Death can plunge us into despair. Confrontation with our mortality can also, as Francis reminds us, awaken us to the beauty and wonder of God’s creation and presence in our lives. Recognizing our mortality inspires us to experience our solidarity with suffering humanity. We are, as a plaque once erected on a Paris hospital noted, “the dying taking care of the dying.” Francis would have recognized that within the tragedy of the COVID-19 virus is the challenge to all people and nations to realize our interdependence and recognize the illusion of ethnic, national, or economic separation. As Jesus asserted, the sun shines and the rain falls on the righteous and unrighteous—and the wealthy and poor—alike (see Matthew 5:45). Francis recognized the dangers of privilege and out of his own experience of conversion from privilege to prayer counseled his companions to go beyond class and status, emphasizing humility as the pathway of human heartedness and empathy.
