ROME UNDER QUARANTINE Persevering in Hope Amid the COVID-19 Crisis

A. M. D. G.

ROME UNDER QUARANTINE Persevering in hope amid the COVID-19 crisis

Father Joseph Carola, S.J.

Blest be the Lord for He has wondrously shown me His merciful love in a fortified city!

Psalm 31 (30): 22

PREFACE

“I am writing to you in order to let you know that I am well.” With these words, on Friday, March 6th, 2020, the Friday of the first full week of Lent, I began this series of updates to family and friends. At first I wrote only to my immediate family. Like everyone else in the United States, they had been hearing horrific stories about COVID-19 coming from northern Italy. At that point the virus had not yet notably spread down the Italian peninsula. We were not quarantined in Rome. But these distinctions were probably lost on many who did not live in Italy. Italy, the entire country, had become or at least was becoming the next China. That is what they understood. In the end they weren’t far off the mark. But in those first days of Lent, we still enjoyed freedom of movement in the Eternal City. Rome was not Milan. I wanted to let my family know that I was in good health and in a safe place. I also wanted to encourage them to join me in prayer through Our Lady’s intercession. Some days later and in rapid succession thereafter, events began to unfold dramatically across the entire nation. Lombardy and the Veneto went into lockdown—an impenetrable red zone. Then, Prime Minister Conte declared that there was no longer a red zone—there was simply Italy. For he had quarantined the whole country. So I wrote to my family again in order to assure them of my well-being during these traumatic events. On that email I also copied various friends.

At first these updates were not much more than just that: updates meant to convey basic information. Hence, the first several letters in this series are rather stark in comparison with the ones that follow. But I soon realized that these updates could help my family and friends to persevere in hope amid the COVID-19 crisis as it developed in other parts of Europe and North America just as it had already spread throughout China and Italy. For by mid-March, the coronavirus epidemic had become a global pandemic. The mother of one former student of mine in Texas wrote to say that my updates read like a short story. The father of another former student also in Texas thanked me for my latest “sermon”. Others commented on how inspiring and up-lifting they found these updates. My sister Maureen encouraged me to save them and bind them together. These positive reactions confirmed my mission of inspiring hope in others—a mission that the good Lord had indeed already given me last summer: the mission to assure the joy and the hope of my students, but, as I have come to see, the hope and joy of others as well. On this account, these updates have taken on the character of a literary apostolate by means of which from within my own Roman quarantine I can serve in a priestly manner those who read them. They remain very much a work-in-progress. For we are still not out of the woods or free, that is, from those dreadful and often fatal microbes.

Most importantly, please know that every paragraph, every line and every word is accompanied by a prayer. For these updates are the fruit of prayer offered for each one of you every morning from my perch overlooking the rooftops and domes of Rome.

FATHER JOSEPH CAROLA, SJ

6 March 2020 Rome

Pax Christi

I am writing to you in order to let you know that I am well. Rome, moreover, is quite calm and somewhat empty since there are so few tourists out and about. Most of the coronavirus cases are in the North of Italy. But there are about forty cases in Lazio, the Italian Province where Rome is located. I imagine that the virus will continue to spread. In fact, I have no doubt that it has been here already for a while, but, since many cases are either asymptomatic or mild and manageable at home, they have not been reported.

On Wednesday evening, 4 March, the Italian government closed all the schools and universities in the country until 15 March in order to stop the spread of the virus. But it seems likely that that closure will be extended through Easter. For us at the Gregorian University, the closure simply means that there are no classes, lectures or seminars just now, and that the library reading room is closed. But the university doors and the offices remain open, and we are able to receive students individually. All of my students—both in my seminar and my lecture course—are able to continue with their work. The seminar students continue to read, write and email their weekly essays, and I continue to read them. For the moment, however, we just can't get together in order to discuss them. As for my weekly lectures, I have recordings of them all—thanks be to God! Two years ago I gave permission to an American student, who was still perfecting his Italian, to record them. So on Wednesday evening within hours of the governmental decree closing the schools, I began emailing those recorded lectures to my 125 students who, thanks to these recordings, can continue their work until we meet again.

Accustomed to preparing for hurricanes, I have purchased about three weeks of tinned food stuffs, olive-oil potato chips, rice cakes, jam and water. So, just in case I am quarantined in the building, I am okay for food. But pray God that it will not come to that. Anyway, the Jesuit community is well provided for in this regard. I also made sure to go to confession—twice, in fact—over the past ten days while I have still been able to move freely about the city. So body and soul are in order—at least, for the time being.

I do hope that you are making the necessary preparations, most especially, spiritual preparations, for these unprecedented events now unfolding globally. I am confident that the good Lord is with us in these days of crisis. I pray that His Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, wrap each and every one of you safely in Her mantle. May She place us in the Heart of Her Son Jesus where no harm can ever come to us.

I remember as a young boy how our dear mother, during a tornado warning, took me into the central hallway of our home on Deal Street in Houston, and we knelt down before a statue of Our Lady of Fatima and prayed for protection through Her intercession. I would now like to invite each of you to join me in praying the rosary daily. Through that prayer we will be united together in a spiritual bond of love with the Mother of Our Lord as She places us in the Heart of Her Son. There we have nothing to fear.

II.

12 March 2020 Rome under quarantine

Pax Christi

On Sunday, 8 March, the Italian Government prohibited various public gatherings in its attempts to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Religious ceremonies fall into that category. The Italian Bishops' Conference has cooperated with the government and suspended public Masses until 3 April. The government has also extended the closure of schools and universities until 3 April. Today (or perhaps it was yesterday afternoon—things keep developing so quickly from day to day, and hour to hour!) it announced that all businesses, restaurants, coffee shops, stores (except for grocery stores and pharmacies) are to close until the end of the month. So more and more the world around me is shutting down.

As a result of Sunday evening’s decree, the North American College cancelled the Station Church Lenten Pilgrimage. On the following morning, Monday, 9 March, I was to have celebrated the Station Church Mass at the Basilica of San Clemente. I had prepared a sermon featuring the basilica’s Saint Catherine Chapel—a sermon, in fact, that I had anticipated preaching for some years (although under very different circumstances!), and for which I had been reading for several months. I had subtitled the sermon Renewing our hope through holy women in honor of both Saint Catherine of Alexandria, to whom the chapel is dedicated, and Saint Frances of Rome, whose feast day the Church commemorates annually on March 9th. At 9:00pm on Sunday night, however, I learned that I would not be able to celebrate Mass and preach at San Clemente. The superior of the Casa Santa Maria, the residence for American priests studying in Rome, had kindly called to inform me of the cancellation. But he also invited me to celebrate Mass and preach at the Casa’s concelebrated 6:30am Mass the following morning. I gladly accepted. After Mass one of the priests in residence, a former student of mine from Atlanta, Georgia, pointed out the image of St. Catherine of Alexandria that adorns their chapel’s sanctuary. I likewise noticed the images of Our Lady and St. Mary Magdalene to whom I had also referred in my sermon. I had, in fact, known of the image of Our Lady of Humility over the high altar, but I had been unaware of the other two. When I saw the marble bas-reliefs of St. Catherine and the Magdalene on either side of the high altar, I immediately recognized God's providence. For I had not chosen that site in which to preach on their account, nor had the Casa superior known the theme of my sermon. Yet as an alternative site, the Casa Santa Maria chapel could not have been more ideal. Providence had clearly arranged it. Standing at the foot of the high altar, I said to my former student: “This is a providential sign from God letting us know that we are going to get through this.”

By the following day, Tuesday, 10 March, Rome was quarantined. Residents have permission only to go out for groceries, medicine and necessary work. Thankfully, we Jesuits live in a very big building. Our community is located on the top floors of the Gregorian University. We can move about the building freely. We also have a large rooftop terrace with a spectacular view of Rome. I have been spending more and more time up there. I was up there praying and reading, for example, this morning for 2 ½ hours. The weather has been quite nice. This morning there was a perfectly blue sky, lots of sunshine and a cool breeze—one of those beautiful early Spring days in Rome. The sun works as a natural antidepressant and the vitamin D helps to boost one’s immune system. As it turns out, I am also getting a bit of a tan!

In the several days since the decree of general quarantine, many, but not all, of the American seminarians and priests studying in Rome have returned to the United States. Others, however, have 6 stayed behind in the North American College (the US seminary) and the Casa Santa Maria. The Scots College, the French College, the Irish College and the English College (all national seminaries) have sent all their students home. Most of these students will have to put themselves in self-quarantine for the first fourteen days back in their home countries. Rome has not seen the closure of the national colleges since the Second World War—and even then the Irish College remained open! We are living in truly historic times.

The Gregorian University still intends to resume classes after Easter—that is, if we have returned to some sense of normalcy by then. In the meantime, I continue to send my students recordings of my lectures for them to listen to at home. My seminar students continue to read, write and send me their essays. So our academic life goes on.

I find that I have lots of time for reading and for prayer—the latter being a profound source of consolation these days. The relaxed pace of quarantine is not so bad. My only real challenge is keeping anxious moments to a minimum. When I read, for example, of President Trump’s decision to restrict travel between Europe and the United States, I must confess, I did have a notably anxious moment. But it quickly passed—especially when I saw that the restriction was only for thirty days and that, in fact, it does not include US citizens.

Let us continue to keep one another in prayer. Let us be particularly mindful of the sick, the elderly and those who will struggle economically during this present crisis. May the good Lord please bring it to a swift end. In the meantime, I pray that Our Lady wrap you and me in Her mantle.

III.

16 March 2020 Rome under quarantine

Pax Christi

Had the first deadline for the closure of schools and universities not been extended, our students would have returned to the university today. But that deadline was extended until April 3rd, the Friday before Palm Sunday. In the university calendar we have a two-week vacation already scheduled beginning that Friday afternoon. In other words, we are off for Holy Week and Easter Week. I should have returned to the United States on school-related business on Easter Monday. But that trip has now been deferred. So, if we are able to resume classes in April, we shall see our students, God willing, on Monday, 20 April.

Today is a beautiful day in Rome—a blue, cloudless sky, lots of sunshine, and temperatures in the 60s. I spent more than an hour this morning up on our rooftop terrace, basking in the sun and praying for all of you. The forecast for the rest of the week remains the same.

Yesterday, from the terrace, Cardinal Ladaria, SJ, (who lives in our community) and I enjoyed watching some of the American priests over at the Casa Santa Maria playing Frisbee on their terrace. From the looks and the sounds of it, they were having a good time.

As I sit up on our terrace, I take odd consolation in hearing automotive traffic on the streets below. There are not many cars out, but there are some. And the now much-limited buses still rumble along through the Piazza Venezia. The garbage collectors were out this morning. I have never taken such joy in hearing them empty the large containers of glass bottles. That crashing sound is a reminder that life does indeed still go on even under quarantine. Most of all, though, I enjoy listening to the birds. No one seems to have informed them about COVID-19! They sing the good Lord’s praises, and so should we.

My Jesuit community and I remain well. We all are living like monks now. The Pontifical Gregorian University has become the Pontifical Gregorian Charterhouse! We have added daily Eucharistic Adoration to our house schedule. Other innovations include practicing “social distancing” even within the community and doing all the house chores since our support staff cannot come to work this week because of the increased quarantine restrictions in the city. The university archivist, another theology professor and I form one team assigned to cleaning toilets and the showers! It is like being back in the novitiate again!

As I am writing to you, I can hear the voice of a child and mother playing together on a nearby terrace. What joy that child’s voice conveys.

I find that I am able to manage the quarantine well enough because of my already well-ordered daily life. I am accustomed to following a daily order of prayer, work, rest and recreation. Under normal circumstances, I can spend about six hours a day in the library where I am either preparing lectures, reading students’ thesis chapters and essays, or doing my own research and writing. These days I have no lectures to prepare, but I am still reading the work that my students had either given me before the quarantine or have sent me via the email. I am also managing to do some of my own reading. Quite remarkably, I am making great strides in my use of technology! I have never skyped so much in my life! Prayer throughout the day remains my greatest consolation and source of peace. Moments shared with the Jesuit community are similarly sustaining.

My heart goes out to all who suffer. I learned yesterday that the father of one of my former students, an Italian medical doctor, has contracted the virus. Another friend is sick in the US, but not necessarily with COVID-19. I am praying for them all. I am also praying for all of you, especially those among you who may not be able to get to Mass because of the various church closures. I remember you most especially in the Holy Mass that I celebrate daily in the chapel across from my bedroom. There we are united. Indeed, none of us is alone in this present crisis. On the contrary, the good Lord is with us as He has promised: “I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

May we all know His peace—especially in those anxious moments that can sneak up on us (I am no exception here.) May His Mother, the Queen of Peace, place us in His Most Sacred Heart where no harm can ever come to us.

I entrust myself to your own prayers.

IV.

19 March 2020 The Solemnity of Saint Joseph, the Spouse of Mary Rome under quarantine

Pax Christi

I celebrate my Name Day today. At breakfast members of my community offered me their well- wishes, and the Father Superior even sang “Tanti auguri a te!”—“Happy Feast Day”, more or less, to the tune of “Happy Birthday”. May Saint Joseph intercede for us during these days of trial. As he once provided for the Holy Family, may he, too, by his prayers in heaven provide for us, for our families and friends, for our respective nations, for the sick and the quarantined, for the elderly and the fearful, and for the health-care workers who are on the front line of this global crisis.

