A COVID 2020 Christmas Reflection


Harry Hopkins and Winston Churchill


This year, for the first time, I sent out a Christmas reflection. I always love getting these from others and I thought, given the restrictions on our interaction, it would be a good year to start. 

Christmas 2020 Reflection

 

I just finished the excellent book, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson. Throughout the book, set in 1940-41, Great Britain famously displays its “Keep calm and carry on,” philosophy as Germany tries to bomb the country into surrender.


But despite the British stiff upper lip, times are desperate. Thousands of people have died in the Luftwaffe air raids, and there is fear of a German invasion. The prime minister, Winston Churchill, is urgently courting President Franklin Roosevelt. He needs U.S. financial support and ultimately U.S. involvement in the war for Great Britain to have a chance. Roosevelt sends his closest advisor, Harry Hopkins, over to England to assess the situation. Churchill barely lets Hopkins out of his sight the entire four weeks of Hopkins’ visit, as he takes him around, showing him the bombed cites and neighborhoods, but also the fortitude, resourcefulness, and courage of the British people and government.


At a dinner party, after Hopkins has been in England for some time witnessing the devastation and determination, Hopkins addresses Churchill and the group saying, “I suppose you wish to know what I am going to say to President Roosevelt.” There was nothing Churchill wanted to know more. Hopkins, quoting from the Old Testament book of Ruth makes Churchill weep with his response: “Wherever you go, I will go, wherever you lodge, I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”


Certainly, this time of pandemic that we are living through is nowhere near as severe as the Blitz. In particular, for our family, we have not suffered much. John was able to make trips to Haiti and is working to bring a patient to the U.S. for surgery. Luke is a senior at Peoria Notre Dame, where he has adjusted well to flipping between being physically in school and online. He hopes there will be a high school football season in February and to run track in the spring. I have continued in my work as coordinator for Haitian Hearts, celebrating its 25th anniversary, and director of advancement for St. Mark’s School. Some of us were even able to sneak in a little travel to Boston, Galena, and Omaha.


But there have been minor sufferings: not being able to fully celebrate Mom and Dad’s 60th wedding anniversary or get together with family and friends at other celebratory times; having to wear the dreaded mask; the low-grade worry that attends the pandemic. My uncle Al Killian passed on in November, and as with deaths and funerals throughout this time, we aren’t able to be present like we want. People who have lost family or friends or health or livelihoods to the virus bear the greatest pain of the pandemic. We pray for all and for compassionate action in our world.


One of the gifts of difficult times is the renewed appreciation of what is truly important—our relationships with the people we love and our faith. Challenging times allow us to test the strength of this faith and push us to live this faith and what it demands of us in ways that easier times don’t.


We are reminded at Christmas time that we follow our God, a baby named Jesus, born to a poor couple in Bethlehem. We follow Him like the Wise Men did, and then we follow Him through his ministry; we follow Him through his Passion and Death, and we follow Him to the Resurrection. We follow Him, and we can say to Him and to each other, “Wherever you go, I will go, wherever you lodge, I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”


With much gratitude to God for you, we wish you and your family a blessed Christmas and health, happiness, and all good things in 2021.

 

 

                                 John-Maria-Luke

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