Our Jewish elder cousins commemorate The Passover by solemnly declaring “Now we are slaves, next year may we be free men.” This year, the injunction to retell the saga of The Exodus from slavery — the “charter myth of the Israelites” — resonates with fearful passion.
Isolated with their nuclear families, confined to their homes, Jews pray that the invisible angel of viral death will spare their loved ones,
their elderly and their vulnerable — that their homes will be safely passed over.
The Jews are not alone praying to Our Father for deliverance from the Corona virus.
Temporarily deprived of a few of our customary freedoms, we have begun to understand the value of our liberty predictably taken for granted.
When the dust settles will we come to regard our response as hysterically exaggerated? To demote the pandemic to a passing inconvenience, that cost beloved lives but should not have been permitted to so intrude into our day, to day celebration of life to shrug off and swiftly forget the lock downs? To mourn the economic, social and psychological devastation having been absurdly unnecessary? To castigate our political leaders for their many inadequacies?
The wise person learns rapidly through experience that life's journey of self discovery opens up the prospect of better days ahead, when putting into place all that today's fears, and struggles teach us to implement Our Father's invitation to love our neighbour, as we would wish to be loved.
“Now we are slaves, next year may we be free men,” our Jewish brethren declared this year, as they do every year. But when these words are spoken with deep humility on a night so different, the Seder (1) will register its lesson that life is never to be taken for granted from one day, to the next.
(1) https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/activities/view.cfm?id=544
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