The fact that Jesus Christ was victorious over affliction and death, even after being executed upon the cross, is a timely reminder that God can draw great good from the darkest of situations such as the fear, sickness and death surrounding the current COVID-19 outbreak – so says Fr. Karl Pung, Rector of St. Mary Cathedral, Lansing.
“He brings good out of each and every thing, if we let him,” said Fr. Pung in his homily marking the Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 22.
“I'm not saying any of that is easy. Being sick is miserable. Encountering death, uh, it’s something that should be in our world but it is. Hard. Loss and grief and loneliness and ache and betrayal, are all real and painful things but as Christians we keep before us the Cross of Christ.”
“It reminds us that, even in this, He brings life, He brings hope, that if we encounter these things with Him they reveal God's work, they reveal God's mercy, they reveal God's grace.”
With public Masses still temporarily suspended across the Diocese of Lansing, Fr. Pung made his comments via a live-stream of Sunday Mass from the Cathedral of St. Mary. He urged those Catholics watching to “give witness to grace and to love and to mercy” in “the midst of a difficult time,” by letting go of “fears and false expectations” and being open “to receiving the grace and the mercy that reveals God in our presence.”
“Whether it is sickness. Whether it is glory. Whether it is death. Whether is mercy. All things are meant to give God glory, to glorify Him.”