Every morning, I continue to spend about one and a half hours at my rooftop perch, seated behind one of the papal tiaras on the façade of the Gregorian University. I spend that time praying the Divine Office and making my morning meditation. During those prayers, I remember each and every one of you—as I also do during my morning Mass. The good Lord generously grants me a deep sense of peace during my prayer. I pray that He will likewise bestow that peace upon you, implanting it deeply within your hearts. During these tremendous days, the Evil One will be working overtime in order to take away our peace and to drive us to despair. Let us not give him even an inch (or a centimeter for those of you in the metric system!) Our hope is in the Lord. We trust in His providence. During these times of trial, He is purifying us and preparing for us an even greater spiritual good. Recall Saint Paul’s words: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). Amid the present sufferings, we are given anew the grace to recall that God alone is our true joy. Only in God is our soul at rest. In Him alone is our true happiness in time and eternity.

The present global crisis confronts us with our mortality. We all are limited, and for each one of us this life of pilgrimage will come to an end one day, pray God, later rather than sooner. The Risen Lord Jesus Crucified Himself has already passed from this life through death into the glory of the life to come. By His Cross He has conquered death and has opened for us the way to heaven. On this account, we hail His Cross as our one hope—Ave, O Crux, Spes Unica. Let us remain close to Him now so that whenever the day of our own passing comes we shall not lose our way. Through the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist, we are blessed to encounter the Lord Jesus in a singular manner. Through them, even now, He shares with us a foretaste of heaven and its enduring peace. With the help of His grace, may we be open to receive the gift of His mercy and peace—a healing peace that He alone can give. With His peace dwelling in our hearts, we have nothing to fear.

Among God’s many gifts in Rome these days is His gift of the Spring and the Easter season that it announces. COVID-19 is powerless to turn back the Spring. Pray God, the warmer weather that it brings will also serve to zap this virus as it does all others. Just the other day, while seated at my rooftop perch, I noticed daffodils growing out of the crevices between the bricks. Life always finds a way. Those simple yellow wildflowers brought me joy. They may not be as spectacular as a field of Texas bluebonnets, but they give abundant praise to the good Lord, nonetheless. Life does indeed always find a way. Spring is coming. Hope in the Risen Lord sustains us even now.

The sounds of the city continue to delight me. Overhead, airplanes continue to make their way to Ciampino airport—far fewer than usual, of course, but some are still flying. As I mentioned in my last 9 update, a new sound fills the air around the Gregorian University—the sound of children playing on the neighboring terraces or in the gardens of the neighboring palazzi (palatial buildings like the Colonna family palace whose extensive garden is situated immediately next to the university's main building). The children’s joy inspires joy.

Speaking of joy, I was deeply consoled yesterday afternoon. I conducted my first-ever ZOOM meeting on-line! The present crisis is forcing me to make extraordinary advances in my knowledge and use of technology (of which I have usually had less, rather than more, good to say!) Quite ironically, because of these advances, some members of my community are even turning to me now as the tech- guy!—especially since the computer assistant who works for us cannot come to work these days. Anyway, the ZOOM meeting brought together the students of my patristics seminar for a two- hour session of stimulating conversation and consoling fraternity. At this moment, we are scattered across Europe and North America: from California and Oregon, across the US Midwest, to Florida and New York; from Ireland, Scotland, England, and France to Rome. All but two of our members—those in the UK—are in some form of quarantine. But the Brits, no doubt, will soon be joining us. Thanks to this bit of modern technology we were able to gather for the seminar. We broke through our quarantine and reunited for our weekly session. How eagerly I now await our gathering next Wednesday!

As the challenges increase over the coming days for both Italy and the rest of the world, the good Lord will be increasing His providences as well. For the most part, they will be simple providences that serve as concrete reminders that He accompanies us in these present trials. He does not abandon us. He is by our side. May we all remain on the lookout for the providences that He sends, and rejoice when they come our way. Rejoicing in the good Lord will be our strength these days.

May we remain united in the good Lord. Let us keep one another in prayer as we pray for healing and protection for ourselves and those who are dear to us, for our neighbors and our nations, and indeed for the whole world. May Our Lady wrap us in Her mantle as She places us in the Heart of Her Son. In our charity, let us not forget to pray also for those who have died. May the good Lord welcome them into His eternal peace.

22 March 2020 Rome under quarantine

Pax Christi

Yesterday was the first day of Spring. Today is Laetare Sunday, that is, the one Sunday during Lent when the priest may wear rose-colored vestments. Those rose-colored vestments symbolize a moment of restorative rest amid our Lenten penances. The Latin verb, that describes this particular Lenten Sunday, means “to make joyful, to delight, cheer, gladden.” Amid the present global health crisis, the good Lord gives us this holy day for the sake of our joy at the beginning of Spring. For He knows that only by rejoicing in Him do we find strength to persevere through this life’s trials. As the short reading from the Prophet Nehemiah in the Church’s Morning Prayer exhorts us: “Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). 10

In previous updates I have mentioned the sounds of Rome that bring consolation. One particular sound most especially consoles—the sound of church bells both announcing the celebration of Holy Mass and marking the solemn moment of Eucharistic consecration. In Rome one hears these bells every day in the morning and in the evening. But they ring out most gloriously on Sundays. Today has been no exception. Indeed, as I write these lines, I hear the bells of the Basilica of the Twelve Apostles ringing boldly. As I hear the bells of Rome, I unite myself with the Eucharistic Sacrifice that continues to be celebrated in her churches—celebrated behind closed doors, that is true, but still celebrated in spiritual union with and for all the holy faithful, nonetheless. All who wish are able to participate in these celebrations through live-streaming, radio, and television. All are invited, moreover, to make a spiritual communion—a practice much more common in the past, and now taken up again with renewed spiritual vigor. May the Eucharistic fast, that the Catholic faithful throughout the world are at present sadly constrained to make, make their hearts hunger all the more for the day when they can again receive Jesus in Holy Communion. May the spiritual purification that this Eucharistic fast brings help prepare a worthy place in all our hearts for our Eucharistic Lord. I myself do not take for granted the inestimable blessing of being able to celebrate the Eucharist daily in my quarantine. Know that at the beginning of each Mass I remember each and every one of you, I place you on the Altar, and I unite your own self-offerings with the Church’s offering of the Eucharistic Sacrifice—that unique Sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross at Calvary whose victory over sin and death the Resurrection reveals.

Two days ago, as I meditatively gazed out over Rome from my rooftop perch, I realized that I was looking down upon the Church of San Marcello on the Via del Corso just blocks away from the Gregorian University. To that very church Pope Francis made a brief pilgrimage on foot this past week. The Holy Father went there in order to pray before a miraculous Crucifix whose veneration marked the end of the plague that had ravaged sixteenth-century Rome. Our Holy Father beseeched our Crucified Lord to bring an end to COVID-19. Now, each morning, I look down upon the nave of that church, I recall that miraculous Crucifix before which I myself have prayed in the past, and I, too, beseech Our Lord for an end to this present crisis, for the safety and well-being of my family, friends, students, fellow Jesuits and all those who are dear to us.

For many years now a homeless man named Serge has camped in a portico of the Pontifical Biblical Institute immediately across from the Gregorian University on the Piazza della Pilotta. Serge is French. He had been a high school teacher. But at some point in his life, he decided to come to Rome and live on the street. He comes almost every evening to the Piazza della Pilotta in order to sleep in a cardboard box. In the early morning, he packs up his “bedroom” and spends most of the day elsewhere. I have often spoken with him in the evenings and brought him food on occasion. A wealthy family nearby always shares their dinner with him and even invites him to their country home for an occasional week outside the city. From my rooftop perch, I see Serge every morning now seated peacefully in that portico as he reads the newspaper. He is, in fact, a voracious reader. I heard, moreover, that, at the beginning of the national quarantine, a police car stopped in front of the portico where Serge sat. The officers ordered him to go home. Serge responded, “This is my home.” The police simply shrugged the shoulders and drove on. Since there is no one else walking about the streets of Rome’s historic center these days, Serge has no problem maintaining “social distancing.” He may well be the safest man in the city. A member of my community has also informed me that the Jesuit-community cook at the Biblical Institute prepares meals daily for Serge and hands them to him at a side door that opens onto the piazza.

Toward the end of this past week, I was inspired to send a small gift over to my patristic seminar students who have remained at the Pontifical North American College on the Janiculum Hill. You might ask: but with everyone quarantined in their buildings, how did you manage to send them anything? Well, you see, the Roman Curia continues to work. The Holy See, after all, is a Sovereign State independent of the Italian State. So I asked the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith if he would be so kind as to take a small package over to the Holy Office and give it to an official who lives 11 at the North American College (an alumnus of my patristics seminar.) Cardinal Ladaria, my confrere in community, kindly agreed. The package arrived at the North American College yesterday evening. What did it contain? Six Cuban cigars! They were the last remaining cigars of those that I had brought back with me from Havana in February (I was there for my annual visit to the Cuban seminary.) In an email that I received this afternoon, one of those seminarians reports that those cigars are now safely in his humidor.

The reports from the North of Italy remain grim. As one of my northern Italian students, who has stayed in Rome, has told me from reports that he has heard, the situation has become surreal. Hundreds die every day. The city of Bergamo has been particularly hard hit. The health-care services and morgues have been overwhelmed. The military has been deployed to transport the dead. The father of another student of mine, the medical doctor whom I mentioned in an earlier update, has been intubated at this point. She reports that he is in critical condition, but not beyond hope. I offered Holy Mass for him this morning. Please keep him, his daughter and his entire family in your prayers. The situation in Rome, while challenging, has not yet become critical. Pray God, the lockdown will contain the virus. But new cases are bound to emerge among those already infected. By this coming Tuesday, my community will reach its 14-day-quarantine milestone—a key moment for determining our own risk-level. So far no one has fallen ill…although one does hear the confreres coughing. But given the Spring weather that has arrived, environmental allergies may account for those coughs.

We Jesuits continue to do all that we can within the confines of our quarantine. The Gregorian community residence is quite spick and span these days. The hallways smell of rubbing alcohol and chlorine. Surfaces get wiped down regularly. Alcohol-based sanitizers and hand soap abound. That virus doesn’t stand a chance if it were to penetrate our fortress walls. We continue to gather for Eucharistic Adoration every day before pranzo, and this morning many of us concelebrated the Sunday Mass in the community chapel. One of the Fathers prepared and, together with others, sang all the Latin chants. I served as the liturgical Master of Ceremonies and then afterwards presided at the Eucharistic Blessing and Reposition that concluded our morning of prayer. Know that, during such moments of prayer, I pray fervently for you all.

In preparation for these days, I took out a Miraculous Medal that I had purchased at Rue de Bac in Paris in the summer of 1984. I had my Carmelite confessor, Father Raffaele (please pray for him—he is quite old, infirmed, and at risk), bless it the last time that I saw him—less than a week before the quarantine. I have placed it on a cord, and now wear it over my shirt. (In fact, already for decades, I have worn a much smaller Miraculous Medal attached to my scapular under my shirt.) The Miraculous Medal was first struck in 1832 according to the design that Our Lady had shown to St. Catherine Labouré in a vision on 27 November 1830. The medal proved to be miraculous during the 1832 Cholera epidemic that killed over 20,000 Parisians in one month alone. Those who wore the Miraculous Medal experienced Our Lady’s protection. As I put that medal on each morning and recite the words, “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee,” I remember each and every one of you. I implore Our Lady's protection upon you. May She continue to keep us and all our loved ones safely wrapped within the folds of Her mantle as She places us in the Heart of Her Son. May Jesus lay His healing hand upon us and grant us His peace. May He heal the sick, comfort the afflicted, strengthen health-care workers in their exhausting labors, and welcome the faithful departed into His Father’s House where we, too, hope one day to dwell. 12

VI. 26 March 2020 Rome under quarantine

Pax Christi

Seventeen days have passed since I last set foot outside the Gregorian University. On 9 March I made a brief afternoon pilgrimage to the Church of St. Frances of Rome (Santa Francesca Romana) in the Roman Forum. It was her feast day. I had referred to her in the sermon that I had preached that morning—a sermon that I should have preached at the Lenten Station Church of San Clemente, but that I ended up preaching at the Casa Santa Maria (the US priest residence on the Piazza della Pilotta) because of the suspension of all public Masses in Italy implemented the evening before. St Frances’s relics lie behind glass in a crypt chapel under the High Altar. Her complete skeleton is dressed in the religious habit of the Order that she founded. I spent at least an hour in prayer before both her relics and the Blessed Sacrament reserved in the upper church, imploring St. Frances to intercede for Rome, Italy and the entire world during this time of global crisis. As I returned to the Gregorian University, I found the twenty-minute walk under a foreboding grey, late-winter sky down the Via dei Fori Imperiali and through the Piazza Venezia to be rather eerie. There were still some tourists out and about, and I even saw a 13 group of high school students on tour. But otherwise the streets were relatively empty. That was my last excursion into the city. I had thought to go the following evening to see my Carmelite confessor at Santa Maria della Vittoria, but I was not sure if it was still permitted to walk freely about town. I did not, moreover, want to risk his health by exposing him unconsciously to the virus if, by chance, I were an asymptomatic carrier. So I remained within the university walls. I have not ventured out since.

This past Tuesday, 24 March, marks the end of the Gregorian University Jesuit community’s initial fourteen-day quarantine. That is a significant milestone, for a COVID-19 infection typically manifests itself within fourteen days. Thanks be to God, my Jesuit community and I remain healthy. Perhaps someone has been asymptomatic? If so, next Tuesday, 31 March, may be the more significant date. Whatever the case may be, we like the rest of Italy remain in quarantine—“sheltering at home” as they are wont to say in the United States these days.

