‘HOLY WEEK IS PERFECTLY POSITIONED’
Coronavirus crisis shaping Easter message
Father John Grace has been asked to lead through dark times before.
He was dispatched to Virginia Tech University on April 17, 2007, the day after one of its students shot and killed 32 faculty and students before killing himself.
Grace, now pastor of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Hampton, remembers how the grief and anxiety escalated the following year as the campus braced for the anniversary. Holy Week and Easter fell four weeks before the commemoration.
Holy Week felt different then as it does now, Grace says, as he comforts a congregation that is fearful and sequestered at home during a pandemic. But Holy Week could not come at a better time, he said.
“Suddenly with a backdrop of fear, a backdrop of death, we pay attention to anybody and anything who is life-giving and raise them up. … When was the last time we appreciated a doctor?” Grace said.
“That’s Jesus. That’s the Resurrection. In some ways, Holy Week is positioned perfectly for us now.”
Several faith leaders said that Easter, the consummate story of overcoming fear and death, was intended for times such as these.
Easter never was about egg hunts, candy baskets or stressing over that new dress for church, they say.
“This gives us the absolute, phenomenal opportunity to practice what we preach,” said Ann Frances of Unity Church of Tidewater in Virginia Beach. “And that’s faith beyond measure. … The ‘joy’ of this virus, if you will, is that we’re all in this together. This virus doesn’t care what race you are, what gender you are, what your sexual preferences are, what country you were raised in or your ethnicity. The virus doesn’t care.
“It is showing us true oneness, either through the good or through the struggles … I just see this as a marvelous opportunity for Easter Sunday, for us to truly rise up to our authentic true selves as an expression of Christ.”
For Easter, Unity is conducting an 11 a.m. drive -in service in the parking