Abp Thomas Menamparampil

Reflections during Social Distancing on the identity and the destiny of the human person and the most intelligent way to set his/her goals.

1. The Thoughts of those Who “Withdrew” (Chose Timely Social Distancing) Changed the World.

Arnold Toynbee shows in his multi-volume Study of Historyhow certain great personalities in history withdrew from the scene of action for a period of time to reflect on their mission in life and returned with a clear vision and a deep sense of commitment to transform the world. He places among them Buddha, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, whose inner transformation changed world history.
Their thoughts have remained on to our own days challenging us to think in like manner with a sense of responsibility and place ourselves at the service of humanity with the utmost generosity and absolute self-confidence.

2. Identity-affirmation: The Chief Driving Force of Current History

Social Distancing that has been thrust upon us under pressure from Coronavirus has given us a chance to think. Simon Critchley writing in New York Times, 11.4.20 gives us many examples of people who spent long periods of time “thinking” during a Social Distancing imposed on them against their will: Socrates in prison; Rene Descartes housebound; Boethius, Thomas More, Antonio Gramsci in confinement. It tells us how much we can benefit, if we reflect in similar fashion while indoors on the deeper issues life, e.g. our identity and our destiny.

According to Francis Fukuyama, the driving force of recent history has been an assertion of identities by minority communities, weaker groups, and small ethnicities. Of late, there is reversal of order: Dominant Communities are asserting their identities, seeking recognition, and claiming their rights. Samuel Huntington’s Who are We presents the identity-concern of the Americans. Trump makes it audible. Today’s populist parties adopt a threatening posture over it.

3. In Contrast, The Identity-affirmation of the Human Race Casual and Perfunctory

Though all exaggerations should be avoided, affirmation of one’s collective identity and pride in one’s culture constitute the source of energy and motivation for a community or a people. They also provide the needed incentive for self-correction and self-betterment. While we look with admiration at diverse forms of self-assertion and legitimate claims of communities and nations, we only wonder why in current times humanity as a whole is forgetful of its collective identity, its common mission, and its ultimate destiny.

This is not to suggest that human beings should claim superiority over the rest of creation with utter insensitivity, as they may have done in the past. But it is a gentle reminder that all of us humans would be the collective beneficiaries, if only we are fully awakened to our true identity as human beings.

4. Man: Puff of Wind, a Passing Shadow – but Godlike

People have often recognised their insignificance in the cosmic reality. Centuries ago, the Psalmist exclaimed, “Lord, what is man, that you notice him; mere man, that you pay attention to him? He is like a puff of wind; his days are like a passing shadow” (Ps 144:1-2). This confession makes real meaning in these Covid-19 days. The Psalmist follows up the reflection, “Yet you made him inferior only to Yourself,” and gave him the responsibility for caring for his fellow-creatures (Ps 8:5-8). Thus, mysteriously, his creaturely littleness is combined with a divinely given mission: care for others.

5. Man: “A Thinking Reed” – Consequent Responsibility

Man’s greatness does not consist in that he can outsmart the rest of creation in ‘thinking,’ but in the responsibility he has been given to ‘think’ in behalf also of others: for himself, his fellow humans, and other creatures. Blaise Pascal says, “Man is only a reed, the weakest thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed—that is, reed with self-awareness, and to that extent infinitely precious, even if most of the time, his self-awareness remains a mere dormant potentiality” (Pensees). Man’s mission, therefore, is to awaken this potentiality in behalf of oneself, the rest of humanity, and the Universe.

Social Distancing may be a call for deeper self-study, self-understanding, and a revision of our values, plans, priorities, relationships; and a questioning of what is superficial, ephemeral, unjust, unfairly unequal; violence to each other and to Nature, unbalanced structures and unfair political and economic situations. It may be an invitation to a ‘spiritual globalization.’