At this point, much of the world has been quarantined. Yesterday, I received a phone call from a dear Jesuit friend of mine who lives in Kyrgyzstan, a nation in central Asia that shares a common border with China. He, along with an elderly Jesuit, are sheltering in a modest house. The same restrictions operative in Rome are since two days ago also in force there. In the evening, I spoke with friends in Florida and a former student in Minnesota. They shared stories of raided grocery stores and urban lockdown. This morning, another friend who lives in Vienna called with a similar story, but the Viennese at least can still go out for a walk either alone or solely with those with whom they live. Such a luxury does not exist in Rome. One of our members went out to buy bread today, and he was stopped and interrogated by the police who demanded to see his papers declaring the motives for his venturing outside. Thankfully, they allowed him to continue on his way, and he, quite literarily, was able to bring home the bread (our usual baker stopped furnishing freshly baked bread about one and a half weeks ago.)

Despite all these measures, Rome, of course, has not been spared the immediate effects of COVID-19. The Lombard College for northern Italian priests studying in Rome has been particularly hard hit. Even before the general quarantine, that college was already in self-isolation given their frequent contacts with northern Italy. From the reports that I have heard, approximately thirty of the priests in residence have contracted the virus. Some are asymptomatic while others have a high fever. But no one, from what I know, has been so gravely ill as to require hospitalization. The Father Rector was sick, but, thanks be to God, has recovered.

If I am not mistaken, the death toll in Italy has now surpassed that in China. But perhaps this fact is due more to better Italian statistics than the actual number of deaths in both countries. Nonetheless, reports from the North of Italy remain tragic. Another student of mine from the north has informed me that his father, upon being diagnosed with the virus, was immediately intubated. His father is one year younger than I am—a sobering fact. I entrust him to your prayers. I have also learned from yet another student, a Catholic laywoman, how death has struck many a home, how the overwhelming demand for ventilators leaves some patients without the help that they need, and how one hospital has turned away a sick patient for fear of contagion. These are but a few of the many tragic stories that weigh heavily upon our hearts.

Amid the dying, there is yet another kind of dying that is also taking place. It entails the abrupt separation of friends. At the beginning of this week, the Father Rector at the North American College announced the closure of the college. This has not happened since the United States’ entry into the Second World War. Throughout this week, the remaining seminarians, with some exceptions, have been returning home. They have boarded the last daily flight between Rome and the United States—an Alitalia flight to JKF airport in New York from where they have taken connecting flights to other destinations across America. (One fellow has had to fly from Italy via New York to Seattle!) The news of their departure came as quite a blow to me—as had the closure of each of the other national colleges. For, even though the North American College seminarians and I have had no direct contact since the general 14 quarantine, it has been a consolation for me just to know that at least some of my students were still in Rome. From my rooftop perch, I would gaze across the Roman skyline and look at the North American College’s tower prominent on the western horizon. Every morning, at the conclusion of my prayer, I would send a blessing their way. Yes, the news hit me hard. But, for the students themselves, their sudden departure has been even more challenging. Since they come from dioceses across the United States and Australia, they do not normally live near their companions and friends. Those in their fourth and fifth years of study, who knew already that they would not be returning to Rome next year, have had to say good-byes to their closest friends—in some cases, in only a matter of hours. There is real dying here. But for men of faith, there is also consolation. For we know that friendships made in the Lord endure the test of time. When we are united in the Lord, no separation can ever diminish our love for one another—not even death. For in faith we await in hope that Day when we all will be reunited in the Risen Lord. On this account, Christian friends help one another to get to heaven by encouraging each another to grow in both virtue and our love of the Lord.

As I live this presently critical moment in world history and the daily developments that threaten to undermine my peace, I derive great consolation from the daily Mass that I celebrate in the small chapel across from my room. During that Mass, I bring each and every one of you with me to the Altar of the Lord. I unite your own self-offerings and intentions to the Church’s Eucharistic Sacrifice. The words of Scripture and the liturgy offer me much solace. On Monday, the entrance antiphon for Mass expressed most eloquently the prayer of my heart: “As for me, I trust in the Lord. Let me be glad and rejoice in your mercy, for you have seen my affliction” (Psalm 31 (30):7-8). As I mourned the departure of yet more students, Jesus in Monday’s Gospel assured me: “You son[s] will live” (John 5:50). In Tuesday’s Gospel, the good Lord pointed out the way for the future: “Look, you are well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you” (John 5:14). Yes, through these days of intense purification, the good Lord is healing us and calling us to even greater conversion. In my own life this Lent, He has given me a particular grace for which I have long prayed—a grace not just for the present moment, but for the rest of my life.

In the past, young seminarians have often said to me: “Father, I find it difficult to pray the Liturgy of the Hours. I do not get much out of praying the Psalms. Can you offer me any advice?” I have always responded: “The problem is that you have not suffered enough. Once you have suffered, you will find that the Psalms express the deepest longings of your heart.” These days the words of each and every Psalm leap off the page at me! And they remind me that the good Lord does indeed hear the cry of the afflicted. “Because he clings to me in love,” the good Lord Himself assures us,

I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will rescue him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, and show him my salvation (Psalm 91 (90):14-16.

From my rooftop perch, I continue to pray for you—although today I have remained inside because of a gently falling rain that brings its own soothing balm. From our terrace I can see the roof, dome and tower of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte—the church where Our Lady appeared in 1842. That Marian apparition is closely associated with the Miraculous Medal, and, on this account, in Rome, the church is known popularly as the little Rue de Bac. On the Friday before the general quarantine, I had made an impromptu pilgrimage to that church with a good friend of mine whom I encouraged to purchase a Miraculous Medal at the gift shop in order that she might wear it during these most tremendous days. How consoling our visit to that little Marian shrine was! As I look out now at Sant’Andrea, I return spiritually to that visit, and I entrust you all to Our Lady’s protection. May She wrap us within the folds of Her mantle.

Last September at the Mass of the Holy Spirit at Jesuit High School in Tampa, Florida, I preached to the students, faculty and staff: 15

What lies ahead for each one of us this academic year we really do not know. But we trust that, as at La Storta [where St. Ignatius Loyola received the grace to be placed with Christ bearing His Cross], the good Lord will bestow on us through His Cross His Spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and reverence so that we may faithfully bear witness to Him as we bear whatever crosses may come our way. Thus empowered by the Holy Spirit, we have no reason to fear.

Little did I know the extraordinary cross that lay ahead for us all in the second semester of this academic year! But I remain confident that the Holy Spirit will give us the wisdom and fortitude to bear it faithfully and fruitfully in the Lord.

During that same visit to Jesuit High School, I received from the Lord in prayer the particular vocation to assure the joy and hope of my students this academic year. A few years ago, I had previously experienced the call to assure their joy, but this late summer I recognized the even greater calling to assure their hope. At the beginning of this academic year, the good Lord confirmed that grace through another grace given during a cup of tea with some of the students of my patristics seminar. I can see now that the Lord has given me these graces not only for my students, but indeed for all of you. He is a generous giver. Indeed, He cannot be outdone in generosity. The hope that He offers you and me is no false promise. It is rather that hope that cannot be confounded. I am convinced that He has instilled this call to hope within my own heart in order to instill it also within yours. Let us fervently hope in the Lord. These days will pass, and the greater good that He Himself is preparing for us will flourish in the days that follow. In this presently challenging moment, may we grow closer to Him so that one day in the near future, pray God, we may rejoice with Him and in eternity, along with the saints, reign with Him.

Forty-one years ago today, on 26 March 1979, at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, I heard Our Lady’s voice. She spoke only four words: “Care for My people.” Those words became the cornerstone of my sacerdotal vocation. I was sixteen years old. I share this singular grace with you now because I want to assure you that Our Lady is interceding for us at this very moment. As at Cana, She remains ever attentive to our needs. Through Her maternal intercession, She calls forth Her Son’s never failing providence. To us, in turn, She says: “Do whatever He tells you” (John 2:5). Confident in His providence, may we respond wholeheartedly to His call to conversion.

Underneath the Biblical Institute’s portico, protected from the rain, Serge still sits and reads.

VII. 29 March 2020 Rome under quarantine

Pax Christi

Yesterday I finished reading Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables—the unabridged edition, all 1,201 pages! Don’t think, however, that my quarantine has been so severe that I managed to fly through that thick tome in under three weeks. No. I began the novel at the beginning of November, perhaps just as COVID-19 was making its debut in that Chinese live-animal and fish market. Since November, I have been reading about 10 pages at a sitting when on the stationary bike in the little gym that we have in our Jesuit community. To read that novel requires commitment, but I can assure you that the commitment is well worth it. The first hundred pages, for example, recount the life of a saintly bishop whose charity 16 and humility convert the felon Jean Valjean whose own divinely inspired charity and humility animate the novel’s every page (the long excursus on the Battle of Waterloo notwithstanding!) Once done with Les Misérables, I had thought to begin reading Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. But a young priest and former student of mine wisely suggested that this may not be the ideal time to read anything with the word “bleak” in the title. So, yesterday afternoon, I began Jane Austen’s Emma.

In an earlier update, I had encouraged you to be on the lookout for those little providences that remind us of how the good Lord is indeed providing for us at this very moment. You might find it hard to believe, but Emma has turned out to be one such providence for me. How, you might ask, can a Jane Austen novel be a providential sign from God? Well, it was not really the novel, but rather the bookmark that I found in my copy that has proven to be so providential.

I purchased my copy of Emma in Regensburg, Germany, back in the summer of 2012. At that time I was spending two months at the Austrian Cistercian Monastery Stift-Heiligenkreuz in the Vienna woods. One of the monks, a doctoral student of mine, and I made a brief excursion to the Benedict XVI Institute in Regensburg. Walking about town, I stopped at a bookstore and purchased a copy of Emma, having already read and enjoyed Pride and Prejudice. Although I began the novel upon my return to the monastery, I made little progress. My health was quite poor that summer due to overwork and exhaustion. Indeed, I had suffered a collapse some months before. As the summer progressed, I hardly had the strength or concentration to read anything. It was a particularly dark time in my life. So I set that novel aside. Amid the darkness of those days, I would often repeat that simple prayer, “Jesus, I trust in You!” Those words kept me from being dragged into the abyss. They also proved to be crucial during the eight-day retreat that I made while at Heiligenkreuz. On the sixth day of my retreat, 7 September 2012, I wrote in my journal:

Yesterday evening was a time of increased anxiety about the future and my abilities to confront whatever it may entail. Given the “burn out” which I have been suffering since the beginning of May, others have regularly suggested that I take a sabbatical semester this autumn, if not even an entire sabbatical year. The thought brings a certain consolation—liberation from all obligations— but it likewise brings even greater anguish—the sense of abandoning those whom I serve, that is, my students at the Gregorian [University] and the members of my [Catholic Studies] chaplaincy. Can a father abandon his children? I must honestly confront my present physical and psychic limitations. They are very real and painfully present to me. Anxiety comes in waves. I have decided to lay everything before my superiors once I return to Rome—most especially, my various experiences this summer. I will leave the ultimate decision about the future in their hands. But I am aware of two things. Even if I drastically reduce my obligations this coming semester, I do not want to be far from my students, for they are a source of life and joy for me. To be away from them would only increase my sorrow. Secondly, although indeed most importantly, whatever the future may hold, Jesus will be there with me, sustaining me with His grace. In this light, yesterday’s profound spiritual desolation has given way to this morning’s consolation and quiet joy.

At the beginning of my present Roman quarantine and the anxieties that it has aroused, I returned to those words in my retreat journal. Jesus has indeed been with me over the past eight years. My trust in Him was not misplaced. For these years have been extraordinarily fruitful and indeed most joyful. He has sustained me with His grace and loving mercy at every step of the way. So what bookmark, you may ask, did I find in my copy of Emma? A Divine Mercy prayer card in German: “JESUS ich vertraue auf Dich! (Jesus, I trust in You!)” When I opened that paperback yesterday afternoon for the first time in eight years, I beheld an image of the Risen Lord Jesus Crucified with red and white rays of light radiating from His Heart. From that holy card, Our Lord looked back at me and assured me interiorly, “I was there for you in the summer of 2012, and I am here for you now.” No small providence that.

The Church’s liturgy also continues to speak to me profoundly. On Saturday morning, the entrance antiphon for Mass read: “The waves of death rose about me; the pains of the netherworld surrounded me. In my anguish I called to the Lord, and from his holy temple he heard my voice” (Psalm 18 (17):5,7). These are not just pious sentiments, for the waves of death do indeed rise about me. At this writing, one third of the global deaths due to COVID-19 has occurred in Italy. Death surrounds us. Amid the anguish, I have called out to the Lord. I am confident that the last words of that Psalm-verse are as equally true as the first: “He heard my voice.” The words of Saint Athanasius in the second reading from the Office of Readings on Friday also brought much needed solace: “Such is the wonder of [God’s] love: he gathers to this feast those who are far apart, and brings together in unity of faith those who may be physically separated from each other” (SAINT ATHANASIUS, E Letter 5.2). In our respective quarantines, we are far apart—apart from our loved ones perhaps even in the same cities where we live, especially grandparents apart from their grandchildren. But our faith in the good Lord unites us. He hears us when we cry out to Him.

I received heart-breaking news yesterday. Two communities of Religious Sisters in Spain, who are very dear to me, have all contracted COVID-19, no doubt, from the poor whom they most generously serve. One Sister in Granada has been gravely ill. She was hospitalized and intubated. But today I have learned that her fever has passed, and that she may well be turning the corner. Two other Sisters in their Madrid community, however, are developing pneumonia. Their condition worsens. I was with these Sisters in Madrid only last month at the beginning of February on my way to Cuba. Please join me in storming heaven for them.

