Friday Links: March 13, 2020

What are Catholics to do in a time of coronavirus?

If you are on Facebook and your friends are anything like mine, most of the posts in your feed are probably about the coronavirus.  Through one such post yesterday, I learned about an aptly named saint for the times we live in: There Is a Saint Corona, And She Is the Patron Saint Against Epidemics.

Before going on to links to posts about a few more saintly intercessors, first is a small selection of posts on what else to do in this time of coronavirus:

CoronavirusBooks.jpg
Early Baroque Medusa Shield by Caravaggio. From the Armory of the Medici, now at the Uffizi

Early Baroque Medusa Shield by Caravaggio. From the Armory of the Medici, now at the Uffizi

Reading Albert Camus’s The Plague in the Time of the Coronavirus

This post, from the "Korea Blog" at Los Angeles Review of Books, mentions the 1971 Charlton Heston movie, The Omega Man, which was based on the 1954 novel I Am Legend. But—as its title indicates—it is mostly focused on Camus' famous novel, The Plague (which is also mentioned in the above-referenced reading lists). "Reading The Plague here in South Korea, the second-most coronavirus-afflicted country in the world, one instinctively spots parallels between art and life."

Pray for Italy

Last Sunday, March 8, Gregory DiPippo reported at New Liturgical Movement that after the Italian government suspended “all civil and religious ceremonies, including funerals” until April 3rd, the Italian Bishops’ Conference suspended all public celebrations of the Mass, not excluding Sundays, and he predicted that other nations will soon follow. “Obviously,” DiPippo continued, “there are innumerable Saints who have intervened in times of plague, but I would recommend that we also ask, on behalf of our bishops, for the intervention of St Charles Borromeo . . .. When Milan was struck by a plague in 1576-77, the city was largely abandoned by the civil authorities, and St Charles was the first not only to aid the afflicted, but also to lead the Church in prayer for deliverance from the plague.” St. Roche is another saint mentioned in a link in DiPippo’s post who is frequently invoked in time of plague.

Just as we must take all reasonable worldly precautions against catching or spreading the coronavirus, prayers for heavenly intercession are only one essential spiritual part of An Authentic Catholic Response to A Public Health Crisis.

And finally, tying the worldly and the spiritual together, let us remember this biblical injunction from the 4th chapter and 8th verse of the Epistle of James.

Roseanne T. Sullivan

After a career in technical writing and course development in the computer industry while doing other writing on the side, Roseanne T. Sullivan now writes full-time about sacred music, liturgy, art, and whatever strikes her Catholic imagination. Before she started technical writing, Sullivan earned a B.A. in English and Studio Arts, and an M.A. in English with writing emphasis, and she taught courses in fiction and memoir writing. Her Masters Thesis consisted of poetry, fiction, memoir, and interviews, and two of her short stories won prizes before she completed the M.A. In recent years, she has won prizes in poetry competitions. Sullivan has published many essays, interviews, reviews, and memoir pieces in Catholic Arts Today, National Catholic Register, Religion.Unplugged, The Catholic Thing, and other publications. Sullivan also edits and writes posts on Facebook for the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship, Catholic Arts Today, the St. Ann Choir, El Camino Real, and other pages.

https://tinyurl.com/rtsullivanwritings
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Friday Links: March 20, 2020

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Literature in the Time of Covid-19