To the world the Corona is only a virus: an enemy. That it is, even for Christians. But a Christian is under obligation to love his enemy. To ‘love’ is to know or to understand. Loving is a state of deepening understanding. Love overcomes, or should overcome, stranger anxieties and transform strangers into neighbours. The satanic degrades neighbours into strangers, and strangers into enemies.

There is something funny about mobilizing ourselves toe to top for fighting this virus without making any effort to know what it seeks to convey. Does a virus have anything to tell us? You might well ask. The answer to that question is a counter-question: If Balaak’s donkey can speak the truth to the Prophet (Numbers 22) –consider the irony of it- why not a virus to us? Don’t discount that possibility. Even stones, said Jesus, could shout, given human callousness. So, it may not be all that odd to heed the Corona.

Let’s start with the obvious. The virus –all viruses- emanate from the unknown. We may get to know them over time; but when they make their debut appearances, they are emissaries of the unknown. There was a time when the ‘unknown’ would have been deemed ‘unknowable’. The means to respond to them, then, would have been sought in magic. The difference between magic and science is that the latter believes in engaging with the unknown and, in the process, attempts to interpret its ways, making the unknown unknowable. Viruses could well be reminders, as Hamlet said, that there is more to life than is reckoned in our philosophies. That is why we feel humbled and menaced by these peremptory visitations. It is bad for our ego to be taken by surprise. It pricks the bubble of our presumptions; which is a greater problem for the proud than it is for the meek. So, the proud inherit shocks and discomfitures; whereas the meek inherit the earth. Admitted, it is earth riddled with viruses too. But only in a world so riddled is there any logic to meekness. So, it is a spiritual absurdity to expect to be rewarded with a virus-free world –a blemish-less paradise- for being meek. One has to be particularly proud to insist on such a reward for meekness!

What is the specific spiritual and philosophical significance of this reality? Put simply it is: it could be a reminder that there is a realm of reality outside our self-embraced limits of routine and awareness. Life is capable of surprising us and of doing so when we are least ready for it. That is because we are not in the habit of being vigilant. To choose to be un-vigilant is to remain prone to being taken by surprise. That is why Jesus said, “Watch and pray!” Be vigilant. Why should we be? Well, because there is a great deal out there that we have not reckoned in our life-strategy. Or, as St Paul says, “Now we know only in part.” But we don’t know this to be the case. So we believe that we are self-sufficient in our mental and material means. In that case we are closer to the Rich Fool in the parable in St. Luke 12 that we realize.

Let’s be specific. As yet, there is no specific treatment for the Corona. (Treatments and vaccines may emerge in due course.) So, what we can do now is to try and tone up our immune system. But note: this is akin to the spiritual approach! The term for this is ‘strengthening the inner man’ via spiritual discipline. The pride of the scientific world and the profit of the global pharma industry –I nearly wrote the ‘drug mafia’- is in getting you dependent on its wares. It is bad news for this world of ‘progress’ that you ‘regress’ to the old-fashioned idea of depending more on yourself by toning up your immune system. May be, it is not far-fetched to think of the virus as nature’s SOS regarding our immune status. When our inner strength, or inner man, or immune system is compromised everything out there assumes a menacing character. If you are (God forbid) undergoing chemotherapy, even the proximity of a dear one could prove hazardous to you. It is your immune system that makes the difference between friend and foe. Enmity, that is to say, is as much because of you as it is because of someone else. You can control and manage only yourself. If, say, by next year humankind develops specific immunity to the Corona, it will cease to be a threat. Looking back, we may feel amused (and embarrassed) at how we panicked because of a lowly virus!

Hence the irony of this pandemic: being with yourself –as against finding your refuge in crowds or social diversions- may well be the only feasible remedy for our existential and spiritual illnesses. There is no alternative to being authentic in oneself as human beings.

Finally, the Corona has come to us as an agent of disruption. See how everything has been torn apart in no time! But is ‘disruption’ such a bad thing? Disruption also can denote the birth-pang of a new beginning. It all depends on what we see in the given crisis. A crisis is a hybrid of danger and opportunity. Most people see the peril. Christians are obliged, if we are anywhere near the role-model of Jesus Christ, to see prospects hidden behind the tantalizing veils of perils. Jonah, in the Old Testament, was transfixed between these contrary outlooks for a while. He started off to Tarshish because he could see only peril in the Nineveh-crisis. God opened his eyes to see it differently. It happened through apersonal crisis –what Karl Jaspers calls a ‘boundary-situation’ and, Arthur Koestler, a ‘foundation-shattering experience’. The question stares us in the face now: how shall we cope with this emerging disruption?What sense shall we make of it? Is there no way this raging contemporary Galilee can be calmed? Has the connection between storm and faith ceased to be of spiritual tender?