Enemies can be our best spiritual friends - a reflection from Fr Laurence Freeman

For many, Covid 19 has unexpectedly begun a spiritual awakening and a re-evaluation of life’s values. The tsunami of a tiny virus shut down factories, financial institutions, offices, places of worship, planes and trains, schools and universities, overwhelmed healthcare and exposed the flaws of the people and institutions that govern us. But didn’t the internet flourish! We newly discovered its human, spiritual potential. It allowed us to volunteer, in great numbers, to help others, to express solidarity with the worst affected, to meet and pray, to accompany the lonely, to discuss what all this craziness might mean for the future. The crisis has exposed fundamental flaws in our view of the world, our environment and social structures. We are all in the same storm, rich and poor, north and south. But we are clearly not in the same boat. There is a zip code and racial factor in how the virus strikes. So what does ‘getting back to normal’ mean? Do we want to go back, or alternatively, to learn from new sources of wisdom how to change, to be converted in heart and remember what we forgot even that we had lost when we were burning the candle at both ends?

In the black comedy “In Bruges”, two hit men, friends as much as killers can be, are forced to go under cover. One has been commissioned to kill the other who is secretly suicidal. One morning as he is sitting on a park bench the assassin creeps up on him to shoot him. But he sees with horror that his friend is preparing to shoot himself. Forgetting his commission, he prevents him. This act of natural goodness restores a real human value and the story ends with dark but true meanings. The world has been on a course of self-destruction. Has the virus, a deadly assassin, become a friend saving us? Enemies can be our best spiritual friends.

Laurence Freeman OSB is a Benedictine monk and the spiritual guide and Director of the World Community for Christian Meditation, a contemporary, ecumenical, contemplative community. Website > https://acontemplativepath-wccm.org/

His book Sensing God is a practical introduction and guide to Christian meditation as taught by Fr John Main and continued through the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) Learn more >