What a classic work by a
nonbeliever can teach us about
faith in the face of disease
BY JOHN J. MILLER / ANGELUS
When a deadly disease decimates
the French Algerian
city of Oran, a priest takes
to the pulpit and tells his parishioners
why they must suffer: “You deserved it.”
Father Paneloux, SJ, doesn’t mean
that they refused to wash their hands or
neglected to engage in social distancing.
He means that they took God for
granted: “Too long this world of ours
has connived at evil, too long it has
counted on the divine mercy, on God’s
forgiveness,” he says. “And so, God’s
light withdrawn, we walk in darkness,
in the thick darkness of this plague.”
Algerian-French philosopher Albert
Camus placed this scene about a third
of the way through his 1947 novel,
“The Plague.” Already a modern
classic, “The Plague” suddenly has
assumed an unnerving relevance in the
age of the coronavirus (COVID-19),
as readers
struggle to
make sense
of what’s
happening
and why.
Great
books have
a way of
speaking
across
generations.
Readers in
2020 have
turned to several standbys: “A Journal
of the Plague Year,” an 18th-century
blend of truth and fiction by Daniel
Defoe; “The Masque of the Red
Death,” an eerie short story by Edgar
Allan Poe; and “Blindness,” a 1995
novel that helped Portuguese writer
Jose Saramago win the Nobel Prize in
Literature.
Yet Camus may have given us the best
old book for our confusing new times,
a tale that forces hard thinking about
the sources of human suffering as well
as the ways to respond to it.
The story starts with a step. Departing
his office, Dr. Bernard Rieux “felt
something soft under his foot.” It was a
dead rat on the staircase.
34 • ANGELUS • April 10-17, 2020

LUS
Two priests stand in
front of a crucifix as
they celebrate the “Via
Crucis” (“Way of the
Cross”) from the roof
of their church, Santa
Maria della Salute in
Naples, Italy, March 20.
Rieux kicks the rat aside “without
giving it a further thought.” Moments
later, however, he reports the rodent
to the building’s concierge, who is perturbed:
“There weren’t no rats here,”
he insists.
When did you first hear the distant
early warning sound of the coronavirus?
(I dimly recall reading a brief
account of a strange sickness in
China.) Did you have any idea of what
it portended? (Nope, and neither do
Rieux or the concierge.)
Soon the dead rats are everywhere
in Oran, a commercial center on the
shore of the Mediterranean Sea. They
have brought the bubonic plague.
The sickness spreads. People die.
The government locks down the city.
Nobody can come or go. The hospitals
are overwhelmed. The ailing go into
quarantine (a word that derives from
the Italian “quaranta,” which means
“40,” providing a biblical rationale for
the traditional number of days the ill
would live in isolation).
Officials study graphs, looking for
signs that the “long rising curve had
flattened out.” There’s no mention of
shortages of face masks or toilet paper,
but the drugstores run out of peppermint
lozenges because a popular myth
holds that they prevent the contagion.
Worst of all, the victims don’t know
how long their plight will last. “Ah, if
only it had been an earthquake!” says
a night watchman. “A good bad shock,
and there you are! You count the dead
and the living, and that’s an end of it.
But this here damned disease, even
them who haven’t got it can’t think of
anything else.”
Sound familiar?
Of course it does. Yet the value of
“The Plague” isn’t that it predicted
our problems, like a visionary novel
by a science-fiction prophet. Rather, it
presents a case study in theodicy: the
eternal conundrum of why a good God
would permit so much bad.
Father Paneloux draws his answer
from the Old Testament: “Pharaoh set
himself up against the divine will, and
the plague beat him to his knees.” It
also dissatisfies. The novel’s villain has
no will, divine or otherwise. Maybe it’s
not even a villain. As a faceless force
of nature, the plague is possibly more
menacing than a villain with a motive:
It’s indifferent. It doesn’t care about
human joy or misery. It strikes with apparent
randomness. It has no meaning.
People yearn for meaning, however.
When Father Paneloux tries to make
sense of Oran’s anguish (“You deserved
it”), he misses the point. The
plague has no concept of deserving or
undeserving. It just does what plagues
do, with lethal apathy. Father Paneloux
recognizes this possibility only after he
watches the decline of an innocent.