One of my former students, a young priest in the Archdiocese of New York, has just written to me in order to inform me that he has answered Cardinal Dolan’s call for volunteers among the New York clergy to minister to patients in the makeshift COVID-19 hospitals that are being rapidly built around the city. The young priest’s patron is the Jesuit Saint Aloysius Gonzaga who died from the plague that he had contracted while ministering to plague victims in sixteenth-century Rome. Please keep Father Louis in your prayers. Entrust him to the good Lord through the intercession of Our Lady and Saint Aloysius. May Jesus sustain him in his heroic service of the sick and dying.

This past Friday evening, 27 March, Pope Francis led the world in an extraordinary prayer service—Urbi et Orbi—held in an empty St. Peter’s Square. That day had begun with the most spectacular Spring weather—bright blue skies and relatively warm weather, especially in the sun. But conditions deteriorated throughout the day. By evening, overcast skies brought Spring showers. A lone Pope Francis walked in the rain through that empty square up to the sagrato in front of the Basilica. Under the canopy erected for the outdoor Wednesday General Audiences, he preached to the city and the world. After his sermon on Jesus calming the storm at sea, he made his way through the Basilica’s front gates to the inner loggia. Before the Basilica’s massive central bronze doors opened for the occasion, a movable altar had been set in place. Upon that altar an Augustinian priest exposed the Blessed Sacrament in a golden monstrance. The Holy Father led both the small group present in the loggia and all who watched via live-streaming in Eucharistic Adoration. At the moment of Benediction, the Holy Father vested in white stole, cope, and humeral veil took the monstrance to the gate of the loggia opening up onto that empty, rain-drenched square. Darkness covered the city, and rain fell with ever greater force. Struggling to maintain his own balance, the octogenarian Pope raised the monstrance containing our Eucharistic Lord, the Real Presence of Jesus Christ among us, and blessed both the city and the world. On either side of the Holy Father were the venerable icon of Our Lady, Salvation of the Roman People, Salus Populi Romani, from the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, and the miraculous Crucifix from the Church of San Marcello. Rain splattered against the plastic case protecting the icon while it poured down the corpus of our crucified Lord. Streams of rain flowed down Christ’s left side while painted blood gushed forth from the wound in His right side. That water and blood resembled the white and red rays of light that radiate from the Heart of Jesus in the Divine Mercy image. As the waves of death rose about him and the pains of the netherworld surrounded him, the Holy Father cried out in anguish to the Lord. The merciful 18

Lord, no doubt, has heard His Vicar’s voice. In almost thirty years of residency in Rome, I have witnessed nothing more moving, except solely perhaps for the funeral Mass of Pope St. John Paul the Great.

That same Friday morning, from my rooftop perch, bathed in the sun’s warm rays, I had prayed my Office and made my morning meditation. When I finished, I saw a lone Jesuit strolling on the terrace below me. It was the very Jesuit to whom I had intended to go earlier for confession because in my quarantine I can no longer venture out to see my Carmelite confessor. From my perch, I asked him if he would be willing to hear my confession. He agreed immediately and climbed up the metal steps. What joy it brought be to confess my sins and to receive the Lord’s absolution through His priest (who happens also to be a cardinal.) My prayer for each and every one of you is that you, too, may know such joy.

Freshly baked bread arrived in our breakfast room the other day, and today we had coronetti for the first time since the quarantine began—much appreciated, small signs of normalcy. At least the baker has been able to return to work. For our part, we Jesuits continue each day to clean the toilets, mop the floors, wash the dishes (for a community of some sixty-odd members!) and disinfect the door-handles— the University’s Jesuit Rector has volunteered for that latter job. On this Fifth Sunday of Lent, Rome’s church bells continue to ring, and Serge still sits in his portico and reads.

Know that I bring each and every one of you with me every morning to the Altar of the Lord. I also remember you in my daily prayers—most especially when praying Our Lady’s rosary. Please join me in praying the rosary daily for the sick and the suffering, the dying and the dead, and for the health-care workers and the priests and Religious who selflessly minister to them. These days will pass—although not immediately. For some of us, greater challenges and perhaps even greater suffering still lie ahead. But let us not be afraid, for the good Lord is with us.

May Our Blessed Mother wrap us in the folds of Her mantle as She places us in the Heart of Her Son.

VIII. 2 April 2020 Rome under quarantine

Pax Christi

AccuWeather had forecasted rain for Rome all this week. But, thanks be to God, the weather forecast was wrong. Indeed, forecasts are not always right. Except for strong winds from the north and some majestic clouds through which the sun, nonetheless, continued to shine on Tuesday afternoon, the Spring weather has been glorious all week—bright blue, cloudless skies, lots of sun and cool temperatures. Every morning I have mounted my perch—my own personal Mount Sinai, if you will—and prayed. I have been warmly bundled in my black hoodie and fleece with a soft, warm, royal blue blanket on my legs. The rising sun’s gentle rays have warmed my hands and face.

This morning from my perch, I saw a young nun in full grey habit and white wimple running laps on the terrace next-door. We all need to get our exercise somehow. Serge continues to sit and read in the Piazza della Pilotta. The general quarantine has hardly disrupted his daily routine.

During those morning hours, I remain alone for the most part on our terrace with Rome at my feet. Never has the Eternal City been so clean! Every morning without fail the street cleaners pass by. Their automated power-brushes and water-sprays polish the sanpietrini—Rome’s cobbled-stone streets. For by now there is certainly no trash to sweep up given that there is hardly anyone out and about to have left it behind. Even the ubiquitous cigarette-butts have all but disappeared. There are, of course, a few Romans who do venture out into the historic center in order to buy groceries and to walk their dogs. But, from what I can tell from my perch, they have yet to figure out how to wear a surgical mask and smoke simultaneously. If the quarantine continues too much longer, I imagine that some enterprising Italian will invent a mask with a convenient, anti-viral hole. For they certainly wasted no time in getting designer masks out on the market.

In an earlier update, I had mentioned the odd consolation that I had derived from the sound of crashing glass bottles falling from recycling bins into the garbage trucks. I hear that sound less and less now ever since the Americans vacated the Casa Santa Maria. But other consolations thankfully still abound.

A clean Rome is certainly a plus, but it has not benefitted the city’s seagull population. Like the pigeons, the seagulls are scavengers, but, in fact, far worse. For when they fail to find adequate food in the Roman trash, they prey on the pigeons! I will spare you the details of that ghastly sight. Now, that there is no trash for them to pick their way through, the majority of the seagulls have abandoned the city. Their departure, in fact, has embolden the pigeons. They’ve been cautiously making their way up to the university terrace. I don’t ever recall having seen a pigeon on our roof before! Where have the seagulls gone? I am not really sure. I doubt that the Roman seagulls have ever seen the shore. They’d be at a loss as to what to do with a fish.

The seagulls are not the only thing noticeably absent from the streets of Rome these days. The red, semi-motorized UBER bicycles, that had been legion on the city streets, are now nowhere to be seen—at least, not in the Piazza della Pilotta where every morning they stood neatly aligned awaiting their next customers. When I first saw them, I did, in fact, wonder how long they would last. For, you see, those red bikes were the third attempt at introducing Romans to communal bicycles. At first, we had the green bikes. They were attached to parking poles placed strategically throughout the historic center. One had to purchase an electronic card from ATAC, the Roman mass-transit company, in order to release them from those parking poles. The problem with those green bikes, however, turned out to be twofold: (1) you could not leave them just anywhere; you had to return them to the nearest parking pole; and (2) since, it seems, that those parking poles where not, in fact, strategically placed, or at least not adequately so, the bikes just simply disappeared. I imagine that they also quickly changed color. Then, there were the yellow bikes. They solved the problem of those poorly placed parking poles. Those yellow bikes could be left anywhere. You no longer needed an ATAC card to unhitch them. Rather, you just used your cellphone to activate them digitally. I’ll admit that they did last awhile—that is, until some Roman urchin discovered how to remove the adjustable seat. A massive decapitation quickly ensued. Seat-less bikes lay abandoned in Rome’s otherwise beautiful piazzas. So much for those yellow bikes. Finally, there have been the red bikes. UBER seems to have gotten the formula correct: no parking poles, digitally activated access, and irremovable seats. But how could UBER have foreseen the present pandemic? Once normalcy returns to the city and world—urbi et orbi!—who in his right mind will be interested in putting his hands on those handlebars touched previously by who-knows-who? At the present moment when one’s own doorknob has suddenly become his enemy, those communal handlebars don’t stand a chance.

I continue to clean the fourth-floor showers and toilets, and to mop the bathroom floor. Like all Americans, I have always made fun of the European bidet. From what I have read, 97% of Italian households have a bidet next to the toilet. Our community is no exception. The other day, as toilet paper was running low in the bathroom that I was cleaning, I thought to myself that I may soon have 20 cause never again to ridicule the bidet! The following morning, I saw two large rolls of toilet paper stacked in the hallway outside the Father Minister’s office (the Father Minister is the Jesuit in charge of the community’s temporal affairs.) I knocked on his door and told him that the sight of that toilet paper gave me hope. He took me immediately to the store room in order to increase my joy. There, he showed me rolls of industrial-strength toilet paper stacked four-feet high and six-feet deep. “We’ll be fine until the end of May,” he said. I thought to myself: that’s a lot of …, well, you know what I mean.

Community life in quarantine has its ups and downs. The more challenging moments often take place at table where the more anxious community members help the less anxious to rise to the occasion. One retired Father, who taught pastoral psychology for years in our theology faculty, likes to share his latest insights into the pandemic’s inner dynamics. He expounds on the developmental stages of psychological trauma that we all should be experiencing from day to day. His conversation reminds me of that 1988 Bruce Willis movie, Die Hard, in which terrorists hold hostages captive in a skyscraper. You may recall that scene in which a television news-anchor interviews a psychologist who pontificates about the ever-increasing levels of distress that the hostages must be experiencing. Just translate that scene into Italian, and you’ve got the idea.

These days, however, the real sacrifice is being made in family homes—often small apartments in tall towers. How parents must have to labor to help their children pass hour after hour and day after day inside without ever being able to leave! I imagine that video games and movies fill many a waking moment. In the building immediately behind the Gregorian University, there are several dwellings set aside for government employees. It is part of the Quirinal Palace complex—the residence of the Italian President. Until 1870, it had been the Papal Palace—even though, already in 1850, Pope Blessed Pius IX had transferred his residence to the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. Only one of those dwellings is presently occupied. A family lives there. The mother is Italian, but the father, who speaks English, is clearly a North American. The daughter is bilingual. Their outdoor patio opens up onto the cortile or courtyard outside my bedroom window. It was their little daughter’s joyful voice that I heard the other day. The mother and the father take turns playing with her outside. How good they are with her, and how patient they are when she has her occasional moments. As I listen to them even now as I write these lines, I cannot help but think of that 1997 Italian film, La Vita è Bella!, that won the Academy Award for best motion picture. Through humor, a Jewish child’s father shields him from the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp. The little girl next-door certainly knows that she cannot go out her front door. But she probably really doesn’t understand why. Her parents, for their part, simply assure her joy.

I am managing my own quarantine well enough. My numerous visits to a Carthusian monastery in the south of Italy have helped prepare me for these days. In my Carthusian cell at the Certosa di Serra San Bruno in Calabria, I have spent many a day and indeed entire weeks in silence and solitude. I was there when the December 26, 2004, tsunami struck and devastated the entire Indian-Ocean coastline. I learned about it, however, only six days later when I was saying good-bye to the Father Prior. He had informed his fellow monks, you see, but he had failed to inform me. “You did not know about the tsunami?” he asked with amazement. “Father, how could I have known?” I responded, “I have been in a Carthusian cell for the past ten days!” Amid this world’s vicissitudes, my heart always longs for the silence, solitude and peace of that Carthusian cell. Had it not been for my students and those whom I serve as a priest, I would have gladly remained with the Carthusians in Calabria. But I know that the good Lord calls me elsewhere.

We Jesuits call ourselves “contemplatives in action.” We are to be as spiritually recollected as Carthusians—although not in a monastic cell, but rather in the university classroom or wherever else we may minister. In many ways, an academic’s life is a contemplative life—endless hours, for example, spent in the library. Even before the present quarantine, I could easily spend up to four days in the university building (our Jesuit residence is on the upper floors) without ever going outside. Mind you, the present three weeks plus and counting is definitely a record that I hope never again to surpass. The point is 21 rather that I am able just now to remain within the university walls without undue stress. I rise without an alarm quite naturally at 5:30am (an hour later than my usual rising time!) I bathe, celebrate Mass and then have my breakfast. Afterwards, I go up to my perch and pray. I dedicate the rest of my morning to my academic work which presently consists mostly of reading student essays and thesis chapters, sending out recordings of my patrology lecture, and responding to students’ questions via the email. At midday we Jesuits gather for a half hour of Eucharistic Adoration and midday prayer. Lunch follows. After a short nap, I change into tennis shoes, gym shorts and a T-shirt, and spend the next hour cleaning showers and toilets. My time on the stationary bike with a nineteenth-century novel in hand in our little gym follows those household chores. After my shower, I go up to our terrace again and pray my rosary while strolling back and forth. Afterwards, I usually have about another hour to dedicate to school work before heading down to dinner. After dinner, I pray vespers and then skype with family and friends. I refer to the latter as my evening recreation. I conclude the day with compline and the Marian antiphon Sub Tuum praesidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genetrix—We fly to Thy protection, O Mother of God. I remember you as I pray that prayer. I am usually in bed by 9:00pm and read for a while before falling asleep.

