Eucharist in the Time of Corona

During a road trip through the state of New Mexico recently, I was awestruck with God’s amazing handiwork all around me. The beautiful and diverse topography, from the white sand hills, to the desert plants and sun sets, to the rocky mesas and the mountains covered in lush evergreens, had a most calming effect on my body, mind, and soul. Driving along the state countryside, I found myself marveling in God’s gift of simplicity and harmony.

New Mexico is known as the “The land of Enchantment”. It is the land of my ancestors where the adobe structures, with their unique design and earth tone colors blend into the landscape, making it not easy to distinguish the boundaries between God’s handiwork and the human made structures in the environment. It all fits so harmoniously, and it spoke so loudly to me about the kind of simplicity and harmony that we are called to as co-creators with God.

In his encyclical, Laudato Si, pope Francis speaks of the world, the earth as our common home, affirming that as Christians’ we are called “to accept the world as a sacrament of communion, as a way of sharing with God and our neighbors on a global scale. It is our humble conviction that the divine and the human meet in the slightest detail in the seamless garment of God’s creation, in the last speck of dust of our planet” (as quoted in Laudato Si, #9).

Today, I am left with a deeper understanding of what it means to accept the world as a sacrament of communion, a sign of our communion with our Creator God. How can we cultivate the virtue of simplicity and commit ourselves to the art of simple living so that others and the whole of God’s creation may simply live? What small changes can each one of us make to strike a greater harmony in our relationship with God, with others, with nature, and with ourselves? Let us commend our efforts to St. Francis of Assisi, who models for us “just how inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace” (Laudato Si, #10).

For more reflection read,

https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html