Paschal Joy in a Global Pandemic: Lessons from the Crucified People by Rubén Rosario Rodríguez

History is replete with novels, journals, and memoirs written during times of pandemic, from the Renaissance humanist Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron (1348), to Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) inspired by the Bubonic plague of 1655, to Albert Camus’ The Plague (1947). Theologically, we have Martin Luther’s letter to the Rev. Dr. John Hess, “Whether One Should Flee From A Deadly Plague,” written during the plague that hit Wittenberg in 1527, and Rabbi Eliyahu Guttmacher’s advice on enforcing social distancing during an 1831 cholera pandemic: “Regarding prayer in the synagogue, in my view it is truly not right to congregate in a tight space. However, it is possible to pray in small groups…of about 15 men…Make sure that no more than the aforementioned number of people squeeze in, perhaps by posting a policeman there.”

To a lesser or greater degree, all these works confront human mortality and the very real possibility of death in the time of pandemic. Some, like Luther’s letter to his fellow pastor, draw upon the Christian faith to find strength and encouragement to do what is morally right while taking necessary public health precautions—even if it puts him in harm’s way:

I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance inflict and pollute others and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. If my neighbor needs me however I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely as stated above. See this is such a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash nor foolhardy and does not tempt God.

—Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 43, p. 132

But none—not even Camus—reflect explicitly on the impact of a pandemic on the politically disenfranchised.

As with environmental degradation on a global scale, the primary victims of a global pandemic are inevitably the world’s poor, as evidenced by the disproportionately large number of fatalities caused by COVID-19 among African American and Latino/as in the US. Therefore, as a Christian theologian and ethicist, I have a duty to reflect on the effects of a global pandemic from the “underside of history” (Bonhoeffer).

Sadly, the world’s poor—a true silent majority—remain little more than statistical victims of this global pandemic, worth only a passing mention on the evening news, while vilified in the rhetoric of nationalist and protectionist interests seeking to close our borders and halt funding to the World Health Organization. Yet, given that the world’s poor live daily with the specter of death, there is much they can teach us about our faith—especially the hope of resurrection—in this time of global pandemic.

Gustavo Gutiérrez, in We Drink from Our Own Wells (1984), reminds us that a spirituality grounded in the lived experience of the world’s poor knows true Easter joy—perhaps on a level unimaginable to those who live in relative ease, for whom death seems a far off eventuality and not a daily possibility:

The daily suffering of the poor and the surrender of their lives in the struggle against the causes of their situation have given new power to the Easter message. The deaths of so many in Latin America, whether anonymous individuals or persons better known, have made possible a deeper understanding of the Lord’s resurrection. Joy springs therefore from the hope that death is not the final word of history.

—Gustavo Gutiérrez, We Drink from Our Own Wells, p. 117-8

As Gutiérrez notes, some of these victims are better known, like Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated in 1980 for becoming a voice for the voiceless and decrying the repression and dehumanization of the Salvadoran people facilitated by US foreign policy and fiscal support of the authoritarian military government. Yet, according to Ignacio Ellacuría, the majority of the world’s poor are the unnamed and unmourned crucified people, who daily suffer for the sins of capitalism and militarism without bearing any of the guilt for creating the structures persecuting them. It is to them that Romero spoke from the pulpit, encouraging them in their struggles, while also preparing them for possible martyrdom: “we should all be willing to die for our faith, even if the Lord does not call us to that honor” (homily in the Parish of Our Lady of Fatima, Sunday, May 15, 1977).

But as ethicist Miguel De La Torre reminds us,

Yes, we should do everything in our power to avoid decimation and destruction, martyrdom is not something to be sought; but at times death cannot be avoided, for it provides meaning and purpose to life. Justice probably will not determine the future of humanity; nevertheless, its pursuit is what makes life worth living in the present—and maybe, just maybe, this is what it means to hope against all hope.

—Miguel De La Torre, Embracing Hopelessness (2017), p. 155-6

In We Drink from Our Own Wells, Gutiérrez reflects on the “paschal joy proper to a time of martyrdom,” because in knowing that the poor tread the same path of persecution Jesus trod, there is a hope born of the Resurrection that provides “a deeper understanding of what it means to live the Easter message” (p. 115).

This undying hope in the power of the Resurrection means that the crucified people are neither gone nor forgotten, but risen with Christ in power and glory: “Christ has risen and death no longer has dominion over him…Indeed, let us not think that our dead have gone away from us. Their heaven, their eternal reward makes them perfect in love. They keep on loving the same causes for which they died. Thus, in El Salvador the power of liberation involves not only those who remain alive, but also all of those whom others have assassinated and who are now more present than ever before in the midst of the people’s movement” (homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, March 2, 1980).

From the perspective of middle-class comfort, COVID-19 is the angel of death, haunting our lives, filling us with dread, while leaving us impotent in the face of despair. The wisdom of the world’s poor during this global pandemic is the belief that our dead have not been taken from us but are alive in Christ. For those who daily dance with death—who find paschal joy in the midst of mourning—faith in the Resurrection means that the dead are more alive now then ever.

Their hope rests in the intercession of these saints who empower them en la lucha (“in the struggle”).

The Rev. Dr. Rubén Rosario Rodríguez, a graduate of Union Theological Seminary and Princeton Theological Seminary, is Professor of Systematic Theology in the Department of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University. 

An ordained Presbyterian minister, he has contributed chapters to two recent collections on Latino/a theology in the United States, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Latino/a Theology (2015) and Immigrant Neighbors among Us: Immigration across Theological Traditions (2015). His books include Racism and God-Talk: A Latino/a Perspective (NYU Press, 2008), which won the 2011 Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award for Theology, Christian Martyrdom and Political Violence: A Conversation with Judaism and Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and Dogmatics After Babel: Beyond the Theologies of Word and Culture (Westminster John Knox Press, 2018). His most recent publication is an edited collection, The T&T Clark Handbook of Political Theology (Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2019), which offers a comprehensive snapshot of the field with contributions from scholars in all three Abrahamic traditions. 

He currently directs the Mev Puleo Scholarship in Latin American Theology, Politics, and Culture, a ten-week immersion experience with an emphasis on liberation theology and social justice, and is also Director of Masters Programs in the Department of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University.