Over the internet and in various news articles, priests and the faithful have been debating the Catholic Church’s proper ministerial response to the present global crisis. Often the example of Saint Charles Borromeo during the bubonic plague gets invoked. The saintly, sixteenth-century Cardinal of Milan both exhorted Religious priests to minister fearlessly to the dying and went himself to bring them the Church’s Sacraments. No one questions Saint Charles’ heroic witness. Perhaps, however, the question to be asked today is how to translate his sixteenth-century ministerial practice into a modern idiom. For certainly today no one would insist on resurrecting sixteenth-century hygiene nor re- implementing sixteenth-century medical practices even though quarantines and social-distancing are as much applicable today as they were in the Middle Ages. Preaching during the plague of 1576, Saint Charles exhorted the superiors of monasteries and other Religious priests: “Look to the law of obedience, by the strength of which you rightly wish your actions to be fortified in view of your salvation.” This exhortation to heroism remains perennially pertinent. In the sixteenth-century, religious obedience sent priests out from their monasteries to minister to plague victims. At the present moment, that same obedience calls many of us, but not all of us (recall, for example, Father Louis of New York for whom, I hope, you continue to pray), to practice vigilant charity among those with whom we live and to whom we minister locally so that we ourselves do not become responsible for having infected others, especially the most vulnerable. My own Father Provincial in St. Louis, Missouri, just two days ago wrote to the members of our province:

I know that this has been a particularly difficult time apostolically since we Jesuits have an intense desire to minister to God’s People, especially through the celebration of the sacraments. How hard to have to do so ‘virtually’ at best! Yet, the call not to become carriers of the virus, unintentionally spreading the illness, emphasizes the limits of what we can do. We need to be obedient to those charged with the care of the public health and to our bishops.

In obedience we can, nonetheless, find creative ways to minister to the anguished, the sick and the dying. My own ministry entails both caring for my students as best as I can from my quarantine and reaching out to all of you—confident that what is done in holy obedience is both pleasing to the Lord and most fruitful for those whom I serve. I am a firm believer in the power of prayer and most especially the efficacy of the Eucharist. No quarantine can limit their salutary effect.

In my prayer yesterday morning, I recalled an experience of prayer that I had had one summer day on the shores of Lake Nemi in the Castelli outside Rome. While I was at prayer under brilliant blue skies accented by gently flowing, white clouds, a profound sense of peace settled in my heart. I savored that consolation for some time. Afterwards, though, the Evil One entered in and attempted to disturb my peace. He accused me of selfishly enjoying such peace while others in the world suffered war—at 22 that time, I thought most especially of my students in Syria. Sadly, the Evil One’s assault made some headway into my mind and heart. About a year later, while on retreat, I returned to that spiritual experience while praying over the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9). I realized then that to be a peacemaker one must himself first know peace. On that account, there is nothing selfish about experiencing peace. On the contrary, it is that very experience of peace that enables us to bring peace to others—that is, to be peacemakers. When we receive the gift of peace, we also receive the mission to share that peace with others. For when God gives us His grace, He always does so in order for us to share it with others. Such spiritual peace comes to us most especially in moments of silence, solitude and prayer. This deep peace not only animates our tranquil moments, but even more importantly it sustains us in times of tribulation and at the hour of death. For it is the peace of Christ that accompanies us into paradise. Death has no power to diminish it. Rather death, now transformed by Christ, mercifully liberates this deep-seated peace from all worldly tribulations that threaten to undermine it. What peace the good thief must have known on his cross when our crucified Lord said to him: “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43)! Are there any other words in Scripture more beautiful? Even now we hear similar words spoken to us in the Sacrament of Reconciliation: “Your sins are forgiven; go in peace.” May Christ Jesus grant us His peace, and in granting us His peace may He make us instruments of His peace for others.

This morning my mediation focused quite simply on the Person of Jesus and His consoling presence. I rested in Him. Afterwards, as I stood up to leave my perch, I gazed out over the rooftops and domes of Rome toward St. Peter’s Basilica. A statue on the horizon next the Vatican suddenly caught my eye. It was the colossal statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the garden of the Jesuit General Curia. I have seen that statue many times in the past when visiting our General Curia. But before now I had never noticed it from our terrace. The rising sun cast a brilliant light on it—small though it may have been on the horizon. The grace that I received at that moment was similar to my experience of that Divine Mercy holy card. “I am here,” the good Lord assured me, “Do not be afraid.”

As we hear those dire forecasts of death at home and abroad, let us not forget that forecasts are not always right. For statistics fail to factor in God’s Providence. Indeed, such factoring lies beyond the skills of any statistician. Thanks be to God, our trust is in the good Lord, not in statistics. This is not, however, an excuse not to be vigilant. On the contrary, God expects us to make good use of our reason. But our reason itself also recognizes the reasonableness of our faith in the good Lord’s Providence. He does indeed provide. May the Divine Mercy prayer, “Jesus, I trust in You,” be frequently on our lips and in our hearts. As we offer prayers of petition, may we offer with equal fervor prayers of thanksgiving for all His many benefits.

Tomorrow I will begin my annual, eight-day retreat. Be assured of my prayers during these upcoming days of silence and solitude. I entrust myself and my fellow Jesuits on retreat to your own prayers. I shall write to you again at Easter.

IX. 12 April 2020 Easter Sunday Rome under quarantine

Pax Christi

The Lord is risen, alleluia! He is truly risen, alleluia! But how can we sing our Easter alleluias amid a deadly pandemic? Pope Francis celebrated the Easter Vigil at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica last night, but behind closed doors. A handful of individuals attended—each one strategically seated in his own personal pew. Not even the Basilica’s baroque splendor could alter the celebration’s sober tone. A commentator for the Italian television station RAI UNO awkwardly remarked that in the absence of a congregation the television viewer could better appreciate the beauty of the Basilica’s marble floors! The Basilica was as empty as Christ’s tomb on that first Easter morning. But the Christian viewer could have cared less about those marble floors. He longed rather to see flocks of the faithful fill not only St. Peter’s, but also every other church in Christendom. This Easter we have entered into uncharted territory where quite literally hundreds of millions of Catholics across the globe have not been able to attend the Sacred Triduum and to receive their Eucharistic Lord. Together with the Jews exiled in Babylon they ask: “O how [can] we sing the song of the Lord on foreign soil?” (Psalm 137 (136): 4) But even these tremendous days are not without their spiritual fruit. In our annual Easter celebrations, perhaps we have not taken sufficient time to reflect on the Apostles’ and the holy women’s initial stupor at the sight of that empty tomb. The Magdalene first thought that grave robbers had desecrated her Beloved’s resting place and stolen His crucified corpse. The empty tomb dumbfounded Peter. When Cleopas and his companion heard of it, they departed in despair for Emmaus. Only faith can acclaim the Resurrection. But because the events of the previous days had so severely tested the disciples’ faith, they failed at first to rejoice. Over the following days, the Risen Lord appeared to them in order to restore their faith and to assure their joy. This Easter those initial, paradoxical movements of paschal grace come to the fore.

When I was a child, we had only three television channels in the United States: ABC, CBS and NBC. Cable did not exist, nor did VHS tapes, DVDs and certainly not Netflix! We poor children had to content ourselves with a mere three channels. We could not watch whatever we wanted to watch whenever we wanted to watch it. Some who read these lines may well remember the days (before my time, of course!) when they didn’t even have a television set in their home! How times have changed! Even our televisions are smarter now thanks to Apple. In some ways, their intelligence has undermined our joy. How so? During my childhood, for example, great anticipation always preceded the annual airing of The Wizard of Oz. When the evening finally came, it was an event to recount with friends the following day at school. Nowadays, The Wizard of Oz, like every other show, is nothing more than a digital pacifier to anesthetize antsy offspring. Yes, The Wizard of Oz was an event. The Christmas season also brought the promise of once-a-year yuletide favorites—Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman and How the Grinch Stole Christmas! Perhaps in years to come, if Netflix proves to be sufficiently enterprising, we may be treated to an animated rendition of How the Coronavirus Stole Easter! If that show were to remain true to Dr. Seuss’ original insight (don’t get me started about the gross historical inaccuracies in Netflix’s The Two Popes!), it could teach us something about Easter.

Living alone with his loyal dog Max atop Mount Crumpit, the cold-hearted Grinch hated both Christmas and the warm-hearted Whos of Whoville who celebrated it. So, on Christmas Eve, disguised as Santa Claus with trusty Max playing the part of a pathetic reindeer, the Grinch stole the Whos’ Christmas trees, stockings, presents and even the logs for their fire. But at dawn when he expected to hear loud lamentations ascend from the valley below, he heard rather a joyous Christmas song. For the 24

Whos, who may have lost their Christmas decorations, had not lost their Christmas spirit. They knew that Christmas did not consist in those trappings, but rather in the love that its spirit instills in the human heart, that is, it celebrates Divine Love Incarnate born among us. Such Christmas love warmed even the old Grinch’s cold heart, and it filled him with unexpected joy.

Just as the Grinch couldn’t steal Christmas, so too COVID-19 can’t steal our Easter. While, it is true, we cannot enjoy a hearty Easter brunch at the local hotel with family and friends, nor hunt for Easter eggs in Grandma’s backyard lest she risk contagion, the faithful rejoice in the Risen Lord. The absence of Easter eggs and other such things focuses our attention on what really matters—our faith. The Risen Lord Jesus Crucified has conquered sin and death. He has given us cause to hope that after this life of pilgrimage we may rejoice with Him forever in heaven, that we may know that unending peace for which our hearts long in time and eternity, and, indeed, that we may see the Face of God and live. Catholics realize, though, that Easter’s enjoyable, but non-essential trappings are not the only thing missing these days. The lay faithful, along with convents of Religious Sisters who do not have a resident chaplain, have not been able to participate directly in the Sacred Triduum. They have not been able to go to Mass and to receive Holy Communion. This absence weighs heavily upon their hearts—that is, the hearts of so many of you who read these lines. Yes, technology has enabled the faithful’s virtual participation and encouraged their spiritual communion. But something is missing, nonetheless. For the Sacraments are not only visible signs that live-streaming brings into our homes, but they are also tangible signs of God’s grace. They can be touched and tasted—something that digital technology simply cannot provide. The faithful are left with a hunger, and not simply for their Easter brunch. They hunger for their Risen Eucharistic Lord. This hunger itself is paradoxically a grace. For in its longing to be satisfied, it draws us closer to Jesus and mysteriously unites us with Him. A comparable desire on the part of the clergy accompanies this longing on the part of the faithful. How many priests long to minister the Sacraments to the faithful directly, and not simply by some virtual means! What joy awaits both priests and people at that first parish Mass that they can celebrate again together!

The Sacraments are the royal road upon which we walk securely with the Lord toward heaven. They are not “extras” as if they were mere fancy trimmings that we can do without—like the Whos’ Christmas stockings. No. Jesus Christ instituted the Sacraments for the sake of our salvation. At the Ascension, He sent His Apostles forth to baptize in the Name of the Most Holy Trinity. At the Last Supper, He gave us His Body as real food and His Blood as real drink, commanding us to celebrate the Eucharist until He comes again. In the Upper Room on that first Easter night, He breathed forth the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and gave them authority to forgive sins in His Name. We know that all who are saved are saved by Jesus Christ, the Unique Savior of the World, through His Body, the Church—that is, through His Catholic Church and the Sacraments that she celebrates. By means of the Holy Mass at which Christ’s unique Sacrifice on the Cross is made present, Christ communicates His saving grace to the world. While God is not limited by His own Sacraments, He employs them as the incarnate channels of His grace not only for those who receive them worthily, but even for those outside the Catholic Church’s visible communion whom He calls to His Church by means of Christian Baptism, His unfolding revelation to the Jewish People fulfilled in Christ, or, as with non-Christians, in ways known to Him alone. During these tremendous days, the Eucharist continues to be celebrated. Through that celebration the Risen Lord’s grace continues to flow. But who could have ever imagined an Easter when millions upon millions of faithful Catholics could not themselves receive the Eucharist? And yet such is the Easter that we presently celebrate. The faithful’s hunger for the Eucharist attests powerfully to how deficient the present situation is. To those who are properly disposed to receive spiritual communion, the good Lord does indeed impart His paschal grace. That very grace makes them long all the more to receive Holy Communion when the public celebration of the Mass resumes. In them the words of Scripture will find fulfillment: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6).

In the year 2005 I saw autumn leaves in May. I was in Australia for my tertianship, the final year of my spiritual formation in the Jesuit Order. At the beginning of that autumn spent Down Under, I celebrated Easter—an autumnal Easter. In the northern hemisphere Easter falls on the Sunday after the first full moon of the Spring equinox. But in the southern hemisphere Easter falls just after the autumn equinox. Whereas in the north the days grow longer, trees bud and flowers bloom, in the south the days grow shorter, autumn leaves fall and flowers turn to seed. Spring speaks of new life while the autumn announces death. What, then, can an Easter in autumn teach us just now about this Easter spent sheltering in place? While an autumn Easter is no less joyful than Easter celebrated at Springtime, it does focus our particular attention on that hope that carries one through the coming winter. It rivets our attention on that sure hope that Christ’s Cross brings. Ave, O Crux, Spes Unica! (Hail, O Cross, our only hope!) “Christ connects the world’s spring and autumn,” the then-Cardinal Ratzinger observes in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, “The autumn of declining time becomes a new beginning, while the spring, as the time of the Lord’s death, now points to the end of time, to the autumn of the world, in which, according the Fathers, Christ came among us. … In both seasons the mystery of hope is at work and reaches its proper depth in the waning year, which leads beyond decline to a new beginning.” Like Easter in autumn, Easter amid COVID-19 calls us to a deeper experience of that hope that cannot be confounded. Christ’s Resurrection brings new life—indeed, eternal life. Our Easter celebration in quarantine reminds us that a renewed, spiritually deeper life after COVID-19 awaits us. An autumnal sorrow may temper our joy just now. But it can also serve to invigorate our hope.

