The eve of Holy Week in the Gregorian calendar, less than two weeks before the end of the one-month lockdown, which comes 40 days after Ash Wednesday, is a Christian tradition observed in many denominations.
This is the hallowed stretch of sacrifice leading up to Jesus’ death and Resurrection.
During Lent, Orthodox Christians, Catholics and some Protestants prepare for Holy Week by fasting, praying and reconciling with the Lord.
The observance of Lent this year, when people review their relationship with kin, friends, their neighbors and their community, is underlined with the continuing rampage of the pandemic coronavirus, known as CoViD-19.
As we watch the frontliners rise to the challenge of this unprecedented disease and those quarantined in their respective homes, some thoughts get to the appreciation of keen observers.
Perhaps this is the better time to evaluate our choices in life: how we treat our kin, our friends, and those in our community, how we made our choices and rejig the same today, given this nightmare.
In the privacy of our thoughts, perhaps, while looking at the evaluation bulletin board, we can “feel” the call to change some of the attitudes we have had for years, what some call the self-absorption and our way of interacting with our fellowmen.
One lesson during Lent that can be adopted during the out-of-control behavior of COVID-19 is the practice of generosity, which can rise with different profiles.
Instance, do we choose to just stay flies-on-the-wall while we see others falling off their erstwhile health stance, or must we—assuming exemption from the lockdown protocols—lend a generous hand by helping, in the permitted possibility, of helping the ones not in hospitals but off these places with perhaps food supplies that otherwise would not be available to them?
Been said that generosity is an attitude. To have this at this time demonstrates the highest rung in a person’s humanity: where people, whatever their religious and political persuasions are, feel that they are loved.
In another lingo, this underlines what is the essence of the spirit of selfless giving.
This places the well-heeled in solidarity with the poor the gifts of sacrifice and almsgiving often declared during Lent.
