“God is too real to be met anywhere other than reality.” – Thomas Merton
And we are in reality right now. And we are grieving. This Coronavirus thing hurts. We all feel it. If we don’t come to terms with our very real grief in this moment, then we will be trying to interact with God and other people with unexpressed grief in our hearts, and our hearts will turn hard. Very little compassion will come out of us. Most of us detach and disconnect from our grief. That’s just the way we are as 21st century Americans. We’re used to expansion. And inflation. And rising stocks. And growing churches. None of that is happening right now. And we’re anxious about that. We’ve never quite been here before, and we hate it. The Church needs to become a grieving space. This is our mandate for Holy Week.