Do we crown Jesus, or the virus

The unusual circumstances require from us an adequate answer, but how to measure our response. We know that in order to love we need to have faith, be prudent, self-resistant and obedient, yet brave and generous. In the passage of the Gospel for today (Sunday, 21st) we are given very direct guidance: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; fear him rather who can destroy both body and soul in hell”.(Mt 10:28) It is obvious that the Lord is making the point that there will be people who would challenge us. Can’t we see that He is referring to anything what might kill our body, such as an invisible virus? Can the virus kill our soul? Can we enter into a trap when our soul is not functioning as we are overtaken by fear? Do we crown Jesus, or the virus?
Indeed, in finding wise balance in different practices we do these days, our heart, our hope, our salvation is not put in medical stability such as vaccine, but in the Lord who created heaven and earth. Apart from that, as the
author of “The Epistle to Diognetus” from late 2ndAD idicates we, Christians, not distinguished from other people neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which we observe. “But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives.”
Fr Stan