During the retreat that I made over Holy Week, I meditated often on the COVID-19 crisis. I returned frequently to the question of God’s wrath. On Mount Sinai Moses interceded for the Hebrews before the God of Israel, imploring Him not to punish His people for their sin of idolatry. The merciful Lord relented. This scene repeats itself over and over again throughout the Old Testament. The Hebrews’ sins provoke God’s wrath. There’s no denying it. COVID-19 looks a lot like an Old Testament plague, and heaven knows that contemporary man has certainly done enough to provoke divine wrath. But as Christians we must ask ourselves how we ought to read these Old Testament accounts. We read them rightly in the light of the Risen Lord Jesus Crucified. For He alone reveals the fullness of truth that the Old Testament contains. On this account, we can make no mention of God’s wrath without first recalling the saving mission of His Son. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God’s permissive will does indeed mysteriously allow us to reap the bitter fruits of our own iniquity. Our sins in and of themselves cause sufficient grief. On Mount Calvary the Crucified God-Man, the New Moses, intercedes on our behalf: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Here is the final word according to which all Scripture must be read. He who forgave His own executioners never tires to forgive us. On His Cross, the Just Judge Himself pleads for us. From His wounded side, He bathes us in mercy—most especially during these days of global crisis.

After praying compline, the Church’s night prayer, on Tuesday of Holy Week, I gazed out my bedroom window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the paschal full moon. But clouds obstructed my view. The angle of my bedroom window, moreover, just wasn’t right for seeing the rising moon. So I walked down the hallway to an eastward-facing window at the end of the corridor. Unfortunately, those clouds still blocked the moon. But, to my great astonishment, I beheld something else. Brilliant green, white and red bars of light formed the Italian national flag on the baroque façade of the eighteenth-century Palazzo della Consulta next to the Quirinal Palace upon whose majestic tower a similar flag also shone. The sight evoked an immediate, rather unexpected sense of patriotism for my ancestral land. Those luminous flags seemed to say: “Forza Italia! Ce la facciamo!” (Hang in there, Italy! We can do this!) As I turned my gaze to the Quirinal tower, another, more subtle, white light caught my eye. It shone upon the mosaic rendition of Carlo Maratta’s Madonna and Child that faces the palace’s courtyard. While those luminous flags instilled patriotism, that illuminated mosaic of Our Lady holding the Child Jesus inspired hope. To the city and the world—urbi et orbi—Our Lord and Our Lady seemed to say: “Do not be afraid. We are with you, and we will get you through this.” 26

Within our quarantine, the Jesuit community celebrated Holy Week and the Sacred Triduum. A third of the community was on an eight-day retreat, and the entire community observed sacred silence from Holy Thursday through the Easter Vigil. Cardinal Ladaria presided at the Masses beginning with Palm Sunday while another Jesuit Father led us in prayer on Good Friday. Our community chapel became the Cardinal’s cathedral church! At the Easter Vigil, in addition to concelebrating, I also served as the Cardinal’s Master of Ceremonies. Perhaps the most striking image that remains with me from the past week was our procession on Palm Sunday. The entire community gathered outside the Academic Vice Rector’s office on the second floor (the third floor, if you count like an American) of the university. More than sixty Fathers, vested in white alb and red stole, held olive branches in their hands as is the Italian custom. After the proclamation of the first Gospel, chanting our hosannas, we processed down the hallway past the first-year theology classroom, where I teach, toward the community chapel. If only our students could have seen us! That hallway has never been so thoroughly blessed. It was a moving scene that I shall never forget.

We learned yesterday that the Italian Prime Minister has extended the general quarantine for another three weeks. That will bring the total time in quarantine to eight weeks once everything is said and done. Ah well, Pazienza! as the Italians say. So I shall continue to mount my perch while Serge sits in his portico and that grey-habited Sister runs her laps. Be assured of my daily prayers. Last night I offered the Easter Vigil Mass for all who read these lines. I am most grateful for your prayers, especially those offered through Our Lady’s intercession.

Have a blessed Easter!

X. 19 April 2020 Divine Mercy Sunday Rome under quarantine

Pax Christi

On Monday of Holy Week, the swallows returned to Rome. As I sat upon my perch in the early morning and prayed the Divine Office, I heard the swift-winged flight of a bird suddenly speed by me. As I looked up from my breviary and gazed out over the Eternal City, I saw to my great delight swallows darting quickly back and forth in the clear blue skies high above Rome’s rooftops. Every Spring I eagerly await the swallows’ return. For their arrival marks the end of long winter nights and heralds the beginning of summer’s sunny days. COVID-19 may well have grounded most airplanes these days, but it certainly hasn’t stopped the swallows’ annual migration north. The swallows bring hope every year, but most especially this year. They also eat mosquitos whose simultaneous return I rather lament.

There are other signs of hope during the Roman Spring to which I always look forward. Throughout the academic year the sun sets to the south of the Vatican. At the winter solstice it sinks behind the most southerly tip of the Janiculum hill. Then, slowly but surely, it begins its trek across the Janiculum over the Pontifical North American College toward St. Peter’s dome. At the beginning of the present quarantine, the sun was still setting some distance to the left of the dome seen from our rooftop terrace. But now, almost six weeks later, the setting sun has begun to make its final descent toward the horizon on the northerly side of St. Peter’s Basilica. By summer it will set much farther to the north over Monte Mario’s lush green hilltop. In the past this annual solar pilgrimage has helped me count down the days leading up to my return home—a trip to the States that I eagerly anticipate. This year the quarantine 27 has only increased my anticipation! But who knows what summer travel may look like in the coming months? If I could fly like a swallow, I’d set off immediately! But for the moment, the airplanes remain grounded, and I am confined to quarters. Thankfully, the setting sun still warms my heart.

At the Gregorian University, ivy covers various courtyard walls. In the autumn the leaves turn brown, wither and fall. Throughout the winter, only bare vines clinging to bricks and plaster remain. But that all changes in the Spring. During my recent retreat I noticed some small green buds beginning to sprout on those barren vines. Day by day fresh green leaves have been gracefully unfolding. Soon a lush green carpet rippling gently in the wind will cover those massive walls. Nature not only renews itself, but it also gives me cause for joy.

During Holy Week I learned of my friend Cardinal George Pell’s liberation from his unjustly imposed, months-long solitary confinement in Australia’s prisons. The Cardinal had been falsely accused, and blatantly so, of sexual abuse. Hearing after hearing and trial after trial and his first appeal all resulted in a gross miscarriage of justice. Thanks be to God, all seven judges of the Australian High Court have unanimously vindicated him and decreed his release. My confessor shared this wonderful news with me almost immediately after its announcement. The news brought me great hope. For I saw the Paschal Mystery firsthand in the case of Cardinal Pell, Christ’s faithful priest falsely accused, unjustly condemned, effectively assassinated, solitarily confined, and now rightly risen. What joy the Cardinal’s freedom brings to us all!

From my perch I continue to listen to the sounds of the city. They have varied over the past six weeks. At the beginning of the quarantine, as I mentioned in an earlier update, automated sounds ascended from the streets below. Buses rumbled by, garbage collectors emptied dumpsters, construction workers hammered away, and police-car sirens screeched past the Quirinale and down the Via Nazionale. But as governmental decrees imposed further restrictions, the city below me quieted down. For those of you who know Rome, just imagine the silence of an early Sunday morning prolonged over three weeks. Mostly just bird calls and church bells broke the silence. But since the beginning of Holy Week, man has been slowly returning to his labors. Our community employees, for example, have resumed their tasks— properly masked, of course. Consequently, I haven’t mopped a floor in almost two weeks! It will take more time than that, however, for my sore right-shoulder muscles to recover. Thankfully, the sounds of Rome are sufficiently soothing. Bird songs fill the upper register while automated noises provide the bass. Several seagulls have begun to perch alongside my own perch. They honk, as it were, in rapid succession. The black ravens crow. Some small, high-pitched birds, whose name escapes me, chirp melodiously like a band of piccolos in a John Philip Sousa fanfare. Below, delivery vans and garbage trucks make their rounds. But not every sound in the lower register comes from a machine. The other day I heard horseshoes clopping rhythmically on the cobblestone streets. Gazing down from my perch, I saw two mounted policemen slowly making their way up the Via dei Lucchesi toward the Trevi Fountain. There is hardly a better way to maintain proper social distancing with the random, surgically masked pedestrian.

From my perch I can see the upper half and right side of the Trevi Fountain. My imagination has to supply the rest—the triumphal arch framing the central statue of Oceanus, the Titan son of Uranus and Gaia in Greek mythology, the tritons taming the hippocamps, and the pure waters flowing into the grand basin. In the early morning, the sun’s rays reflect brilliantly off the white travertine stone. My mother used to tell me stories about the Trevi Fountain when I was a child. She and my father visited Rome on two occasions—once in the late 60s and then again in the early 70s. After sharing with me her joy at seeing the Holy Father, Pope St. Paul VI, carried aloft on the sedia gestatoria in the audience hall, she would describe a glorious fountain built into the side of what she referred to as an office building—the Palazzo Poli, in fact. On one of her two trips, mother took a photograph of the Trevi Fountain. She positioned herself at the southeastern corner of the piazza. That angle allowed her to include one of the two bronze lamp posts on either corner of the steps leading down to the fountain’s base. She managed 28 to frame the photograph quite artistically, I must say. I still have that photo. It’s a treasure. I am not sure if the gelateria on that corner of the piazza was there when my parents visited Rome. But I will occasionally stop there and order a gelato—often lampone e stracciatella (raspberry and chocolate chip). Afterwards, I stand where my mother once stood and look at the fountain, recalling the words that she spoke to me when I was a child. It may be overly mundane that gelato and all, but in those moments I enter powerfully into the communion of saints where death has no power over love. I relive my parents’ visit to the Trevi Fountain, I re-enter their joy, and I abide with them in the Risen Lord.

About a decade or so after my parents’ last visit to Rome (my widowed father returned once more to visit me in March of 1994), I saw the Trevi Fountain for the first time. On 21 May 1984, my parents’ wedding anniversary, I sent them a postcard from Rome. The image on the card, of course, was the Trevi Fountain some years before the various face-washings that have removed decades of soot. I wrote: “Over the past few days, I’ve walked all over Rome. I could easily live here.” Little did my parents know when they first saw the Trevi Fountain and little did I know in 1984 that I would indeed live here, and for decades at that, just two blocks away! But the good Lord knew. No doubt, He was paving the way already in my childhood when my mother recounted her joy at seeing the Trevi Fountain. Even now, as I write these words, I enter again into her joy—a simple joy that heaven, pray God, has not set aside, but rather sanctified.

Easter Tuesday was a grey, rainy day. In the morning I prayed inside, but in the afternoon between showers I did manage to pray my rosary on the terrace. That same afternoon as I was making my way down to our little gym for a half hour on the stationary bike and another chapter or two of Emma, I passed one of our Fathers in the stairwell. “Are you keeping sane?” he asked. “Doing my best,” I replied. Sunlight and exercise do a lot to aid my mental health. While rain clouds may have kept me off the terrace for most of the day, they did not, thankfully, impede my getting to the gym.

Concluding his First Letter to the Thessalonians, Saint Paul prays: “May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). In this passage, Saint Paul acknowledges man’s threefold composition: body, mind and spirit. It is important at all times, but most especially in these days to keep all three sound. For COVID-19 threatens not only our physical health, but also our mental and spiritual health. While the vast majority of the world’s population will not fall seriously ill with this virus, everyone’s mental and spiritual health is suffering immediate threat. Physical illness certainly remains our chief concern, but there are also economic and social concerns that weigh heavily upon us. There is, moreover, a certain spiritual malaise that threatens to pervade our souls. Despair can seep into even the most stout hearts. In many ways, despair, a most powerful weapon in the Evil One’s arsenal, is the last and greatest temptation. The Evil One would have us live life in the pluperfect, as it were, like Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus before they met the Risen Lord. “We had hope,” they lamented to the momentarily incognito Christ. If the Evil One succeeds in taking away our hope, we sink into the abyss. Such hopelessness is that unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit. For in convincing ourselves that He cannot help us, we no longer seek His aid. In no longer seeking nor trusting in Him, we reject Him. In this sense that sin is unforgivable because we have closed ourselves off from His forgiveness, His mercy and His help. We condemn ourselves to despair.

While we may not yet have a vaccine for COVID-19, we do have a remedy for despair. When the Evil One attempts to undermine our hope, we turn to the Lord, and, on this Divine Mercy Sunday, we pray as Our Lord Himself taught Saint Faustina to pray: “Jesus, I trust in You!” We also recall the final words of the Te Deum, that solemn hymn of the Church that has concluded the Office of Readings every day during the Easter Octave: “In you, Lord, is our hope: and we shall never hope in vain.” These are among the most powerful spiritual remedies that, with the help of God’s grace, we can wield against the evil spirit when he attacks our souls. There are also other natural steps to take in order to raise our drooping spirits: soak in the sun, get exercise, take vitamins, and limit our news intact. Floridians, for 29 example, know that during the hurricane season the news media’s constant, gale-force coverage often raises one’s anxiety-levels unnecessarily. At those times it is best to limit our news consumption to small doses and not to worry continually about what might be when, in fact, what might be in the end often turns out not to be the case. Be prepared, of course, but don’t drown a hundred times over in the storm surge without ever getting wet.

