Our job is to love others
without stopping to inquire
whether or not they are worthy.
That is not our business and, in fact,
it is nobody’s business.
What we are asked to do is to love,
and this love itself will render
both ourselves and our neighbors
worthy if anything can.
~Thomas Merton from Catholic Voices in a World on Fire
This is a time of too many seriously ill people and too few resources to care for them intensively, therefore doctors and nurses are placed in an ethical dilemma: they must decide who receives the critical care needed to save them and who doesn’t. It is an awful and awe-filled dilemma – no one wants to be in the position of deciding who is “worthy” of the only ventilator available, or the scarce medication, or the only empty ICU bed. Yet medical professionals are trained in triage to assess who is most likely to survive thanks to an extreme and immediate intervention and who would be unlikely to survive – essentially, who is “worthy.”
Thankfully, God doesn’t have to triage His children, deciding who gets His intervention and who must wait or go without care. God is not faced with limited resources. God has no dilemma about our worthiness: we are worthy because He loves us and we are His.
So should we love one another as best we can, even in times like these. We share, we give, we serve, and yes, we will sacrifice.
No less than what God has done for us.
This year’s Lenten theme for Barnstorming:
God sees us as we are,
loves us as we are,
and accepts us as we are.
But by His grace,
He does not leave us where we are.
~Tim Keller
1 O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
that in thine ocean depths its flow
may richer, fuller be.
2 O Light that follow’st all my way,
I yield my flick’ring torch to thee;
my heart restores its borrowed ray,
that in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
may brighter, fairer be.
3 O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow thro’ the rain,
and feel the promise is not vain
that morn shall tearless be.
4 O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
and from the ground there blossoms red,
life that shall endless be.
Barnstorming 