by Father Mark P. Nolette

We are about to begin Holy Week.

April is Autism Awareness Month.

We are in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

All three realities converge for us now.  What do they have to do with one another? Nothing… and everything.   The pandemic, and our responses to it, have brought us to a crisis moment as the People of God.  There is hope on the horizon – an immense, brilliant hope, hidden in Christ but offered to us now.  Before we can perceive this hope, we must acknowledge our situation as it is. This will be very difficult for many.  It entails seeing things in a manner differently than the world as a whole sees things.  That is why we need to look to autistic people – people who habitually see things differently; people who are not fooled by ‘spin’ – as an example of what this means and how it can work.  It is the hour when people who appear to be of no use – such as autistic people and contemplatives – may have something valuable to share with everyone else.

Let us begin.

We Americans like to define ourselves by what we do.  We feel better about ourselves when we can tell others how busy we are.  We may complain about it, but we also pride ourselves in it. We define others by how well they can adapt to our culture of busyness.  We speak of those who cannot keep up as “dis-abled”. We do not respect those who choose to order their lives differently.  We plan and fill the hours of our days, our work time and play time.  When we must physically stop, we fill the space around us with movies, TV shows, games, and conversation.  Our culture of busyness also provides us with the illusion that we are in control of our lives.  We have calendars; we have meetings; we have detailed plans and agendas.  We have life by the throat – or so we like to think.

Enter COVID-19.

This virus and the methods we have chosen to slow its spread have upended our usual sense of busyness and control.  A sense of loss and absence is pervasive. Schools and colleges have either gone to online learning or are shut down completely.  Some people must work from home, while others have lost their jobs. Social distancing makes it more difficult to connect with friends and family.  Restaurants, movie theaters, museums, and even many parks are closed. Professional sports leagues have cancelled games. Clubs and other social groups have cancelled or postponed activities.  The way we shop for groceries has changed.  Most states currently have stay-at-home orders in effect for their people.  We now find that we have more time on our hands and fewer ways to spend that time.  We miss the easy familiarity of friends and relatives.  We fear the loss of control.  We feel as though we are now in a Twilight Zone episode where everything looks the same on the outside, but our lives have changed profoundly.  We do not know how long these changes will last, or how many of us may end up with coronavirus.  Where we once knew busyness and control, we now find absence and emptiness.

Absence is suddenly all we see, starting with our own removal from where we normally go.  We basically agree that it is a concession, a sacrifice, for a greater good; and then, we seek to fill the space.  To lessen the shock of change, we begin finding substitutions to approximate what is missing.  Restaurants closed?  Then, we can order takeout!  Housebound for the evening?  Movie marathon!  Meetings cancelled?  Video conferencing!  Birthday party?  Neighborhood greetings on parade, viewed from the safety of your window!  After a while, this improvisation becomes a badge for the war effort. We cheer each other on as we prove that we can overcome any loss with enough creativity and imagination.  Yet, we cannot help but detect the scent of cognitive dissonance in all this.  All these actions are substitutes, desperate attempts to convince ourselves that life goes on as usual – except that it isn’t.  And we know it.

We look to our Church for help and guidance. In official statements from diocese to diocese, we find instead a reflection of what we see everywhere else, written with such consistency from one diocese to the next that we wonder if there is a template that everyone is passing around.  First, we find absence – an absence that we are told, regrettably, is necessary as a response to COVID-19: no public Masses, few if any Sacraments publicly celebrated (or celebrated at all), devotions and other public gatherings cancelled; church buildings in many (but not all) dioceses locked 24/7. Yet, these same official statements assure us that all is well and in control.  The work of the Church continues, we are told.  We are encouraged to watch livestreamed Masses and make prayers of spiritual communion.  Yet again, if we are open, we will catch the scent of cognitive dissonance.  The work of the Church is not continuing as it should – and we all know it.

Something is missing here.  Something is not being spoken or acknowledged.  Until we can fully acknowledge where we are, we cannot know which way we should go from here to move forward.  What is missing?

If all we do is attempt to replace one form of busyness with another, we learn nothing. If all we do is try to maintain the illusion that we are in control, we see nothing.

An artist or an architect might tell us that what we are missing is negative space or, more precisely, what only negative space can reveal.  Negative space – those areas deliberately kept empty – is as essential as every visible color, line and element in any work of art.  The use of space in a painting helps us see the subject as the artist intends.  Pauses bring out the melody in a musical piece.  Silent moments are a necessary part of any good conversation.  Negative space reveals a depth of meaning that color or sound or shape alone cannot offer.  If the artist filled all negative space, the work would suffer and even become incomprehensible.  Negative space, then, is necessary in art and in life.

How does this concept of negative space enter our discussion of the COVID-19 crisis and how we as a Church can see it and respond to it?

