Rome: empty Notebook
As I write from a preternaturally quiet Rome, Italy is about to enter the third week of her coronavirus lockdown and Ireland is ramping up her own quarantine measures to slow the spread of disease and avoid the harrowing experience of the North of Italy.
That word quarantine has religious roots. It comes from the Italian quaranta giorni (40 days), and originated in the city-state of Venice. Since the 14th Century it was Venetian law that the passengers and crew of ships coming from plague-infected areas would serve a so-called quarantena of isolation before they were allowed on-shore.
That 40-day period comes from Scripture. Whether one thinks of the 40 days of purification that Noah passed on the Ark, the 40 years of wandering that the Israelites spent in the desert, or the 40 days of fasting that Christ endured in the wilderness, the same logic that gave us the 40 days of Lent, led the Venetians to settle on a 40-day period of isolation in order to test those who might bring disease into their city.
In Italian the link is easy to see – the word for Lent (quaresima) is close to that for quarantine (quarantena).
In Rome this lockdown has very much been linked to Lent. The news of Venice’s famous carnival being shut down was an omen that things might be more serious than previously understood.
Precautions
Extra precautions around the reception of Communion started happening when Rome’s English-language community gathered for its Ash Wednesday Mass at the Basilica of Santa Sabina. News from Lombardy showed that they were dealing with a full-blown crisis, and the restrictions placed on the so-called ‘red zones’ in the North were extended to the whole country. Schools and universities were closed in the middle of the first week of Lent, whilst the parish Masses for the second Sunday of Lent were the last public liturgies in the city.
Although churches remain open for prayer, the people can no longer gather for public Mass. This Lent is a prolonged Holy Saturday in more ways than one.
I wonder at the nature of this trial, when so much is being stripped away from people by this awful virus. One thing is clear: this Lent of loss, this time when so much relies on the careful discipline of the many, and the heroic efforts of the few, is forcing us to place ourselves in God’s hands as we also depend on the actions of so many other people.
Even though we live as individuals, our shared physical and spiritual welfare depends on an invisible communion of care, responsibility and love.
Italian school children are encouraged to place posters in their windows reading tutto andrà bene – all will be well. Whatever happens, Lent always promises the arrival of Easter, and carries with it the sure hope that whatever the darkness faced, that all will indeed be well.
As one door closes, another one opens
My professor, Fr Joseph Carola SJ ,drew my attention to an event in the life of St John Henry Newman.
On Christmas Day 1832, as a young Anglican clergyman touring the Mediterranean, Newman was humbled by the faith of a Catholic layman who, like many in these days, could not attend Mass. Although the poor fellow was in quarantine on a small island in the harbour of Valletta, Malta, he devoutly followed the Mass which was being celebrated in a chapel onshore.
This form of devotion was foreign to the Anglican tradition and Newman’s heart was touched. He saw the man “saying his prayers with his face to the house of God in his sight over the water”, and he told his sister Harriet, “it is a confusion of face to me that the humblest Romanist testifies to his Saviour as I, a minister, do not”.
Although physically cut off from the Mass, the prayer of those who hunger for the Lord are powerful.
One side-effect of the current situation is a re-discovery of the history and folklore associated with the Spanish Flu outbreak in the wake of World War I. In my first parish of Dingle there are two holy wells that stand side-by-side in a place called Kinard. One, dedicated to St Fionán, bears a cross dated 1918 that was erected at the start of the outbreak. It is said that the water there had a cure for the flu. The second, dedicated to Our Lady, has a Marian statue, erected in thanksgiving after the pandemic.
It is said that no one from that part of the parish perished from influenza. May St Fionán and Our Lady pray for us!