WE ARE IN THE MIDST of a perfect storm that bears the name “SARS-COVID 19 pandemic.” Today we are invited to a personal and social behavior that none of the Europeans born after the Second World War had known and that they certainly would never have thought of.
Perhaps, those who were born before have memories of curfews, bombings, shelter runs, sirens … but what we are experiencing these days is sad news for everyone. The state of alarm, curfew or that denomination that the regulations of each country adopts, reaches us in practically all countries.
We are facing an “invisible” enemy (as Dr. Massimo Gandolfini calls it). We are all witnesses to its lethal effects and cannot control it. Scientists continue to work for its destruction, to find a vaccine, but at the moment they do not find specific therapies that can kill it. It is a “new” virus and this means that even the only effective weapon available to us, the vaccine, does not reach us due to its terrible speed of spread and contagion.
Living years of exciting science and technology achievement, with even more exciting development prospects, we risk believing and feeling “omnipotent.” More than one sociologist, for some time, describes our times as marked by a “trick of omnipotence” that, like a tsunami, is eliminating values, principles, customs, traditions and awareness of the “limits” on which the whole has been built of humanity.
Abortion, euthanasia, suicide, freedom of absolute self-determination, even claiming to choose one’s “gender” and reach the mystery of procreation with the alchemy of warlocks, certainly do not go in the direction of those who are called to serve life and not “use” it to satisfy their desires without “limits”
The lesson that life gives us today is very important and we should not overlook it. The most important thing is the health, defense and protection of human life that concerns to all of us. We see it in the appeals to the population to stay in our homes, and also in the titanic effort of all the health personnel to care for and heal above any other consideration: age, personal situation, sex, etc.
This life-giving lesson also provides us with the opportunity to reconnect with our families and elders. Older people unfortunately many times forget, facing the recently proposals of euthanasia laws in many countries, today plagued by this pandemic, were also in the eye of the hurricane.
Let us trust, have Faith and Hope that this terrible situation awakens in the humanity a feeling of solidarity and collaboration, of sacrifice for others and a goal of common Good. We remember today the importance of the simplest things, that so many people have forgotten because they are involved in a routine of consumerism, selfishness, virtual reality, thirst for power and prominence.