“My God, spare this child!” he calls
out, and the boy dies anyway.
“The Plague” is full of atheists, but
many of them aren’t especially good at
atheism. First among them is Rieux,
who is the novel’s main character as
well as its narrator. Asked if he believes
in God, he replies that he doesn’t.
Then he confesses: “I’m fumbling in
the dark, struggling to make something
out.” In his confusion, he may not
believe like a Christian, but he often
behaves like one as he cares for the sick
and risks exposure to the pestilence.
He’s possessed by a moral sense, a desire
to do good in a world that he finds
impossible to understand.
Father Paneloux strives to understand
it, and one of his jobs as a priest is
to help others understand it as well.
When he delivers a second sermon, he
contradicts his first message. Christians
can’t know the will of God, he says, but
they must accept it, even to the point
of believing that the horrors of a plague
and the death of an innocent child
may be for the best.
Hoping that good can come from
bad is a natural desire, and it has the
power to console in times of grief. Yet
Father Paneloux gives the idea a radical
application: If you’re sick, don’t call a
doctor, whose business is to defy what
God intends.
This is madness, and Father Paneloux’s
actions drown out his words as
he devotes himself to the afflicted.
He becomes one of those who Pope
Francis in his March 27 “Urbi et Orbi”
liturgy called the “ordinary people …
who without a doubt are in these very
days writing the decisive events of our
time” by tending to the needs of others.
Father Paneloux may fail as a homilist
— a wiser priest would have spoken
about the need for faith, as the pope
did — but he succeeds as a Christian.
Ultimately, he dies in the service of the
sick.
His death is puzzling, though. Rieux
doubts that it’s from the plague at all.
Father Paneloux simply may have
willed himself to die. The result is
ambiguity, or maybe even absurdity, as
Camus, who was no apologist for the
Church, might have put it.
That’s the thing about theodicy,
though: It doesn’t lend itself to human
understanding. Yet it does provide an
occasion for faith and service.
John J. Miller is director of the Dow
Journalism Program at Hillsdale
College, a national correspondent for
National Review, and the author of
“Reading Around: Journalism on Authors,
Artists, and Ideas.”
April 10-17, 2020 • ANGELUS • 35

THE CRUX
BY HEATHER KING
Harrowed: notes from an
urban garden
“If you have a garden and a library,
you have everything you need.”
— Cicero, first century B.C.
Danish author Isak Dinesen had
a farm in Africa at the foot of
the Ngong Hills. I have a native
plant garden in Pasadena.
Unlike Dinesen (“Out of Africa”),
however, I don’t “own” my garden. It’s
behind the Craftsman where I rent one
of eight apartments.
I started it at the age of 64. I’m 67
now. The garden brings me satisfaction,
beauty, astonishment, joy. The
garden also requires an inordinate
amount of worry and work.
When I started out, I thought simply
to put my creative energy into arranging
a bunch of plants. I didn’t know the
garden would overtake my life.
I didn’t know the garden would help
teach me how to order my day, pray, let
go, love my neighbor, die.
• • •
COURTESY HEATHER KING
It all started when I moved in around
Christmas of 2015. The apartment is
just my style: 1930s-era with alcove
doorways, hardwood floors, and a
west-facing balcony, now crammed
with succulents and aloes, from which
to watch the sun set.
I began to be bothered, however,
by the more immediate view. The
compound is huge, going beyond the
parking lot to a vacant lot that extends
the width of both our house and the
house next door, also owned by our
landlord.
The lot was overgrown and derelict,
36 • ANGELUS • April 10-17, 2020

filled with half-buried spackling compound
buckets, busted wheelbarrows,
and rotting lawn chairs. Bit by bit that
first winter, I began to clear. Bit by bit,
the idea of a garden took hold.
I had never seriously gardened before.
I took a half-day class at Theodore
Payne Nursery in Sunland and my
imagination caught fire.
At that point we were still in a
yearslong drought. So I hired my friend
Jerry to prune, haul the stuff that was
too heavy for me, and do a one-day
rototill: the only time I have ever used
a power tool of any kind in the garden.
He also beautifully laid the garden
out with pea gravel-lined paths, a
sitting area, and a couple of nicely
shaped mounds.
