Around the year 250 AD, a plague swept through the Roman Empire which had devastating consequences. Known as the “Plague of Cyprian” (named after St. Cyprian of Carthage, who did not cause the plague, but lived through it, and whose testimony provided an account of the devastation) the mortality rates recorded in the city of Rome were said to be 5000 people a day. This was just in Rome. The population of the city of Alexandria was recorded to have diminished by 68% due to deaths and people fleeing the city. Refugees pressed against the borders of the Roman Empire, the economy ground to a halt, scant public services ceased, and the political order collapsed. It was a disaster of apocalyptic proportions.
It also was not the first time in human history that a contagious epidemic had shaken the human project of civilization to its foundations. But what made this plague different was the effect it had on a small religious sect called the Church.
The Church, a reality that we know as a vast international reality with well over a billion adherents, was a small minority in 250 AD and it was also a minority that was illegal, despised and held with suspicion by anyone that mattered in the culture. The Church was considered by many to be either dangerous or a joke.
Yet in the face of the devastating plague, people saw the Church in a different light, a light that illuminated a quality of the profession and practice of their strange faith they the culture found both confounding and compelling.
This quality was a religiously motivated, magnanimous compassion that the Christians called charity.
A first hand account of the plague describes the odd behavior of Christians: “Heedless of danger they took charge of the sick, attending to their needs and ministering to them in Christ”.
And this care and ministry was not limited to their co-religionists. Even their pagan neighbors were the recipients of their compassion, with no distinction of rich or poor. An attitude and action that confused a culture that was strictly conscious of class, status and separatist in terms of tribe, ethnicity, religion and family.
In the midst of a disaster, people saw that the Church did not just provide emotional solace or a sense of identity, but a practical, prescription for action, that the culture found counter-intuitive. This prescription was called charity, and this charity was not limited to financial assistance, but direct intervention on behalf of the afflicted, even though to do so, meant great risk.
Historian Rodney Stark estimated that in areas of the empire of without a Christian presence, 30% succumbed to the plague. In contrast, areas of the empire in which there was a strong Christian presence, the rate of mortality was cut by 20%.
Thus in Rome, if the mortality rates were 5000 a day, the intervention of Christians likely saved 1000 people a day who would without the Church would have died.
This was long before the modern understanding of epidemiology, contagion and without advanced medical technology or pharmaceuticals.
Many Christians would die as a result of their interventions, but one observer remarked that he witnessed in their passing “serenity and happiness”. Christians demonstrated they had a transcendent reference point in their faith that encouraged them to overcome fear and revulsion with charity.
In the wake of the plague, conversions to Christianity would increase, and these numbers were of great concern to cultural elites who perceived this minority religious movement as a real threat to their status quo. Christians had made themselves credible, not simply through eloquent argumentation but by practicing publically what they believed to be true.
Their motivation for all this risk taking was not merely a vague humanism, but a robust faith in Jesus Christ, whom they believed to be the one, true God who had accepted for himself a human nature and lived a real human life. This one, true God, Jesus Christ, like humanity in all things but sin, existed not as an idea or feeling, or as a spirit inhabiting a statue (like the pagan gods) but met them personally in the reality of the Church, taught them the truth about God and about themselves in the Gospel, and gave Christians his life and presence in the Holy Communion of the Eucharist. The proper end towards which the religious convictions and practices of the Christians was directed was this uncanny charity that motivated them to take great risks, move towards, rather than away, from danger, and to serve all that God in Christ had created and loved, including especially, strangers and even enemies.
The reality of our situation right now, with 24/7 reporting on a mysterious contagion from the East is much different from the situation in 250 AD, but our fears are the same and also, the Church is still here.
And what Christians believed about God, about their way of life, about who they had to become in a moment of crisis is still believed today. At least, this is the case on paper, in our Sacred texts and our Catechism, but it’s up to every generation of Christians to take what is in the books and embody that teaching in real lives.
If we don’t then the world, rightly, looks at us as a marginal faith based entertainment club rather than the life and presence of God in Christ in the world.
Out of charity, the Church has asked that we Christians accept precautionary measures in regards to some of our ritual practices because of risks associated with the Coronavirus. These precautions, though they are intended towards the common good, might be received by some Christians as disruptions and as such will be criticized, but please remember that they are acts of charity meant to protect the most vulnerable.
If fears become reality, we Christians may be asked to take some risks so that the sick might be cared for and that people receive the Holy Sacraments, especially those who need them the most. It’s a good time for us Christians to make sure we know who our neighbors are, especially those neighbors who are elderly and alone, those who are most vulnerable and may have no one to care for them. We also need to overcome the natural impulse to simply take care of our own, and ask ourselves how the Church is prepared to care for strangers and those who do not share our faith. It also may be the time that we have to offer to help, even taking a lower place, rather than placing ourselves in charge. How will you assist those who will have to place themselves at risk?
There is no time in our lives when our faith in Christ does not measure and judge us and there has been no age of the Church’s life where there has not been a crisis. The long history of the Church is a history of crisis management. We are naïve and mistaken if we think this is not the case.
The Christians of 250 AD were a minority that for many years gained strength from their narrowness. The Cyprian plague changed that. They grew and became stronger because narrowness gave way to reality, the reality that Christ intends his Church to be in the world, not withdrawn from it- not becoming the world, but changing it. You have to go out and take risks to do this.
In Christ’s holy Gospel, we hear of his transfiguration, a mysterious event where the Lord Jesus revealed who he really is- he is God.
Christ is God, who, as I have said many times, accepts a human nature and lives a real, human life. In doing so he goes where we all go- into suffering and death, and in this descent into the raw facts of our lives he reveals that neither suffering and death are the end of us and even within those experiences, he is present and working. He does all this, God does this for us in Christ, not because he has to, or because he needs to, but because of his charity, his love for us. Out of love he risks the worst so that in the midst of the worst we can still be found by him.
Seeing the Lord Jesus for who he really and truly is and accepting him in this revelation is at the heart of the Gospel. Our natural preference is to make the Lord Jesus into someone we want him to be. This happens usually because we intuit correctly that if Christ is who he reveals himself to be, we have to change, and this change will inevitably entail risks and following him into experiences that we would rather stay away from.
So it also is with the Church. More often than not, Christians are exerting tremendous effort to make the Church into what we want it to be- an institution, a debating society, a political lobby, a servant of our ideologies, a fantasy kingdom, social club, an ethnic identity. All these are attempts by us to gain strength from our narrowness.
But the moment comes, when narrowness will not suffice, and a crisis demands more of us, and we have to decide as to whether or not we will go where the Lord Jesus wants us to go.
Father Steve Grunow 