Pastor Tom Krieg of St. James the Greater Church in Eau Claire, Wisconsin recently urged his parishioners to not forget that they are children of God even in times of turmoil and trouble.

While the combined stresses of COVID-19 and the election conspire to stress and test the faithful, Krieg wrote that they also provide the opportunity to recall where the certainty of the faithful lies.

First, crisis assures the faithful “the Good News: that Jesus Christ came from heaven to show us the way to eternal life, and that he is with us on this journey,” Krieg wrote. 

If anything, crisis is a calling to the faithful to reconfirm their faith.

“Our faith not only assures us but also compels us – to love one another and to see all these challenges as opportunities to respond faithfully and generously, being God’s light with a confident heart instead of throwing more stress logs on the fire,” Krieg wrote. “With the Good News in our hearts, even worst case scenarios aren’t the end of things.”

Krieg carried on in his discussions, noting the various ways in which, even in the midst of a pandemic, Catholics touch and are touched by one another.

There is connection even in the shared Catholic belief of praying for the souls of the dead, Krieg wrote. 

“The Catholic approach is what I would call ‘mystical,’ in that it comes from an appreciation that none of us lives as an island but rather that we are essentially connected to one another,” Krieg wrote. “It’s easy to slip into a way of thinking that we are each responsible only for ourselves, but I am most inspired when I realize that we are all walking each other home, needing at different times to lift or be lifted by one another.”