The COVID-19 pandemic and isolation continues into it’s 7th month and I must admit, I am rather getting used to the social distancing and have benefited from this time on earth by working inwardly and on my inner work. I really appreciate working from home and how not having a long commute provides me with having more time to dedicate to meditation and prayer. It truly has been a transformational time for me spiritually and in nourishing my soul. I hope that you too have discovered a growth in spirit and re-energized soul.

Unfortunately, many of our faith communities are still forced to worship virtually via Zoom, FaceBook live or YouTube. Personally, I haven’t gotten into the virtual worship services involving the sacraments. The sacraments to me are tangible expressions of God’s grace for all people celebrated in community.

Recently, I was in correspondence with a Roman Catholic priest from my young adult age when I still worshiped as a Roman Catholic and before I found the independent sacramental movement where God’s grace and sacraments are celebrated for all God’s children and not just the few deemed “a Catholic in good standing.” He closed our discussion by stating, “I pray every day for you to return to the sacraments.”

That statement really rang like a gong through me as I’ve never “left the sacraments” as much as the Roman Catholic Church under the latter years of John Paul II’s papacy and as Cardinal Ratzinger began his papacy as Pope Benedict XVI barred so many Catholics from the sacraments because of their sexuality, their marital status as divorced, their beliefs on human rights in regards to a woman’s right to choice, a person’s right to love, a person’s right to follow their calling to ministry regardless of gender.

Luckily, I found other communions to worship in and live a sacramental life as an out homosexual like the Episcopal Church and in the independent sacramental movement / Old Catholic tradition.

I will always be grateful for the solid foundation in spirituality and faith my journey as a Roman Catholic celebrating the sacraments of initiation, confirmation, reconciliation, and Eucharist. For that phase of my journey opened the doors to Spirit that I had never known and helped me continue on to celebrating the sacraments in the independent sacramental movement and a more mystical expression of the sacraments. That mystical expression has in turn opened new doors to awareness and consciousness I never would have experienced had I remained closeted and a Roman Catholic “in good standing.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has globally opened and heightened the awareness of so many as to the importance of their fellow humans. It’s taught us the meaning of “essential” workers and people in our lives. Many of those with elderly parents in nursing homes haven’t been able to physically hug and visit with their parents for over 7 months. Further instilling the importance of savoring the time with loved one’s that perhaps we took for granted prior to COVID-19 so widely impacting all our lives.

All of this has gotten me to pondering in prayer and meditation, if Jesus’ last commandment was the new commandment to “Love one another as I have loved you”, what are the roles of the sacraments today in this COVID-19 pandemic and social isolation where the sacraments can’t physically be celebrated together?

Have we perhaps taken the sacraments and our ability to so widely celebrate them in person prior to COVID-19 taken them for granted and forgotten to live the sacraments? Have the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in their never ending effort to continue to draw the line as to who may or may not receive the sacraments, perhaps missed the boat so far on Jesus’ last commandment and completely lost a sense of decency in regards to celebrating the sacraments?

In this peri-COVID-19 environment, do the sacraments have the same meaning that they had prior to 200,000+ individuals in the United States losing their lives to this virus? Has the COVID-19 pandemic and it’s revealing of the chasms between rich and poor, those with access to quality healthcare and with no access to healthcare, those who proactively act to prevent infection and those who could care less with preventing infection changed the meaning and purpose of the sacraments? Has it transformed Christ’s mandatum to take precedence over returning to and otherwise being in the sacraments but not living the sacraments?