A message from Archbishop Michael Jackson
CORONAVIRUS or Covid-19 entered our world and our vocabulary like a bolt from the blue. It brought us face to face with globalisation, with the convenience of travel and the ease of transmission. It put us right in the path of danger and of fear. It showed us that nature is a force beyond our understanding, our manipulating and our controlling. For those who see time after time the model of the molecular biology of the disease on the television screen, on Twitter or in the newspaper, we have grown to dread this little ball of infection and of invasion of our immune system that looks like a brightly coloured conker fallen from a psychedelic autumnal tree. Fear for ourselves as individuals and fear for others as a community are entirely appropriate reactions and responses. Fear directed towards other people is a much more dangerous emotion because we have no clear sense of where this will lead or where this will end. Kindness directed towards others will take us a lot further. So will reshaping all of our engagements with others in accordance with The HSE expert guidelines. They are our new manual for being a society of people who care for one another in these days. Social distancing is essential. Social distancing bears fruit and saves lives. This cannot be underlined enough. Once you get used to it, it is easy to do. It really does make a difference. We all need to do it all the time, no matter how difficult we find it. Churches are about gathering. Churches are about people, friendship, sharing in worship and in community. All of this type of gathering has come to an abrupt halt. We in the churches are totally supportive of complying with civic duty and civic responsibility by distancing. We still want worship and prayer and care of others to continue.
The absence of church as we know it has forced us to dig deeper and to try more inventively to reach out to people we can no longer reach so easily. Please be patient with us as we continue to try. While some of this is online, not everyone finds comfort or companionship online. So we are trying to keep in touch by tried and tested means as well like paper-based communication and the friendships that are the heartbeat of community everywhere.