It’s Brought Us to Our Knees

This week the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention testified before Congress that we have “used the capacity that we have” to confront the pandem-ic, but “the reality is that it’s brought this nation to its knees.” The image of being “on our knees” has both emotional and spiritual connotations, but both refer to a position of humility. In battle, kneeling shows surrender; in a royal court, it shows dedicated service; and in prayer, it shows reverence to God. While there are many references to fighting the pandemic as a war, Dr. Robert Redfield was not signifying surrender in the sense of giving up. The battle to find treatments and a vaccine continues, as do the efforts to keep us safe in the meantime. But I think Dr. Redfield was making an important acknowledgement that many of us have been discovering for ourselves over these recent months
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The pandemic, economic crisis, and emphatic cries for justice and equality have humbled us and invited us to reflect on how vulnerable we all are. If we have tak-en time to reflect on this reality, perhaps it has confronted a fairytale image that we like to have of ourselves. The formula many fairytales follow ultimately comes down to helping the main character discover they have the power within themselves to determine their own destiny. This is good for a fairytale: it inspires us to look at things from a fresh perspective and not give up. But the experience of the past few months has reminded us that many things are not under our control, and even when the human family all works together, there are some challenges we cannot overcome without God’s help, without a Savior who is greater than ourselves. Jesus is not like a fairytale prince who comes and makes everything “happily ever after.” Rather, he shows that the Creator of all things is willing to come and share our human experiences - both joys and sufferings - to show the depth of God’s love for us.

As people of faith, we know being “on our knees” primarily as a posture of prayer and service. We genuflect to Christ, present in the Eucharist. We kneel when we turn to God in solemn prayer. We bend down, like Jesus did, to wash one another’s feet. We have been humbled by the medical, economic, and social justice crisis of our time, but being “brought to our knees” puts us in the perfect position to move forward from here. From our knees, we recognize our need to be in a strong relationship with God to be able to pour out our hearts in prayer and be open to the Lord’s guidance in our lives. From our knees, we have to look up to those around us, instead of looking down on them in judgment. From our knees, we can appreciate so much more the blessings we have received, and the relative unimportance of some of the things we wish we had. From here we are able to look forward with hope, trusting in the will of God that we humble ourselves enough to be open to the Lord’s desire to save us and even use us as part of the remedies our world so desperately needs.