My morning prayer on the terrace covers both these bases—natural and supernatural. It strengthens me spiritually in the Lord, and it also affords me time in the sun. When I pray on the terrace, I pray toward the east—ad orientem—that is, toward the rising sun. This means that during my prayer I face away from St. Peter’s Basilica. Only afterwards when I begin to do my spiritual reading do I turn toward the rooftops of Rome. One of the Jesuit Fathers, who has observed my posture, “accused” me of paganism. “You turn your back on St. Peter’s and worship the sun!” he said in jest. I explained that there was nothing new about his accusation. Early Christians were similarly accused of sun-god-worship by real pagans. “This suspicion started,” notes the ancient ecclesiastical writer Tertullian of Carthage, “when it became known that we pray facing the East” (TERTULLIAN, Apology 16.10). Why do Christians traditionally pray toward the east? We pray facing the east because the rising sun, that dispels the night’s darkness, symbolizes the Lord’s Resurrection from the dead. Praying to the east, we await His return in glory. Thus even prayer posture brings hope.

Regarding posture, Serge and I are much the same. He sits in his portico and I on my perch, and we both face east. Serge reads, and I pray. Saint Isidore of Seville counsels that “prayer purifies us, reading instructs us. Both are good when both are possible. If a man wants to be always in God’s company, he must pray regularly and read regularly. When we pray, we talk to God; when we read, God talks to us.” Of course, by “reading”, Saint Isidore means when we read Sacred Scripture. Serge appears to be reading the newspaper. Nonetheless, there is something distinctly contemplative about Serge. As one of our Fathers pointed out, Serge is not a beggar, but rather a hermit. In fact, he apparently has some sort of pension. Over the past several days, I have seen Serge receiving the occasional visitor. Like most hermits, he can be quite chatty. On Easter Thursday morning, one of the grey-habited nuns from next door paid him a brief visit. Surgically masked and properly gloved, she stopped her bicycle in front of Serge’s portico. She was returning, it seemed, from either the pharmacy or a local grocery store. She dropped off some supplies for Serge who would have gladly chatted with her longer than their brief exchange allowed.

To conclude, I want to leave you with a few photos. Each, of course, is worth a thousand words. Be assured of my continued prayers for each and every one of you—prayers offered on my perch, but most especially at the Altar of the Lord where I remember you daily in the Eucharist. I entrust myself to your own prayers, especially through Our Lady’s intercession. Together let us remember before the Lord all who suffer physically, mentally and spiritually due to COVID-19, and, in our charity, let us commend the dead to God’s mercy.

Peace on this Divine Mercy Sunday!

Me at my perch. 31

Me again at my perch.

The Piazza della Pilotta. Serge wearing a red jacket seated in his portico. Note the parked cars. During the more intense weeks of quarantine, the piazza was completely empty except for Serge. But with the slight mitigation of restrictions two weeks ago, cars have returned to the piazza. While it may have looked better empty, the parked cars consolingly signal that life does indeed go on.

Serge reading in his portico.

XI. 25 April 2020 Feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist Anniversary of the Liberation of Italy Rome under quarantine

Pax Christi

On Monday, April 20th, yet another deadline came and went without resolution. We should have resumed classes at the Gregorian University that day. It should have marked our much-anticipated return to normalcy. But the third extension of the quarantine squashed that possibility. Fair enough, we did not wish to lose in a matter of days all that we had gained over the previous weeks in our attempts to stem the spread of COVID-19. At this point, despite no official word from the university authorities, we have no real hope of seeing our students again in the classroom this academic year. Phase Two of Italy’s coronavirus response plan scheduled to begin on 4 May will allow for some minimal teacher- student interaction—sufficient for conducting one-on-one oral exams and even the possible doctoral defense—all parties, of course, properly masked and gloved. For my own students, I myself have made other provisions. I will give the students in my patrology course a take-home test that they can turn in 34 to me via the email. My seminar students have their final papers to write and nothing else. So, less mask- time for all concerned! For me personally Phase Two holds the promise of a long walk fuori le mura— outside the university’s walls. To date I have not set foot beyond the front door in forty-seven days. But I must confess that later today I am going to venture out. It is, after all, Italy’s Liberation Day from Nazi occupation at the end of World War II, and I want to celebrate.

So what will I do? I am going on pilgrimage to a neighboring terrace, and I shall do so without violating my quarantine. How so? Well, you see, the Gregorian University Jesuit community inhabits the upper floors of not only the Palazzo Centrale (the main building), but also two other buildings, the Lucchesi and the Frascara. Passageways connect the Lucchesi building to the main building. So going over to Lucchesi hardly counts for a pilgrimage—no adventure in that! But in order to get to the Frascara building, one has to exit the front door of the Palazzo Centrale, where I live, and walk across the Piazza della Pilotta. The Jesuits, who live in the Frascara building, make this trek various times every day even under quarantine. For the community refectory and other common rooms are in the main building. So my novice classmate, who is also the University Academic Vice Rector, and I have decided to be bold and go on pilgrimage to Frascara in order to celebrate Liberation Day! It is also his Name Day today— so even more reason to celebrate. What a relief it will be just to walk out the front door! I may even manage to greet Serge along the way—at a socially acceptable distance, of course. As you can see, I have become just a tad bit stir crazy.

It rained almost continuously during the first half of the week. Rain, of course, is a good thing. I won’t deny it—April showers bring May flowers and all that. But those grey, overcast skies weighed down on me heavily. There was also a sirocco—an oppressive southerly wind preceded by a drastic drop in the barometric pressure that dumps sand from the Sahara on the city of Rome. Consequently, on Wednesday morning, I woke up with a headache. The recent weather and the seven-week quarantine have had their adverse effects. At the beginning of March, once my initial anxieties had passed, I did manage to move ahead with my school work. During Easter Week I even arrived at that rare, highly desirable moment of having read every single page of student work on my desk. The moment lasted no more than a week, but nonetheless! This past week, however, a certain lethargy has threatened to drag me down. I have had little motivation to perform ordinary tasks. Mind you, I am not physically tired. I get sufficient sleep and exercise. Thanks be to God, I am also spiritually in good stead. But mentally I am feeling the constraints of our quarantine more and more. We Jesuits at the Gregorian University certainly have no reason to complain, and we realize that. The burden of our quarantine is nothing in comparison with the quarantine of so many who live in small dwellings without terrace or garden. We have the company of confreres while many live in isolation. We also have remained in good health while illness and death have plagued so many others. Nonetheless, there is no mistaking the toll that these past seven weeks enclosed within the university walls has taken. Thankfully, cobalt blue skies over the past two days have lifted my spirits. But the irony remains. While I have more free time, I have less and less energy or even desire to accomplish anything. One reason is quite simple. My students energize me. Without them I am at a bit of a loss. Yes, we communicate via email, skype and zoom. But virtual contact is no substitute for real presence—neither at Mass nor in the classroom.

Despite the above, these days do remain spiritually rich. I want to share with you another grace from my recent retreat. It involves the Mother of God and COVID-19.

At the wedding feast at Cana, “the mother of Jesus was there” (John 2:1), along with Her Son and His disciples. Mary drew Jesus’ attention to the needs of the newlyweds. Even now, She draws His attention to the needs of all men and women amid the COVID-19 crisis. “They have no wine” (John 2:3), She told Jesus—“they have no vaccine.” In response Jesus neither calls Mary “mother” nor even mentions Her name. No. He rather jarringly retorts: “O woman, what have you to do with me?” (John 2:4). Please do not think that He means disrespect. On the contrary, by that vocative, “O woman”, He reveals the great mystery of who Mary is. She is the Woman of Scripture whom the stars crown, the sun 35 clothes and the moon upholds (cf. Revelation 12:1). She is the New Eve whom the New Adam rhetorically interrogates in order to place in stark relief the fact that She does indeed have everything to do with Him. For just as He, the Divine Word through whom all things were made, had created Eve to be a fitting helpmate for Adam (cf. Genesis 2:18), so too He fashioned Mary Immaculate from the moment of Her Conception in order to be His Mother. Unlike the Old Eve who became Adam’s accomplice in evil, the New Eve is Her Son’s chosen accomplice in the good of our redemption. Mary models uniquely how God desires for us to co-operate in our own salvation. For without Mary’s yes there would have been no redemption. But at Her yes the Word became flesh. From Her sinless humanity God formed His own. Mary’s obedience enabled the Redemption wrought by Her Son. At the very hour of our Redemption, the hour that Mary by Her maternal intercession had anticipated at Cana, She stood faithfully at the foot of His Cross and singularly entered into His suffering as only a mother can share her own child’s pain. From His Cross Jesus gave us Mary to be our Mother—the Mother who, sharing our pain, accompanies us compassionately in this valley of tears.

Cana marvelously reveals Mary’s mission. Throughout the ages She continually exhorts us: “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5). In other words, She exhorts us to obey His word as She Herself had done at Nazareth. Just as the Triune God had looked with favor on Her lowliness, so too does Jesus look with mercy upon our misery. At His Mother’s insistence, He averted a crisis at Cana. He ordered the empty water jars to be filled to the brim, and then promptly turned that water into wine. In the present global crisis, His Mother continues to intercede for us before Her Son and to exhort us to do whatever He tells us. With His abundant grace Jesus fills the emptiness, the spiritual poverty, of those docile to His word. By means of the trials that such emptiness initially entails—“they have no wine”— Jesus perfects His love within us. Through the labors of the servants and the chief steward, He provided a superior wine for the feast. Through the labors of doctors and scientists, He will also provide a vaccine. Be confident that, in a post-COVID-19 world, we will once again acclaim: “You have kept the good wine until now” (John 2:10).

Will that good wine of the future constitute a “new normal”? In recent years we have heard this expression widely employed. These days, with COVID-19 thrown into the mix, the “new normal” seems to entail an indeterminate future of surgical masks, social distancing and sporadic sheltering in place. While necessary to stem the spread of the virus in the short run—a short run that admittedly may not be all that short—such daily practices won’t be with us forever. Pray God that they never become normal. To be honest, I always cringe whenever I encounter that buzzword “new normal”. For, in fact, it is nothing other than the monstrous offspring of a morally corrupt culture. The morally relativistic employ it in order to justify immoral behavior. As things get worse, what we all once recognized as bad has apparently become good in comparison to the latest disorder on steroids. As standards collapse, upgrades become cheap, and morality goes by the wayside. Nonetheless, the notion of a “new normal” does admit of a positive interpretation. The superior wine, that the Lord prepares, is just one such example.

These tremendous days of COVID-19 are days of intense spiritual purification. The Lord loves us with a severe mercy that purifies us like gold tested in fire. He is calling us to conversion—to a new normal superior to the old, wherein the hearts of believers are made more fervent, and those of the lukewarm turn back toward the Lord. Such spiritual renewal is, in fact, nothing new. As COVID-19 began to explode in New York City, I spoke with a former doctoral student of mine over the phone. The business district around his parish in lower Manhattan had become a ghost town. The atmosphere in the city resembled the days following 9/11. After the attack on the Twin Towers, New Yorkers—and indeed not only New Yorkers—filled their churches and synagogues. In anguish they turned to the good Lord for help and protection. This fervor lasted for some time, but it eventually faded. The new normal reverted to the old normal soon enough. Will the same happen in the wake of COVID-19?

The Lord has been purifying us. He has given us ample opportunity to trust in Him. He has used the suspension of public Masses in order to instill an even greater hunger in us for the Eucharist 36 and the other Sacraments. At this very moment, He is bringing good out of evil. As Saint Paul reminded the Romans: “We know that in everything [even COVID-19] God works for good with those who love him” (Romans 8:28). What fruits are we reaping now for the future? Of course, the intensity of these days will pass—thanks be to God. But pray God that the graces themselves don’t pass, but rather that they take deep root within our hearts. May we never take for granted the reception of Holy Communion. May we prepare ourselves for its worthy reception through regular sacramental confession. May we deepen our life of prayer, not only petitioning the good Lord to deliver us from evil, but also thanking Him for His many gifts and abiding with Him in love. May we recognize the great good of praying together as a family in our homes. As Father Louis of New York wrote to me some weeks ago, “One good thing that is coming from [the parish’s internet outreach] is that prayer is being brought into the home. We hope that when things return to normal, in addition to many of the other spiritual benefits that may come, people will continue to pray more at home with their families as they are now doing.” Father Louis also noted how daily attendance at Eucharistic Adoration in his parish church had never been better. Yes, just as that lack of wine at Cana paradoxically brought even greater joy, it often takes a crisis in order for us to be renewed in our faith and to enter more deeply into our relationship with Jesus.

I want to conclude with an image of Our Lady from Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. Recall the scene when the Blessed Mother runs to comfort Her cross-bearing, thorn-crowned, beaten and bloodied Son on the via dolorosa leading to Calvary. Jesus has just fallen. Passing through a hostile, jeering crowd, Mary reaches out to Her Son and assures Him, “I’m here.” With love beyond all telling, He places His bloodied hand on Her immaculate face and says, “See, Mother, how I make all things new.” The screenplay writer poignantly places on Our Lord’s lips the words of the Apocalypse: “And he who sat upon the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new’” (Revelation 21:5). For, by His Passion, Death and Resurrection, Christ the King, who bears His cruciform throne to Calvary, does indeed make all things new. The Cross becomes the Tree of Life. The COVID-19 crisis can also become a tree of life for those who hope in the Lord. The question remains, though, how will we respond to the present crisis? In faith or in fear? The Blessed Mother exhorts us not to be afraid, but rather to do whatever Jesus tells us—in other words, to be men and women of faith. Such faith in Jesus frees us from all fear and enables us to see how through our present suffering Jesus is indeed making all things new. In God’s Providence, our present lack of wine becomes paradoxically the occasion of our even greater joy.

May Our Lady continue to wrap us in the folds of Her mantle as She places us deeply within the inner recesses of the Heart of Her Son. May the faithful departed rest in the peace of Christ.

Peace!

