Quarantine and the Corporal Works of Mercy: A Short Meditation

As COVID-19 continues to afflict our country, many of us are seeking ways to be helpful in our parish, our community, and our nation. When I think of all the needs of this new world —joblessness, hunger, loneliness — and all those that have been affected, it can be overwhelming. It’s times like these when I find that the Corporal Works of Mercy can provide direction. These seven acts, given by Jesus in Matthew 25, give us concrete ways to care for the bodily needs of our neighbor. 
 
There is a certain beauty in the simplicity and wholeness of the Corporal Works of Mercy. Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, visit the imprisoned, and bury the dead. I connect immediately with the first four; they are self-evidently merciful and good. It wasn’t until the Great Quarantine that I understood the final three.
 
It’s a strange thing that visiting the sick and imprisoned are merciful acts. It seems to me that the merciful thing to do would be to “heal the sick” or “free the imprisoned.” But perhaps Jesus understands that for us, healing may not be possible, and freedom may not be just. But once I encountered loneliness, deep loneliness, I recognized how essential human interaction was to a flourishing life. This quarantine might be the first time many have experienced isolation, especially those of us that live alone. At the risk of equating my quarantine with imprisonment, I will say that I have a newfound appreciation for the gift of human presence. Video chats are well and good, but the act of looking another person eye-to-eye, implicitly recognizing their existence as human and desiring to connect, is so essential to our lives that giving it to a person who is deprived of it is profoundly meaningful. Indeed, giving that experience to someone who has been justly deprived of it, like one imprisoned, is deeply merciful. (Side note: The 20th century theologian Jean-Luc Marion called this moment “the crossing of the gaze,” and he claimed that in it was all we needed to understand the selfless and other-yearning nature of love. But that’s an idea for another time.) Watching the news in this stay-at-home time also led me to a greater understanding of the last corporal act of mercy.
 
Burying the dead is, as a work of mercy, very peculiar. (Who are we being merciful towards?) And yet it is also very human; animals do not bury their dead. We not only bury them, we process them through the street, adorn their graves with flowers and memorials, and offer up a Eucharistic Sacrifice for them. I have played dozens of funeral masses, and they are some of the most beautiful and significant liturgies I have seen. But it wasn’t until I saw the images of mass graves of COVID-19 victims in New York City that I was moved to understand the merciful nature of burial. There they were, hundreds of unclaimed bodies, being laid into the earth.  We as a society recognize that even those without friends or family at the end still deserve a burial. Their lives mattered and deserve to be mourned. It is an act of mercy to mourn them, to recognize that their death is a tragedy, and to pray for their souls. 
 
I pray that God keep us safe through this pandemic. I pray that He continue to bless us with wisdom and draw us closer to Him. And I pray that the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.