Five years ago, our country’s Christians experienced an Easter like none before it, and hopefully like none we will ever see again. It was a time of isolation, loneliness and anxiety, and yet today, we are learning that out of this darkness, the flame of our faith has only grown brighter.
Prior to the COVID pandemic, few Americans could have even imagined any day, let alone an Easter Sunday, upon which we could not go to church. This is, after all, a nation created by people who were seeking the freedom to worship however they pleased.
All throughout Lent in 2020, which eerily tracked with the emergence of the Chinese virus, I recall hearing the Brooklyn church bells peeling, piercing the strange silence of the empty urban landscape.
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But the church doors were locked tight on epidemiologists’ orders.
The sound of the bells mingled consolation with mockery, a harsh reminder of the spiritual prohibition, but also ringing with the promise and the truth that this too would pass.
At the time, separated from my family, I wrote in a column for the New York Post that “we have given up each other for Lent. But as we awake on Sunday to the surreal reality of current circumstance, there is hope we will see each other again.”
As we celebrate the Lord’s resurrection this year, not only have the COVID lockdowns passed, not only are our churches open, but they are packed to the brim with flocks of the faithful, new and old, in what some have called another American religious revival.
This week, that same New York Post ran an article with the glorious headline, “Young people are converting to Catholicism en masse — driven by pandemic, internet, ‘lax’ alternatives.”
The National Catholic Register reports that Catholic parishes across the nation are experiencing 30-70% growth in attendance, and it’s not just Catholics. Ask any practicing Christian in our country, and I meet a lot on the road, and most will tell you they see and feel the growth in the faith.
Perhaps we should not be surprised that the bitter cup of COVID led to greater religious observance by Christians. After all the Holy Spirit, speaking through the prophets, has told for thousands of years of periods of loss and suffering that end in the fullness of God’s light.
From the banishment from Eden, to the Flood, to the Exodus, and finally Christ’s 40 days of starvation and temptation in the desert, again and again, it is suffering that brings God’s people closest to Him.
During COVID, our desert was isolation, and especially for young people, it only exacerbated what was already a trend of smartphones replacing playgrounds, of virtual life online slowly supplanting reality.
At church, everything is very real, much as it has been for more than a thousand years. At church, we are never alone. At church, things can be beautiful and true and celebrated, unlike the snark-filled world of our screens that thrives on cruel jokes.
Human beings need a purpose and meaning beyond being a cog in the brave new world of tech. We need connection to our God and to each other.
And so we should think back to our cold, dark COVID Easter this year, as spring brightens the clouds and warms the grass across this nation, and remember that once again, like always, God has delivered us from suffering.
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This year, there will be family and friends, handshakes and hugs. There will be no masks, and life will be well-lived, like in the good old days, like in the old normal.
Maybe more than anything else, we all learned the hard way not to take the practice of our faith for granted. We never thought it could be taken from us, and yet it was, though thankfully only briefly.
The other night, I had to pick up my son from his CCD class at church. It was after 9 p.m. and the class was running late. I was tired and annoyed, but then I saw him and his buddies walking out, laughing, having just spent an hour talking about God.
A feeling of gratitude washed over me. I didn’t have to be there, I got to be there. This wasn’t a burden, it was a blessing.
Is America poised for a new religious revival out of the ashes of COVID? It may be too soon to say, but in the end, it is up to us, and so far, the signs are looking pretty good.
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