6. Life amidst Panic

Meanwhile Corona virus advances. As long as we hear of death from a distance, they are mere names and numbers. If it strikes us near, the matter changes immediately. If some of our dear ones are touched, the atmosphere turns sore. If numbers increase around us, affecting also medical personnel and order-maintaining officials, matters go chaotic. Simon Critchley, writing in New York Times, 11.4.20, describes the feelings of individuals during Social Distancing: news is “terrifying and sad,” “daytime naps seem involuntary and fitful.” We “wake up in a mortal panic.” “We take our temperature. We wait. We take it again.” Long calls have become “sombre, more sullen and altogether more serious.” “The social structures, habits and ways of life we took for granted are dissolving.”

If history is any guide, there may be places where things can go truly out of control, where neither creed, nor code, custom, counsel, courtesy nor concern will help… and humans cease to be human. That is really the reason why questions about human identity assumes centrality in critical times.

7. This Responsibility has to be Brought to Actual Situations: That Is the Christian Vocation

Never be alarmed. If history again has something to teach us, in the midst of every human tragedy there are persons, self-possessed and self-composed, serene and confident, who are eager to help others even at great sacrifice. They avoid all pessimism. They look aloft. They “think.” They help others to think and regain their basic human orientations, retain their gentle refinement, optimism and hope.

It is to this privileged group that everyone is invited: to be of help to others in every context. This invitation stands strong not only in a situation of Coronavirus, but also before life’s ongoing anxieties and before the challenge of the human condition as a whole. This is what we understand by one’s vocation to Christian life in its deepest sense: to help others. But in today’s context, our Christian call—our missionary vocation—has to be realized in a questioning world.

8. The Ordinary Man is Helpless before Unendurable Sufferings

Job was a good man. But when his certitudes were shaken, he too questioned. “Where shall wisdom be found?… Mortals do not know the way to it, and it is not found in the land of the living… It is hidden from the eyes of the living” (Job 28:12-13,21a). Should we then wonder that the present-day society should be asking similar questions? Can we as fellow-believers/fellow-searchers become participators in their inner agonies, rather than remain severe critics of their questioning attitude? Can we risk an Emmaus walk with them? Will theoretically correct and theologically well-formulated answers alone suffice for people in pain, in inner agony? Can we help them to build a bridge from diffidence to self-confidence, despair to hope, and hesitation to faith? That is the challenge before every committed Christian today.

Today’s society is pragmatic, realistic. Apostle Thomas said “Unless I see the scars of the nails in his hands and put my finger on those scars and my hand in his side, I will not believe” (Jn 20:25). He was not unlike the modern man who seeks empirical evidence for everything.Vaccines must work. Not finding the evidence they seek…and in today’s context, not being able to see the authenticity they demand from professed Christians, there is growing disappointment within the Christian fold itself. Some walk away. Are they very different from the Emmaus duo who walked away from Jerusalem, deeply disappointed with everything, hopes crushed. They kept saying, “We had hoped that he would be the one…” (Lk 24:21).

9. Self-questioning Leads to Conversion

Matthew describes the Ascension scene, “When they saw him, they worshipped him, even though some of them doubted” (Mt 28:17). If Thomas and some of the early disciples hesitated, questioned and doubted, doubt is nothing new in Christian history. But their very questioning led them to self-questioning, change of hearts, and profounder convictions. That is what we look forward to from Social Distancing, not only the one Coronavirus-related, but life’s anxieties-related.

At one moment, stubborn questioning collapses. It turns to self-questioning. Self-questioning leads to conversion. It is in such moments that believers understand the way the Holy Spirit achieves human transformation. Peter went out and wept bitterly (Jn 22:62), Thomas broke down (Jn 20:28), the disciples were overpowered seeing his wounds (Jn 20:20).