In the Christian spiritual life, we have a term for negative space.  We call it contemplation. Contemplation is a long, loving look at the real. Because it is a loving look, it means that we see things through the eyes of God.  Because it is a long look, it means that, in order to have that loving, divine perspective, we must create negative space in our hearts and minds.  We let go of control and power so that we can look around us with open eyes and humble, loving hearts.  Contemplation, or Christian negative space, reminds us that God’s ways are not our ways, that we are all blinded by the world, and that we can only see once we see the truth in love, as God knows it to be.  This can only be given us by God as a grace.  We cannot control it or set its agenda.  We receive it, and then we offer it to all.

Here we must add a warning. Some people have the impression that contemplation should always yield peace of mind; that it is a method to calm fears and anxieties.  Not necessarily.  Christian contemplation sees what really is with the eyes of love.  In this case, we may fear what we might see.  We see absence.  Emptiness.  But it’s not a neutral emptiness.  We would not fear that so much.  In that empty space, we perceive pain.

What pain do we perceive?  There is the pain of the hundreds of thousands who have COVID-19 and the thousands who are dying of it.  There is the pain of hundreds of thousands of others who have other afflictions that we might be ignoring now.  There is the pain brought about by social distancing and the lack of human touch.  There is the fear of what this pandemic will mean for everyone.  There is the pain of separation from Mass, the Sacraments, and especially the Eucharist.

All these are our pains.  But can we speak of a pain in the very heart of God? Does God not in some mysterious way share our burdens? Does God not know the suffering of those who are ill with COVID-19, or any other illness? Does God not know the pain of social isolation, or anxiety, or uncertainty? When we no longer offer one another the Sacraments – those extremely precious gifts of God to us – have we not, in a sense, spurned God by rejecting His gifts? Does our lack of faith and courage also cause God pain, in that our fears become an obstacle to His love and mercy?

When we stand in the love of God, we have the courage to face all such pain.  Where do we go from here?  Where does hope enter in?

The Scriptures show us.  Faced with such overwhelming pain, people in the Scriptures lament.  We see it in the Psalms, first of all.  We see it in the prophets.  Jesus weeps and laments over Jerusalem for its inability to recognize what the Father was offering it through Him.  So must we lament.

What should we lament?  We lament the pandemic itself and the great suffering it has caused to so many around the world.  We lament the effects of the measures taken to try to curb the pandemic – the social separation, the loss of jobs, the weakening of a sense of community, the loss of access even to many of the Sacraments.  We lament our refusal to pause our busyness long enough to gaze upon the world with that long, loving look of contemplation.  We lament how we have treated those who God has sent to show the rest of us how to do this. Since we find lamentation in the Scriptures, we can be assured that the Lord also laments for all these things and more.

Just as many of the lamentation psalms ended in expressions of hope, so, too, hope can truly enter once we have seen with open eyes what is going on, allowed ourselves to feel the pain, and lamented it.  Then, and only then, do we know where we truly are.  Then, and only then, can the Lord reach us.  Recall that His power is best manifested in what the world calls weakness. Foolishness. Failure.  Nowhere is this better manifested for us than in the events we are about to commemorate during Holy Week.

Only when we have seen things as they are and lamented them fully can we be truly open to the Lord’s voice in our hearts.  Only then can we discover what the Lord has planned for us – a future full of hope and joy.  But this future will not come from our own efforts.  It will be a gift of God.  Living that gift will take plenty of effort, of course.  But the gift will make the effort possible.

Where do we go from here? Only the Lord can fully answer that question, if we are serious about trusting Him and loving Him with all our being.  Yet, we can say this as a beginning.

First of all, the COVID-19 crisis reminds us that we are not in control and that our plans cannot account for everything.  We need something else to add to the mix: we need contemplation.  We need that ongoing long, loving look at the real.  We need to value it in our lives and live it when we can.  We need to value those whom the Lord has called to devote their lives totally to this.  We can now see that contemplation is as valuable as action, for action loses its purpose without the negative space of contemplation.

Secondly, we find ourselves struggling to maintain contact with people we like and love.  We are challenged by the constraints of social distancing.  We feel the uncertainty of a crisis over which we feel little control.  All our normal routines are disrupted.  Can anyone help us with all this? Who knows how to live such lives? Might it not be the autistic people among us, who have always felt socially distant and challenged? Autistic people, who have always struggled to connect emotionally with people they love? Autistic people, who often feel overwhelmed by life and who try to maintain daily routines? Might this be the moment when autistic people can share their hard-earned wisdom and experience with the world?

Finally, we are about to celebrate Holy Week.  This is the week where Jesus made Himself negative space; where He emptied Himself completely, giving His life for us and giving us the Eucharist as the ultimate Sacrament of His presence among us.  This would be an excellent time to practice the art of negative space, the art of contemplation, of a long, loving look at the real.  Set aside times during Holy Week when you can tune out everything, both outside yourself and within, and say to the Lord, “Here I am!”  Be ready to share His love and His sorrow; His joy and His pain.  It is all a part of Love.  It is all a part of how Love will bring you, by love, to Love.