Monday, May 25, 2020

Corona 19 a Sign of the Times

Because of Corona 19, the whole world is distressed. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that "the world before Corona 19 will not come again." Corona 19 swallowed up our daily lives, and even the most important daily life of the believer, the reception of the Eucharist, stopped.

The fear of the invisible virus interfered with our communion with our Creator. Our church reminds us of the duty to identify the signs the Corona19 has brought to our attention. A priest working pastorally with the farmers of a diocese writes of the problems we are facing in a Bulletin for priests.

Pope Francis said, addressing God: "It is not the time of your judgment, but of our judgment: a time to choose what matters and what passes away, a time to separate what is necessary from what is not. It is a time to get our lives back on track about you, Lord, and to others." This is not  God's punishment, but the result of human activity. It is time to correct our ways and choose a new life.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change under the United Nations (IPCC) was established in 1988 and has published several reports. Earlier in the report, the effects of global warming predicted that various weather events would become more frequent and powerful and that epidemics would emerge. If we don't do something now in 2040-50 they warned that it will be too late to change.

In fact, these things happen every year globally, and more people have been sacrificed and devastated than the casualty in war. Meteorological anomalies occur locally, but epidemics quickly spread around the world due to globalization, leading to greater threats. The World Health Organization (WHO) said that since 2001 there have been more than 118,000 epidemics worldwide and can develop into a pandemic in a matter of days.

AIDS, Ebola, MERS, SARS, Zika, Coronavirus, etc., are transmitted from wild animals to humans show that our ecosystem is in critical condition. This is not the fault of the animals, but the fault of the humans who cut the forests and extend the industrial activities and make the path easy for animal microbes to enter our space. Corona19 is a message on the way we treat our planet and other species and tells us that we need 'reconciliation' with them.

Ironically, the coronavirus tells us that all beings in the world do not exist alone and are interconnected (one law of ecology). Community isolation was used to break the chain of viral transmission. Such efforts are only temporary and not effective enough to eradicate the virus. This is because the spread of viruses depends not only on eradication but also on socioecological relationships with other species. The better your relationship with other species, the greater your chances of survival.

The ecosystem needs an equilibrium of the ecosystem. Equilibrium means the proper relationship between one species and another. Unequal relationships, such as the dominance of one species to another, create ecological obstacles that can occur in a variety of problems, including deadly viruses. The arrogance that man is the master of the world and the pinnacle of creation caused ecological obstacles.

Human health and well-being, interconnected by the web of life, are ensured by protecting the diversity of the ecosystem and preserving the order of creation. This is faithfully fulfilling God's mission in creating man. It is God's providence that loves and takes good care of all creation (see Genesis 1,26-28).

The Corona19 situation in which we are in brings to mind the encyclical Laudatio Si in which Pope Francis prophetically teaches we need to take care of our common home. It is a task that we all need to be concerned with slowly and painfully.