10. Faith to be Personalized, Made into a Lived Experience

Christian faith that is often handed down from one generation to another like in readymade ‘information-packages’ in classes and homilies, has to be ‘personalized,’ and transformed into a ‘lived experience.’ Thus, a cultural heritage/family tradition changes into personally accepted set of values, convictions, and motivating beliefs. From that moment, it comes to have an existential value with deep relevance to their personal lives. Is it possible for Christian animators to walk with these confused questioners, and listen to them?

Listening with empathy already reduces half the anxiety and accomplishes half the persuasion. The Good News becomes truly good when it is preceded by attentive and sympathetic listening, and accompanied by well-reflected understanding and intelligent interpretation. Thus, it turns out to be an exercise in joint searching, ‘mutual teaching,’ and a process of discernment.

11. Avoid Falling Victim to Your Own Goodness

The greatest danger today is that the doctors and nurses fall victims to Corona virus from which they are heroically striving to rescue others. Dozens have suffered, and it seems it can turn to hundreds, even thousands. In a similar way, some can fall victims of what we described as “mutual teaching.” Some convinced believers, wanting to be a diligent learner, can be carried away by a cultural wave, the fashion of the day, and uncritically play to its tune: e.g. adopting a culture of aggressive criticism, ‘teaching a lesson’ to an opponent, insensitivity to the so-called “other” including an authority.

Response to injustice is not the humiliation or elimination or of the unjust, but his correction (e.g. a Zacchaeus). One form of ‘Collective Egoism’ is not to be confronted with another form of swollen ego: continental, national, regional, racial, ethnic, cultural, class-based, gender-based.

12. Avoid the Exaggerations of the Day

And again, it is futile to replace one exaggeration with another. One form or religious fundamentalism cannot be fought by another: by market fundamentalism, cultural fundamentalism, or any other theory proposing a rigid position, whether it be cultural, rationalist, Marxist, Nazi, ultranationalist, ethnic, fascist, or justice-related.

The recent expansion of the economy and development of new forms of communication have intensified interaction among diverse peoples and cultures. A hasty learner can be led into bungling of values, questioning of beliefs, and enfeebling of convictions. New untried ideas sound attractive and convincing when heard for the first time. One needs to be selective. But they may offer new platforms for the creative missionary to offer his message phrased in fresh and new vocabulary.

13. Healing of the Sub-conscious

Again, some serious reflection can open our eyes to another finding of modern psychology. If the sense of sin, guilt, or personal or collective responsibility for the evils which we have caused is suppressed, it just sinks into the subconscious. It does not become non-existent; it manifests itself in other forms. Sin therefore cannot be wished away; it cannot be reduced to a mere human slip, a psychological weakness, social imbalance, no matter how much you try to rationalize things and justify your past, personal or collective.

If the inherent nature of the evil in sin is not recognized and dealt with accordingly, there are bound to be psychological and sociological consequences: in the individual, tension, stress, anxiety, sense of fear, of worthlessness, and even self-hatred; in society, social tension, violence, corruption, hedonism, lack of respect for God’s creation, collective self-hatred. Personal repentance and change alone will bring healing. Similarly, the memory of collective wrongs in the history of one’s people, live on to harass its members like nightmare scalling for humble acceptance, efforts towards remedies, and healing of memories. Neglected ghosts will return.

14. “Everyone is Looking for You” (Mk 1:37)

Humanity is in the process of self-discovery especially in agonizing moments, like a child exploring its bodily parts, like an adolescent becoming aware of his developing faculties and his role in life. What am I? What is man (Ps 144:3)? Can believers be active agents in this search? The present day mission is precisely about being ready to give respectful answers to intelligent and penetrating questions, co-searching and co-discovering the deeper dimensions of present realities and of ancient truths, until Christ’s presence is noticed.
In fact everyone who is looking for more serious answers, fuller explanation of things, proposing a theory for a more complete understanding of reality, or is radically committed to the emergence of a better world, is ardently in search of Jesus (Mk 1:37). Indeed, every person in search of meaning and purpose ultimately, is “looking” for Him (Mk 1:37). Here the true believer finds his/her vocation.