Following upon my own thoughts on the deleterious effects of a long-term shutdown of the Church’s sacramental system, founded by Christ to last ‘unto the end of the ages’ – here are some stark and sobering predictions from David Bonagura Jr. at The Catholic Thing: As he puts it, perhaps Ratzinger’s prediction of a ‘smaller, more purified’ Church may soon be fulfilled before our eyes.
My own questions, amongst many, are: Do we fear death, even the faint and distant danger of death, too much? Should not Catholics, deep down in their heart of hearts, with Saint Paul, desire, or at least be willing, to be ‘dissolved and be with Christ’? Life, after all, is not really about this life.
How should our hope, our trust, our courage, our apostolic zeal be manifested? Should priests and bishops be ‘sheltering in place’? The quasi-rhetorical question of Christ has become all too real – how much faith, and we may add charity, will He find upon Earth?
We are being sifted and tested, and the choice, which each of us has to make in our conscience, by the grace of the good God, within what strictures are placed upon us by the powers that be, secular and spiritual, is both theirs and ours to make. We will all have to give an account, as to where our treasures were and are.