Ruminating on Isaiah 65

Today’s first reading, Isaiah 65: 17-21, is a challenge.

“I create Jerusalem to be a joy.”

How can we react to such a joyful message – stuck at home, insecurity in terms of the health situation in the country, and reading Albert Camus’s The Plague?

“No longer shall the sound of weeping be heard there, or the sound of crying…”

God, you’ve got to be mocking us? Though there are few cases of corona virus 19 here in Honduras, we’re confined to our houses. Some towns are letting people out for 3 hours – but from where I am it’s not really possible to get to Dulce Nombre (and they are saying that they’ll confiscate vehicles.)

But there are people who have little or no food – who are hungry. How get food for them?

Is this just a taste of what the people in the time of Isaiah were experiencing in exile? How can he say such words of hope?

“They shall live in the houses they build, and eat the fruit of the vineyards they plant.”

But my neighbor is working on his house. And two guys are working on the local church meeting hall. I am concerned that they are putting themselves at risk. But…

Yesterday I was rather upset that more than twenty people were in the local church. Though they had cancelled the Celebration of the Word, people were gathered – without much sense of a distance between them. And the mayor was not far away from where they were gathering. When I shared my concern, someone said that was fear. No, I insisted.

I may be wrong but the idea of a social distancing has little sense for the culture here.

In the meantime, I keep a distance – wash clothes and dishes, do some reading and writing, pray, and whatever. I also am keeping myself ready if I am called for anything.

But Isaiah shares these words of the Lord:

“I am about to create new heav­ens and a new earth…”

Will we let God create of us a new heaven and a new earth?

Will our social isolation open us to a new vision or will we return to the same old social isolation that is part of an individualistic culture?

Will we learn anything from this? Will be learn to be a people? Will we learn that we are in this together? This is not a way to make the concern less, as it seems to be for Cottard in The Plague. This may be a way to help us learn that we belong and thus stay in the struggle as Rambert does. Though he has a chance to escape in a few hours, he decides to stay and shares these thoughts with Dr. Rieux:

“Until now I always felt a stranger in this town, and that I’d no concern with you people. But now that I’ve seen what I’ve seen, I know that I belong here whether I want it or not. This business is everybody’s business.’

Make of us, Lord, a people who truly share in the joys and sorrows of others.

Providentially, today’s New Testament reading for Vigils in Benedictine Daily Prayer is 2 Corinthians 1:1-7, one of my favorite passages from Saint Paul, especially verse 7:

“Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, so too also you share in our consolation.”

Have hope.

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- Albert Camus, The Plague, pp. 209-210. (Vintage International)

- Photo of Jerusalem from the church Dominus Flevit - The Lord Wept.

- Print of Kathe Kollwitz from a museum in Köln, Germany