PREFACE
“Eyes” and “Backs” For the first time, in 2020, the Oxford English Dictionary has found it impossible to name only one ‘Word of the Year’. Too much has happened. More and more words seem to be needed to express our common lived experience: lockdown, transmission, social distancing, deep cleaning, pre-Covid and post-Covid, face mask, key workers, PPE, bubble, reopening… Has the Church any other words to add? I believe it has: the word “prophetic”. At the end of the sixth century the city of Rome was devastated by a terrible plague and amongst its first victims was Pope Pelagius. With churches left empty, under an avalanche of fears, sadness and deaths, the people of Rome turned to a young deacon as their new bishop. This was Pope Gregory. Himself keen on medicine, he understood that the “wounds of the soul” are more hidden than the “wounds of the body”. What the sick people of his city were in desperate need of was a “remedy”, a “cure”, an “immunity” – yes; but a spiritual, as well as a medical one. What was needed in the sixth century and is still needed today are medici cordis 7
b. Seeing the Pandemic with Eyes of Faith.indd 7
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