Romeo and Juliet were possibly the most famously tragic victims of a lockdown.
They fell in love at first sight during a ball. They were married secretly the next day by Friar Laurence. Twenty-four hours later the young lovers were dead, a case of double suicide. All because of a lockdown. Friar Laurence’s message to Romeo warning him about Juliet’s fake suicide by poison did not reach him due to a threatened plague that had shut down some streets in Romeo’s hometown, where he had sought sanctuary after a street brawl.
Lockdown, quarantine, timely, trendy words. In the season of Lent, when Catholics are expected to fast, give up their bad habits and certain pleasures, they are reminded of the 40 days when Jesus isolated himself in the desert. Those 40 days could be the origin of the word quarantine, from the Latin “quadraginta,” meaning 40.
We don’t hear of 40-day quarantines anymore in our busy modern life. Jesus’ time in the wide open desert does not conjure up images of a confined area like a monk’s cell. The current practice is common, however, for groups or individuals to go on a retreat – the Cursillo movement of 50 years ago comes to mind – especially for lax or loose Catholics to reflect on their lives, their sins, and resolve to become better people. Those retreats were of short duration, like three days.
What we are experiencing today in the time of coronavirus is something of a nonreligious retreat, and it could, might, stretch to 40 days and more, who knows? The proclamation of an enhanced community quarantine from March 14 to Easter Sunday is a 30-day prison sentence for our own good, with social distancing as a major theme. Pity the cops whose Lenten penance is collaring pigheaded loiterers who will not heed the advice to stay home and be safe from an invisible killer.
In the US, where the city that never sleeps, New York, has been awakened to find itself at the epicenter of the disease, President Trump sounded like an uber optimist when, instead of retreating, he advanced the hope that Americans will pack their churches come Easter Sunday, April 12. “An aspirational goal,” said his defenders. Like owning an Hermès bag.
