“From the Chapel” is a series of short, daily reflections on life and faith in a time of uncertainty. As people across the world cope with the effects of the coronavirus — including the social isolation necessary to combat its spread — these reflections remind us of the hope that lies at the heart of the Gospel.
The best thing about turning another year older is, as they say, that it’s better than the alternative. Three years ago today, when I received a call on my birthday offering me a job at OSV, I was still on the other side of 50. Five weeks earlier, I had left my job of 22 years, the first serious job I had held post-graduate school, and one which I had truly expected never to leave. But despite the surprise of family and friends, co-workers and readers, the time had come to set aside a certain level of security and to see where God wanted me to go. Turns out it was Huntington, Indiana.
Three years later, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, whatever security I had chosen to set aside seems more and more like an illusion. For years before the economic downturn that followed from the measures put in place to combat this virus, most of us had seen stats on the number of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. Over the last month, 25 percent of homeowners missed their mortgage payment (which reminds us that homeownership means something very different from what the word should truly mean). Unemployment is reaching levels not seen since the Great Depression.
In my previous position, as the executive editor of a magazine in Rockford, Illinois, I’d seen similar economic upheaval in the first few years of the new millennium. In the recession that followed in the wake of the dot-com bubble, Rockford lost thousands of manufacturing jobs, and unemployment shot up into double digits, aided by years of the highest property tax rates in the nation. From the late 1940s through the 1960s, Rockford had been one of the most prosperous cities in America, but by the early 1980s, the family-owned factories on which the foundations of Illinois’ second-largest city were built were being sold off to multinational corporations by the descendants of those families, who had been sent off to college to become lawyers and accountants and had returned with hopes of getting rich beyond the dreams of avarice through mergers and acquisitions. When the economic downturn came, the new owners pulled their operations out of Rockford.
I documented those years, and many stories of families who lost everything, in my monthly column, “The Rockford Files,” for the magazine I edited. I examined the effect on Rockford of governmental overreach at the federal, state and local levels. I fought for the people of the city that I had adopted, and tried to give them a voice.
Along the way, I learned a lot of lessons. Chief among them is that, in our current economic system, dependent as it is on centralized production and distribution with supply chains extending around the world (but especially deep into China), there is no such thing as security. The closest we can come in this world is reflected in the stories we’ve all read, and most of us have lived, over the past few months, of local communities redirecting their own suddenly limited income from chain stores and restaurants to locally owned restaurants and stores.
When times get tough, we often (thankfully) develop a newfound appreciation for those around us. As Catholics, we understand that everything good in our lives is a reflection of the ultimate good. Our communities — not the virtual communities of social media but the actual ones, the people among whom we live and with whom we work — are, in an imperfect way, reflections of our participation in the Body of Christ through our baptism. Just as the members of a true parish family help one another to grow in holiness and, by doing so, grow in unity with one another, so the members of a true community recognize that their real security lies in helping their neighbors when they most need their help.
Struggling through these days of uncertainty, working together to stem the economic destruction of our communities while battling an unseen enemy, may not seem like the best time of our lives, but just like marking another birthday, it’s better than the alternative.
Scott P. Richert is publisher for OSV
