I have not had such a prolonged amount time at home with no scheduled public ministerial obligations in a very long time. I have much more time to pray – always a good thing for anyone – because the Psalms were not composed to be rushed.
I can also now attend to some delayed projects and activities. It is amazing to realize how often some things are pushed to the back burner when one is busy with routine important activities. For example, I have been a subscriber to National Geographic magazine for more than 45 years. I have a full basket of back issues that I now have begun to review. Many of the articles in National Geographic reinforce the matters that Pope Francis has frequently raised regarding the destruction of our ecological home. Plants, water sources, forests and animals are often the topics of articles in the magazine, and too often they reveal that our planet is undergoing increasingly destructive events and actions.
The resolutions to these issues that the magazine’s authors might recommend may often be opposed by Catholic moral teaching [Laudato Si’ #50-52]. Nevertheless, the mere admission that we are facing an ecological crisis is a shared concern from the Vatican to the editors’ desks at National Geographic.
Pope Francis’s landmark encyclical Laudato Si’ calls our attention to the challenges that we currently face in preserving and caring for the Earth our common home. Nature scientists and Catholic authorities should not simply highlight our differences over what might be appropriate and successful ethical remedies before acknowledging our fundamental common concerns.
Not only am I at home during my quarantine seclusion, many of the people of the DMV have been homebound because of the snow events this past week. This is my first significant D.C. snowfall. Moreover, while my hometown of Chicago might be able to manage these snow accumulations rather easily, for those of us without a lot of experience in handling heaps of snow, we find it a great challenge. I have been told that people in our area reach near hyper-alarm when lots of snow falls. These winter weather events were further complicated by the surge in pandemic cases.
Our tendency might be to hoard when our faith response calls for us to share. Snowfalls also dramatically increase the difficulties for our homeless neighbors. The DMV is ordinarily a milder climate region, but winter weather changes that advantage for those who live on our streets and under viaducts and bridges. This past week must have been particularly challenging for our archdiocesan Catholic Charities and other social service outreach efforts as they tried to respond to the increased need for clothing and shelter. I know that our parishioners have established and amplified food pantries and shelter assistance efforts in response to the pandemic, and these now are more needed than they might have been before the snowfalls of this past week. I invite us all to support those worthy expressions of charity and outreach for the poor.
As I pray and offer Mass each day in my chapel, my heart is filled with images of the folks of our Archdiocese – our kids, seniors, clergy, and religious. Those images have managed to make these days something of a retreat for me. I am also aware of the experience of being sidelined along with many others because of this virus. If nothing else, I have rediscovered how to run a washing machine and a dryer – a skill that most of our priests probably have had to learn as well!
(Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, writes his “What I Have Seen and Heard” column for the Catholic Standard and Spanish-language El Pregonero newspapers and websites of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. This column was submitted on Jan. 7, 2022, one week after Cardinal Gregory had tested positive for COVID-19. The cardinal, who experienced no symptoms and is fully vaccinated and boosted, has remained in quarantine at home for the time being following his doctor’s recommendation.)
In statement, Cardinal Gregory says he tested positive for COVID-19 and has no symptoms
