This Lenten Season

It’s almost as if I’ve given up church for Lent, the annual commemoration of Christ’s trials in the wilderness. Before Ontario went back into lockdown, worship had been strange enough. But since Boxing Day, it’s become the spiritual equivalent of curbside pickup: a few are allowed in the building for essential services, for the briefest of moments, while the rest of us attempt another do-it-yourself project at home.

Even when assembling was merely limited, not outlawed, I often wondered if God was in the room — it didn’t always feel like it. If God was there, I thought I should ask for an explanation of this modern “plague in the congregation of the Lord.” One Sunday, I was the lector, reading one of the two Biblical passages that lay people are permitted. It was unsettling to survey my spiritual brothers and sisters who had gathered for Mass — socially distanced and masked in the pews. I froze, and my mouth went dry. I removed my mask for the reading, but that made...