Jojo M. Fung SJ

Is the God lockdowned and asleep (Mk 4:35-38) not allowing nature/virus (Arundhati Roy 2020) to mock “immigration controls, biometrics, digital surveillance, and every other kind of data analytics, and struck hardest – thus far – in the richest, most powerful nations of the world, bringing the engine of capitalism to a juddering halt”? Has not this tragic rupture “offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves” so that we can break with the past and courageously walk through a portal, with little luggage, “ready to imagine another world [and] fight for it”? (Ibid) Pope Francis (Urbi Et Orbi Blessing, 27 March, 2020) muses, is this pandemic not “a time to choose what matters and what passes away, a time to separate what is necessary from what is not… get our lives back on track with regard to you, Lord, and to others”?

The lockdown has foregrounded the era of ‘Mysticalocene’ amidst what Jason Moore (2015, 2016) and Duncan Kelly (2019:68) called the age of ‘Capitolocene’ that prides in capital, science and technology. As we prepare for Pentecost, the promptings of Rûah Elohim, God’s Creative Spirit, has alerted us to plummet the mystery of life in the age of ‘Pneumatolocene’ in the practices of Trinitarian Cosmicism. In the prayer on Easter Sunday, I visualized the planet Earth inflamed with fire (Ite Inflammate Omnia) of God’s liberating Spirit of love that consumes the systemic evil, the sacrilegious wickedness in human hearts, the viral, genocidal toxicity and lethality of this pandemic that contaminate the air around the earth. God’s Spirit (Jn 3:8) blows gently yet mightily, as different “winds”, across the face of the earth.

1. Rûah of Contemplativity. Rûah Elohim is impassionating many earth-sojourners to behold the glory of God that is manifested in nature – in the still silence and solitude of the mesmerizing morning, thick with the aromatic scent of flowers in the refreshing air, the melodious chirping of the birds before sunrise, the countless dew-droplets on the blades of the grass and shrubs, the gentle flow of the river water, the golden moon lingering in the night sky, the breaking of dawn at the horizon, the flights of innumerable species of birds in the sky, the ducks afloat on the water, and the dancing of peacocks at the traffic crossings. All these sightings have enabled me to exclaims since April 3, 2020, “All of us are the glory [doxa] of God” in addition to an earlier mantra: “All are sacred and divine in God.”

2. Rûah of Inner strength. Many earth- sojourners have moved from the outer world of glittering neon lights, noise pollution and preoccupation with their smart gadgets, into their inner sanctuaries, gradually untapped the springs of interiority, and drunk of the living water (Jn 7:37-39) that gradually quenches the unheeded thirsts in the parched deserts of their hearts. The inner sanctuaries are now lit up with thousands of lights of  compassion, courage, joy, justice, hope, reconciliation and tranquility, within themselves, in the homes, and within the extended family and clan.

3. Rûah of Sacrifice. What abounds in this special time is the spirit of sacrificial services realizing that we are all interconnected. Pope Francis (Urbi Et Orbi Blessing 2020) remarks us, “We can look to so many exemplary companions for the journey, who, even though fearful, have reacted by giving their lives: doctors, nurses, supermarket employees, cleaners, caregivers, providers of transport, law and order forces, volunteers, priests, religious men and women,” even those emergency relief workers who ensure that food supplies are transported to the migrants and refugees, hurdled in makeshift shelters and camps. Families in the neighborhood have reached out to the homebound sick and elderly, run errands for them, so that they have sufficient food and medicine. Countless of agencies, Churches mosques and temples, have set up shelters for the homeless and the migrants to the cities who work as day laborers have decided to walk home after they lost their jobs in the major cities during the lockdown, only to return to where hunger and starvation await them. In addition, temporary centers offering relief-aids to the families who have filed for bankruptcy, having lost their small and medium-size enterprises when the local-global economy comes to a standstill.

3. Rûah of Prophetic audacity. God’s Spirit has emboldened critics like Marius Meinhof (2020), a German Sociologist, to decry the ‘advance-backward colonial temporality’ of the west that prides on her advanced medical facilities in relation to China and chooses lockdown as a strategy without the wholesale Chinese solution to curb the pandemic.  At the same, God’s Spirit is the inspiration behind Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai (2020), a top MIT Biological engineer, who speaks the truth to the powers behind the Deep State, driven by the pharma-elites’ globalism in support of crony-capitalism and mandatory vaccines, as “vaccines are pure profit, no risk, no liability… use this vaccine for the common good… [and] an amazing recipe for fascism.” From Asia, the President of the FABC, Cardinal Charles Bo (2020), has become an emblematic voice  in his address: “Let me be clear,” the cardinal asserts, “it is the CCP that has been responsible, not the people of China… But it is the repression, the lies and the corruption of the CCP that are responsible… the CCP … is a threat to the world…this regime is responsible, through its criminal negligence and repression, for the pandemic sweeping through our streets today… For the sake of our common humanity, we must not be afraid to hold this regime to account.”

Let us all, on bended knees, beseech “Come, O Holy Spirit, come and renew the face of the Earth!”

‘Mysticaloncene’: an age that focuses on being more mystical in our lifestyle that consumeristic.

‘Pneumotolocene’: an era that sensitizes us to the inner-outer movements of God’s Spirit.

Trinitirian Cosmicsm: a cosmic mysticism that intimates the earth-sojourners to participate in the life of the Triune God and the Cosmos by contemplatively visualizing the sojourners seated in the in the presence of the Triune God, looking upon the world (Sp. Ex. 101-102).

Rev. Jojo M. Fung SJ
International Chaplain
Pax Romana IMCS IT