Fifth Sunday of Easter.
This is now the ninth Sunday without public Mass. Be assured that I am still celebrating the Mass for you privately every day. Every celebration of the Eucharist is the action of Christ united with the members of his body, the Church. In these unusual times, we must stay united in prayer until we can come together again in God’s house.
A special blessing on all mothers, this Mother’s Day. “May the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.” Many of us will not be able to visit our mothers this weekend. I try to get to Ottawa to visit my mom every month or so, but my last visit was before March break. She is doing fine, but for now we are all being super-cautious about visiting the elderly.
It feels as if life itself has been put on hold. This lockdown cannot continue indefinitely. Spring has arrived. Children need to be playing outdoors. Parents need to get back to work. And we all need to get back to Church! Cardinal Collins has sent out a letter to the faithful expressing his hope that we may soon begin public Mass again, while still protecting our vulnerable parishioners. As of yet, there is no telling when this will happen.
Meanwhile, my personal home-schooling is going well. I have been working through St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians in the original Greek (which I learned in Seminary, but needed to refresh). I admit that it is slow going and I am constantly referring to the dictionary. But the benefit is that I have to carefully consider every word and every phrase. There are some great passages in First Corinthians, and it is a pleasure to be able to read them as St. Paul wrote them! Our modern translations are excellent, but inevitably something is lost in translation; though any loss, it must be said, is compensated by an immense gain in accessibility.
St. Jerome, in the 4th century, translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin. He had to learn Hebrew to do this, and he consulted with Jewish Rabbis who helped him with difficult passages. The resulting ‘Latin Vulgate’ Bible was the standard for western Christians until the late 15th century. With the invention of the printing press it became possible to put a copy of the translated Bible into every home. Immense strides have been made in biblical scholarship in the last two centuries and today the Bible is readily available in almost every language.
We must make the best use of the time that is given to us. For me this has been a time for deepening my knowledge and love of Scripture, and in that way drawing closer Christ. We were not able to celebrate Easter together, and that truly is a great tragedy, but I am hopeful that we will be able to celebrate Pentecost.