I chose the plants, Jerry showed me
how to plant them in the fall of 2016,
and since then I’ve been on my own.
I’m a New Englander at heart, trained
since birth to make do with what’s
at hand, apply old-fashioned elbow
grease, and go my own way.
My tools, even now, consist of a shovel,
a spade, a pair of clippers, a rake,
gardening gloves, and a hose that has to
be uncoiled and dragged.
I use no pesticides.
Several times a year I take advantage
of the city of Pasadena’s free mulch
program. At Jackie Robinson Park, I
load the stuff into bins and recycled
potting soil bags, haul them home in
the back of my Fiat, unload, spread,
and return a time or two more.
Caring for the garden is meditative:
weeding, digging, clipping. I’ll say a
rosary while I’m out there. Or I’ll think
of all the people in the world who are
suffering — in prison, being tortured,
giving birth on a filthy pallet; hungry,
hounded, lost — and dedicate my
work, joy, and pain to them. Or I’ll
simply fall silent, both interiorly and
exteriorly, my entire being breathing
thanks and praise.
The monks call this way of being “ora
et labora” (“work and prayer”).
• • •
Many existential contradictions
coalesce in the garden: activity versus
contemplation, solitude versus community,
noise versus quiet, the effort to
love your neighbor while being driven
crazy by your neighbor.
I myself crave quiet, for example. So
I have never played music of any kind
in the garden: partly so as not to disturb
my neighbors; partly because the
notion of quiet implies doing one thing
at a time.
In return I’m surrounded by blaring
hip-hop music, chainsaws, motorized
go-carts, helicopters, and the ubiquitous
leaf blowers.
Each morning I save the gray water
from my shower in a large bucket
and haul it out to the garden. So it’s
painful to watch parents from adjacent
rentals allow their kids to turn on the
spigot and use the precious water as a
substance to play in for an hour.
Since day one, I have paid for the
garden (except for water) and single-handedly
maintained it. In return,
my landlord has raised my rent every
year, and now advertises his other
apartments as having a “lushly landscaped
backyard.”
This used to bother me more. But the
fact is, no one asked me to plant a garden.
And in a world where everything
is lent to us by God, the concept of
ownership assumes its true proportions.
We make a thing ours by loving it, and
the more we love it, the more we are
willing to disappear — to die — for it.
Never have I been more aware of the
glory of the garden than during the
current lockdown. People sit out there
with their coffee and read, or enjoy a
cocktail at dusk. Beleaguered parents
bring their kids to run around and let
off steam; neighbors have started their
own plots of vegetables and flowers.
The Western scrub jay shoots down to
nab a worm from a shovelful of freshly
turned earth. A tiny white butterfly
flickers in and out of the buckwheat.
The bees drowse in the ceanothus.
The whole thing could be plowed
under tomorrow, but the garden would
endure, unto eternity.
That is Christ saying “I will be with
you until the end of time.”
That is the promise of the Resurrection.
What Legacy will YOU
leave?
It’s easy to include a gift
for your favorite
Parish, School or Ministry
in your will or trust.
To leave a lasting legacy,
contact us today.
Kimberly Jetton
Director of Planned Giving
(213) 637-7504
KJetton@la-archdiocese.org
www.ADLALegacy.org
Jubílese Hoy!
• Hoy que está enfermo
y pensando en retirarse.
• Trabajadores con W2
en California tienen
derecho a colectar múltiples pensiones
aparte del SSA Jubilación.
• Pero sólo tiene 40 días para aplicar
para sus beneficios de CA/SDI.
• CA/SDI + SSA Retiro = Más dinero
en su bolsillo
¡No pierda su dinero! !Llámeme hoy!
818-428-5945
Conozca sus derechos como trabajador
y como jubilarse con más dinero.
Lilly Atkinson Flores
Trabajadora de casos de incapacidad
desde hace 18 años.
LLÁMEME PARA UNA CONSULTA GRATIS.
Heather King is a blogger, speaker, and the author of several books.
April 10-17, 2020 • ANGELUS • 37
14536 Roscoe Blvd. Ste #99
Panorama City, CA 91402
11032020_WorkersRights_Angelus_4-10_rect.indd 3/28/20 1 9:53 PM