Both the first reading and the Gospel tie the notion of discipleship with the message of repentance. But, as the experience of Jonah suggests, repentance is more than just the absence of sin. It is more active in the sense that one turns away from in order to turn towards. Consider the dramatic conversion of the first reading. It was a time of xenophobia as Israel was in exile. She was a victim playing the blame-game especially of the foreigners in whose land she was now disenfranchised. And of all things, Jonah was asked to preach to these aliens. To his surprise, one and all citizen of Nineveh turned away from sin and turned towards God.
The second reading provides the basis for this conversion. In order to turn away from sin and turn towards God, St Paul speaks of the provisional nature of the world. The world as he knew it was going to end therefore the Corinthians were advised not put all their trust in the world. The context was clear—St Paul thought he was living within the imminence of the Parousia. He, like many of his contemporaries, believed that Jesus’ return was sooner rather than later. On the one hand, such an advice can sound depressing, if not distressing, especially in a time like this, a raging pandemic, when everything is uncertain. But, on the other hand, it is living with a hopeful sense of dependence and a recognition of how reliant we are on God and how much our lives should be directed to Him.
Within this framework of St Paul’s provisional cosmos, where we are shown that nothing is more contingent than a raging pandemic, the question is, how can we be disciples in a passing world?
Apart from the economic havoc, an issue that this pandemic has underscored is the reality of death. That this pandemic has been devastating, in every sense of the word, is true. However, our reaction might just reveal where we are and where we have come from. To a large extent, the prevailing attitude has been to ignore death. This outright attempt to deny mortality has largely been unsuccessful, which may explain why we want to control the narrative. A hedonistic lifestyle is a good illustration. Live today to the hilt without a thought for tomorrow. A more excellent example is the phenomenon of euthanasia. It shows that even at the hour of death, we want to be in control. Whilst the acceptance of assisted death is not as widespread here as it is in some parts of the world, perhaps what is more indicative of that determination to disregard death is the mushrooming of nursing homes. They simply symbolise our desire to shift death away from our line of vison. Stating this is in no way a judgement of those who have an elderly parent in a home.
Instead, it is trying to make sense of St Paul’s exhortation in the second reading. Death, which is a “passing away”, can teach us how to live in this world that is itself fading away. But it is complicated because along with disdaining death, we may have also lost faith in God. Faith helps us navigate death as well as gives dignity to human existence because it sustains and helps us grapple with the incomprehensible.
What has clearly replaced a faith in God is another faith—a belief in the engineering prowess of our technical, social and political skills; that these are adequate when facing the full reality of life and death. As such, our faith in God is nothing more than a faith in ourselves. If not, faith just means that God must bend to our will.
Whether we like it or not, Covid has merely laid bare this nakedness of ours, that is, we can die and our faith in God is weak. A firm faith would have allowed us to perceive death, while not positively willed by God, nevertheless, it would be permissively allowed by Him as part of His mysterious plan of salvation. Faith in God gives us a perspective which may allow us to hold death, if not like St Francis of Assisi who considered death to be a sister, at least death as the essential key in the passageway to eternity. Therefore, Covid has done two things. It has brought death squarely right in front of our face as well as challenge our faith in God.
This is where our discipleship comes in. Christ called the four of them for a purpose—to be fishers of men. Of course, at the top of every vocation is the call to salvation. Everyone is called for salvation. However, salvation ought to be worked out in the concrete. So, how do we exercise this discipleship in a situation where the fear of death has become almost a deity to be worshipped? How can we be disciples of faith in God who remains mysterious in the workings of the world?
Firstly, as disciple we must recognise that here and now is not all there is. To say the least, our civilisation is in existential shock as our “normal” has been so disrupted that we struggle to expand our vocabulary to embrace the “new normal”. Our novel arrangements have been, at best “disincarnational” since we have veered toward the glorification of the virtual, and at worst, flounder helplessly in mere materialism as they have left many adrift and alone in facing the incomprehensible abyss of death. There must be more to life than the here and now. This brings us to the second point.
A disciple has to live beyond the here and now. A disciple of hope with a knowledge that is grounded, neither endorsing reckless fatalism (takdir) nor enmeshed in destructive fear. This hope allows us to hold the tension between what is necessary in health measures—masks, social distancing, avoidance of large crowds and what is essential to us as social beings—meaningful contact that is human in expression. Ultimately, our faith accepts that no solution, this side of eternity and apart from God, is fool proof. “To live forever” is not eternity.
In a world searching for direction amidst uncertainty, the disciple is called to be the solid Gospel of Hope. Today has been designated as the Sunday of the Word of God. This Word of God, the Gospel of Hope is where one encounters a rightly ordered perspective where the mortal is understood through the lens of the immortal. We are called to a fearlessness (not recklessness) in the face of death so as to be a sign of hope in a God who, despite all the despair surrounding us, is working for our salvation. Therefore, our hope is not in the cure, even if it is a great good, but rather our hope is in God because faith in Him is the only vaccine against a madness of death without eternity.