XII. 1 May 2020 Memorial of Saint Joseph the Worker Rome under quarantine

Pax Christi

I received many graces on last Saturday’s pilgrimage to Frascara (the university building, not Frascati, the Italian hill town outside Rome—Magari, as the Italians say, “if only!”). My novice classmate and I began our pilgrimage with Mass concelebrated in the small chapel across from my bedroom in the Palazzo Centrale. We had pranzo in the community refectory—tortellini in brodo (broth), Italian sausages with grilled onions, and Sicilian oranges. We then made our way to the Palazzo Centrale’s massive bronze doors. To open them at any time is always a somewhat solemn act, but most especially last 37

Saturday. As I opened them, I was almost giddy with anticipation. We stood there for a moment just looking out the front door. Then, for the first time in seven weeks, we gingerly exited the building. How odd it felt to step out into the Piazza della Pilotta! Something that I have done innumerable times over the past three decades, and yet on Saturday the experience seemed almost novel. How quiet that sun- bathed piazza was! The only soul in sight was Serge seated in his portico directly across the piazza from the Palazzo Centrale. By mid-May the Roman sun will generate heat so scorching that no pedestrian will want to walk in it—although this year perhaps pedestrians will flock to it in droves—socially distanced droves, of course. But for now, it is still a pleasure to be warmed by the Roman sun’s rays.

As soon as I exited the building, I made my way straight to Serge. As I approached he was digging into a kiwi at the end of his own pranzo.

“Serge,” I cried out from a contagion-free distance, “Buongiorno!”. He looked up and smiled broadly. Thanks be to God, COVID-19 has not taken away Serge’s joy.

“Salve!” he said.

Mindful of Saint James’ admonition that it profits one nothing to wish the hungry well without providing them food, I came bearing a gift—some tins of tuna from my pre-quarantine stash that I have hardly touched. I offered them to Serge, and he was glad to get them. So I placed them strategically at the base of a nearby column. Having seen Serge reading so studiously for the past seven weeks (I hope that my students have been reading so diligently!), I could not resist the temptation to inquire about his reading.

“What have you been reading these days?” I asked.

“Bulgakov,” he responded.

I was astonished. Serge was reading the twentieth-century Russian Orthodox theologian Sergei Nicolaevich Bulgakov! I could hardly believe it. But since the university’s Trinitarian theology professor lives in the Frascara building, I thought that my Jesuit confrere might have introduced Serge to Bulgakov. So, I inquired further, “Are you reading his Trinitarian theology?”

“No,” Serge replied, “I’m reading the novel Il Maestro e Margherita (The Master and Margarita).”

That took me by surprise. I had no idea that Bulgakov had also written novels. As it turns out, he hadn’t. Serge explained that he was reading Mikhail Bulgakov’s twentieth-century satire about the devil’s visit to the officially atheistic Soviet Union—one of the best novels of the twentieth century, I later discovered. Clearly, Serge knows more about contemporary Russian literature than I do, which impressed me even more. To be honest, I haven’t always been convinced by Sergei Bulgakov’s theology, anyway. Not to flabbergast me any further, Serge did humbly demur that he was reading the novel in Italian translation. It should not have surprised me, though, if he had been making his way through the Russian original.

After dropping off the tuna, I, along with my companion, entered the Frascara building. We went directly to the first-floor chapel (again, second floor, if you count like an American). After a brief visit to the Blessed Sacrament (it was a pilgrimage, after all), we exited the chapel and headed up to the terrace. The Frascara building has one story less than the Palazzo Centrale. It also sits slightly lower on the slope of the piazza that gently rises toward the Quirinal hill. Consequently, it does not command the same sweeping view of the Eternal City that the main building’s terrace affords. One might think, therefore, that the view from Frascara would be inferior. But such is not the case. True enough, the vast panoramic view from the Palazzo Centrale is awe-inspiringly majestic. But the view from the Frascara terrace, 38 nestled among the various neighborhood palazzi, has a charm all its own. From my perch on the Palazzo Centrale, I gaze down on the rooftops and domes of Rome. But on the Frascara terrace, I experienced those same buildings more intimately. From that angle, even my perch behind that papal tiara on the façade of the Palazzo Centrale, though quite exposed, appeared rather cozy. What a difference only a slight change of perspective can make! The garden terrace of the Biblical Institute no longer seemed distant—like a remote valley viewed from a mountain top. The Jesuits strolling among the roses had become companions at recreation rather than objects under observation. The other terraces surrounding the Piazza della Pilotta and down the Via dei Lucchessi formed a neighborhood of rooftop residences rather than vegetative trim outlining the buildings on the block. Even St. Peter’s Basilica seemed to have miraculously leapt forward—its façade somehow more clearly defined. My view of Rome under quarantine had notably shifted from the third-person omniscient to a first-person perspective.

Me on the Frascara terrace in front of my perch.

As I looked toward the roof of the Casa Santa Maria located immediately to the west of the Frascara building, I saw an Australian doctoral student of mine who had been unable to vacate the premises when the Americans did. The sound of military helicopters circling overhead had drawn him up to his roof. “Father Christian,” I called out. Obviously surprised, he walked over to greet me. We chatted for a while—our first chat in seven weeks even though we both live on the same piazza in the heart of Rome. What a delightful chat it was from rooftop to rooftop separated by an alley that guaranteed proper social distancing! The delight came not so much from the content of our conversation than from the very fact of the conversation itself. For we didn’t do much more than catch up and share common experiences of quarantine. But we spoke—we spoke directly, not via skype, zoom or even the telephone. No. We spoke.

Technology has enabled continued communication between family, friends, business associates, students and teachers in quarantine. True enough. I am by no means ungrateful. I have always enjoyed a good phone call myself. During my early years of Jesuit formation, my mother always used to thank God for the wonders of the telephone. In the days before email, when I was a theology student in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I wrote weekly—real letters!—to my widowed father until he informed me that he would prefer a phone call. So I certainly can’t dismiss the telephone. But the telephone and other digital forms of communication are never a substitute for direct personal contact. Perhaps the present global quarantine has served as a reminder to all those who over the past years have preferred to text rather than talk that there is no real substitute for personal exchanges. To be in the presence of another warms the heart in a way that no hand-held device ever can.

Over the past two months, I have, nonetheless, made great strides in my use of technology. Never before inclined to engage in on-line teaching, I have had no choice but to do so under quarantine. I do confess that I look forward to my weekly appointment with the students of my patristics seminar. What a joy it is just to see their faces and to hear their voices via zoom. I am also able to interact via email with the students of my patrology class. The other day I sent them a few “postcards” from my pilgrimage. A number of them have written back in order to express their gratitude. They were happy to see images of their Alma Mater Mother Greg. For during the quarantine, even those remaining in Rome have been unable to come anywhere near the university. As I noted above, I am not ungrateful for what technology provides. But I have also come to see its limits—very real limits that no future technological advances will ever overcome.

On-line teaching doesn’t really do much more than pass on information like a baton in a relay race. Even on-line discussions, no matter how sophisticated, don’t accomplish much else. Yes, everyone gets to have his say. But education is so much more than just passing on information. Authentic education involves communicating the truth in a holistic manner, guiding students into the light of knowledge, encountering the other as a person, engaging in real dialogue, forming with one’s students a scholarly community dedicated to the pursuit of the truth, and inspiring them to pursue it for the rest of their lives. Stripped of that community, on-line teaching becomes nothing more than a digitalized race whose runners drop the baton every time that the internet goes down.

I’ll grant you that zoom sessions do relieve our isolation to a certain extent, and for that I am grateful. But they are incapable of offering a post-seminar cup of tea where, as a former student of mine once said, the real seminar begins. I have always told my students that the hour and a half that we spend together in the classroom is just the cappuccino that one enjoys when sitting with friends in the Piazza Navona. But the actual seminar is much more than just that cup of cappuccino. It is rather the very act of sitting with friends. It is the conversations about the weekly readings that take place at breakfast, lunch and dinner in the respective national colleges and Religious houses of Rome. It is the debates that occur when walking through Rome’s piazzas on the way to the university. It is a matter of struggling through the intricacies of Saint Augustine’s grace theology while strolling past the Pantheon that the good Bishop of Hippo himself had once entered. It is going to Fossanova to celebrate Mass in the medieval Abbey Church and to pray afterwards in the infirmary cell where Saint Thomas Aquinas died. It is to go on pilgrimage to Gaeta and to offer the Eucharist in the Cappella d’Oro dedicated to Mary Immaculate where Pope Blessed Pius IX contemplated the dogmatic definition of Our Lady’s sinless conception. It is to read there on site Ubi Primum, the 1849 encyclical that Pius IX promulgated from his exile in Gaeta in order to inquire among the worldwide Catholic episcopate about the laity’s Marian faith and devotion. For all that it offers, especially now during the COVID-19 crisis, technology is no substitute for these experiences. On-line education just has us looking at a screen. The virtual can never be real. On the other hand, real education builds a community in pursuit of the truth that sets our hearts and minds on fire. When you’re dealing with your computer, the last thing that you want is a fire! My brief exchange with Father Christian stimulated these thoughts, and it reminded me of all that I presently miss.

After we took our leave of Father Christian, my fellow pilgrim and I strolled back and forth on the terrace as prayed our rosary and contemplated the joyful mysteries of our salvation. We offered the fourth mystery, the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, for all who suffer from anxiety and depression amid the COVID-19 crisis. May the Christ Child’s light dispel their darkness.

Once we had finished our prayers, we decided to sit down for a while at a garden-set of table and chairs nestled among flowering potted plants in a small alcove formed by the structure covering the stairway that leads to the terrace. We mused about the Italian decrees regulating our quarantine, struggling to discern what phase two and phase three will or will not actually allow. Our discussion brought a smile to my face. For it provided me with another example of a phenomenon that I had observed many years ago. You can tell a lot about a culture from the words that its native language bequeaths to other languages. Think about it. What Italian words has the English language adopted? Spaghetti, linguini, pasta, pizza and lasagna! Even the occasional “Ciao, bello!” rolls off the lips of the more sophistically affected English speaker—like the rather sappy cara sposa and caro sposo of the newly wedded Eltons in Emma. Clearly, Italian culinary culture has enriched our own. What words have made their way from English into Italian? Serial killer, rigging (as in elections), and now lockdown!—the latter, by the way, inevitably pronounced with two extra vowels: lock-ka-down-na. What does that tell you about Anglo-American culture, or at least how it is perceived?!? Now, the Italians have a perfectly good word for quarantine—quarantena. In fact, in the Middle Ages, the Italians were the ones who invented quarantine—forty days (quaranta giorni) of isolation imposed on foreign vessels entering port. Those forty days are a conscious biblical allusion to the forty days that Our Lord spent in the desert. But for whatever reason these days, even in their official governmental documents, the Italians prefer “lockdown.” Might it be a sign of creeping secularism? Whatever the case maybe, a rose by any other name is still a rose. Whether it be quarantine or lockdown, we still haven’t been able to leave the building.

In order to console us Romans in our lockdown on Liberation Day (irony of all ironies!), the Italian Air Force sent the Tricolore Squadron to fly over the rooftops and domes of Rome and fill the brilliantly blue sky with the green, white and red of the Italian flag. As my fellow pilgrim and I spoke of those regulatory decrees, we suddenly heard military jets approaching from the south. Nine fighter jets scraped the Colosseum and the Roman Forum as they flew toward the Vittore Emmanuelle Monument lording over the Piazza Venezia on their way up the Via del Corso. Streams of green, white and red kerosene-fueled smoke followed in their wake. The smoke was so thick that it even blocked the sun and cast a shadow over the city. What joy their approach evoked! We stood to greet them. I waved my arms in the air and shouted, “Forza Italia!”—quarantine had yet again aroused my Italian patriotism. The squadron made its way north over the Piazza del Popolo and up the Via Flaminia. They circled back and made another pass over the historic center—this time directly over the Quirinal Palace. Bursting with enthusiasm I let out another “Forza Italia!” A few days later I learned that the US Blue Angels had recently brought similar joy to New Yorkers in lockdown. May we, like Serge, never allow COVID-19 to take away our joy.

On Thursday strawberries arrived in the Jesuit community refectory. I always tell my students that when the strawberries arrive it is time to begin studying for exams. When the cherries arrive at the very end of May, it is too late to begin if you haven’t already. The cherries are also an annual sign of hope for me. For their arrival means that within the month I will be on an airplane for the United States. Each summer I enjoy a few months of rest during which I am able to dedicate more time to my own reading and writing along with, of course, visits to family, friends and my fellow Jesuits. I do hope that this year’s cherries, when they arrive, will herald the same.

My immediate hope, however, is for this coming Monday. For on May 4th phase two is scheduled to begin. It holds the promise of a walk outside the university walls—a walk far longer than the short stretch across the piazza to Frascara! While on the stationary bike the other day, I was glad to read that Jane Austen concurs with me on the merits of phase two. The English novelist places her critique on 41 the lips of Mrs. Elton, the newly wedded Augusta Hawkins, who in addressing Miss Emma Woodhouse, says: “I am no advocate for entire seclusion. I think, on the contrary, when people shut themselves up entirely from society, it is a very bad thing; and that it is much more advisable to mix in the world in a proper degree, without living in it either too much or too little.” A leisurely walk to the Villa Borghese, properly masked, should satisfy the latter. On the way I intend to stop at the altar of Our Lady of the Miracle in the Church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte and offer a prayer of thanksgiving for Her protection and intercession during these lock-downed days of the soon-to-be-concluded phase one.

Finally, may I leave you with the words of Saint Teresa of Jesus—words to which I have often turned in prayer, especially these days?

Let nothing disturb you, Let nothing frighten you, All things pass, God does not change, Patience Attains to all things; He who possesses God Lacks nothing: God alone suffices.