2021  Virtual Easter Sunday   For the vast majority of us, any participation in this Holy Week — the culmination of our liturgical lives as Catholics — will be virtual. In other words it will not be real participation, but digital participation. We will use our imaginations and pretend to be where the liturgy is actually being celebrated by a very select few, even though we ourselves are simply “watching” the mere moving of  pixels on a monitor or Smartphone. If you are in the mindset of lotteries (lottos) and gambling, some of you may enter for a “chance” to be among the selected chosen to actually attend a Mass in person (wearing a mask — or two of them — and “socially distancing” ... with only a few “people as pathogens” per pew). Much like the “virtual viewers”, if you receive Holy Communion (which everyone does anyway, regardless of mortal sin (after all, Christ is a “good egg,” and winks at our sins, however appalling) it will not be on the tongue. In some “venues” the priest will be wearing surgical gloves when he gives Communion (lest he give COVID to Christ? ... or to “protect” the people and himself). Almost definitely, you will not be allowed to kneel.   Such a morbid and sinful fear of illness and death (as though you can indefinitely avoid either, or choose the hour and manner)! Do the words of Saint John mean nothing to you? “Perfect love casts out fear, because fear has pain. And he that fears, is not perfected in love. Let us therefore love God, because God first has loved us.” (1 Saint John 4.18-19) He does not admonish us to avoid, at all costs, the inescapable possibility of illness — much less the absolute certainty of death. But we fear because we do not love God as we ought: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength.” (Saint Mark 12.30) The ensuing madness What will soon follow this virtual madness? “Virtual” Sacraments?   “Virtual” Baptisms?   “Virtual” weddings?   “Virtual” wakes for our dead?   “Virtual” burials?   “Virtual” Religious communities?   “Virtual” Vows?   And not one of them will be real! They will all be virtual — one and all, fictions! And we will “pretend” that they are real ... and deem ourselves present in our conspicuous absence. One thing (apart from death) is certain. Among our many virtual fictions, not one will produce a baby! Ask the masters of virtual sex, and hence the masters of fiction: the pornographers. They, too, “stream online” and to a greater audience still! What an abhorrent precedent to follow on this most holy day of the year!   Editor Boston Catholic Journal Easter Sunday April 4, 2021 Comments? Write us:  editor@boston-catholic-journal.com   Totally Faithful to the Sacred Deposit of Faith entrusted to the Holy See in Rome “Scio opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”  “I know your works ... that you have but little power, and yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My Name.” (Apocalypse 3.8) Copyright © 2004 - 2024 Boston Catholic Journal. All rights reserved. Unless otherwise stated, permission is granted by the Boston Catholic Journal for the copying and distribution of the articles and audio files under the following conditions:  No additions, deletions, or changes are to be made to the text or audio files in any way, and the copies may not be sold for a profit. In the reproduction, in any format of any image, graphic, text, or audio file, attribution must be given to the Boston Catholic Journal.