‘Be still and know that I am God’ →

At midnight tonight, OSV headquarters will fall silent. In line with Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb’s stay-at-home order, we have everyone who can work remotely doing so, while the production and distribution staff will take a much-needed rest after weeks of producing as much as possible, in preparation for a shutdown.

In the midst of it all, I paused to read the psalm for today’s Mass. Psalm 46 seems eerily relevant to what the world is going through today: “God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in distress. Therefore we fear not, though the earth be shaken and mountains plunge into the depths of the sea.”

Rejoice, Jerusalem →

On Thursday, we passed the midpoint of Lent 2020. The Sunday after the midpoint — today — has long been known as Laetare Sunday, after the first word (in Latin) of the entrance antiphon of Mass for the Fourth Sunday of Lent: “Rejoice, Jerusalem, and all who love her. / Be joyful, all who were in mourning; / exult and be satisfied at her consoling breast.”

Across the United States, and indeed around the world, the rose-colored vestments that we also see on Gaudete Sunday, the Third Sunday of Advent, made their appearance on video rather than in person.

There and back again →

I could not visit the OSV chapel yesterday, because Cordelia (our 14-year-old daughter) and I left Huntington at 5:20 a.m. to drive to Dubuque, Iowa, to retrieve Jacob and Stephen, the older two of our three sons. Both attend Loras College, and both will graduate this spring. I doubt that they will have a graduation ceremony, though when life resumes, we will throw them one heck of a party.

Loras held out longer than Marian University in Indianapolis, where Grace, our second-oldest daughter, is a freshman. Both have now gone to online courses for the rest of the academic year, so students were ordered to empty their dorm rooms.

The imitation of Christ →

Catholics are used to hearing that we have a priest shortage in the United States. Yet if we have learned one thing in the past few weeks, it’s that we should consider ourselves lucky. As the coronavirus pandemic has made its way to our shores and the public celebration of Masses has been canceled across the country, the vast majority of American Catholics are finally getting a taste of what it’s like to be a Catholic in the sparsely populated regions of the United States, much less in the Amazon.

When is the next time that any of us will receive the Eucharist? Only God knows.