THE Christian world is now in the period of Lent, beginning last Ash Wednesday and lasting 40 days, excluding Sundays, leading to Easter Sunday. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness before he started his public ministry. Today’s Lent is a period of preparation for the events of Holy Week – Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday – that are at the heart of Christianity.
This year’s observance of Lent coincides with world events that have forced many changes in the way we observe many religious events like Ash Wednesday. Because of the coronavirus COVID-19 epidemic, the Church has asked people in church to avoid touching each other, as this may be one way the virus spreads. Even the traditional marking of the forehead with ashes on Ash Wednesday has been replaced by sprinkling of ashes on the hair.
There is very little known about how the virus infects its human victims. There is only a “current understanding,” based on the behavior of previous viruses, that COVID-19 must be infecting people in similar ways – through respiratory droplets that are picked up by others when an infected person coughs or sneezes. Or when one touches a surface containing the virus and then touches one’s face.
But there is yet no explanation for how the virus, after the initial outbreak in China, has quickly reached over 30 other countries – to nearby South Korea, Thailand, Japan, and the Philippines; to as far as Iran, Iraq, Oman, and Kuwait in the Middle East; to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India in Central and South Asia; to Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Spain in Europe; to the United States, Canada, and Brazil; to Australia way down in the south; and even to the Canary Islands in the Atlantic off northwest Africa.
This is a time for special care to avoid possible contamination through carelessness, but also for people “get involved or do something useful to help the situation,” in the words of Cardinal Peter Turkson, head of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, at a news conference to present the Pope’s Lenten message.
The Pope’s message itself stressed: “Not only are Christians called to generously share the richness of the Gospel and gifts from God. Today too there is a need to appeal to men and women of goodwill to share, by almsgiving, their goods with those most in need, as a means of personally participating in the building of a better world.”
