I am aware I write a lot about my pain. There is a good reason. Pain, specifically spinal pain, has been the dominant force in my life for nine years. It is what I wake up to every morning, it is what I carry around during the day and it is the last thing I feel before falling asleep … and it is what wakes me up through the night when pain is more acute.

There is not a lot to commend living in a quarantined world.

In 2006 I was home for about a month recovering from back surgery. It was the first time in my life I was so confined. I was literally staring at all four walls … and what I saw was not pretty.

We all feel the uncertainty in the air; we all hear that low-grade anxiety buzzing in the background.

Every crisis can teach us something about ourselves. Each is a chance to revise the way we live and the way we think about what is important and which people in society deserve our respect and admiration.

As you read this we will be in the last few weeks of our Lenten promises. If you are like me you have probably slipped once or twice.

How does tyranny arrive? And what does it look like once it has? At times it comes like a bomb that overturns all existing norms. Think of a military junta or the sudden collapse of order following massive protests and riots.

We Catholics are at times indifferent about those things that should deeply concern us but obsessed by those things that should be water off our backs. 

I write a lot about euthanasia and associated issues. I will not dispute this nor will I apologize. What I think drives me is not only the abhorrence of such an evil practice but that there are ways to safeguard ourselves and our friends and family from this evil. However, to a large extent we are failing to do so. We need to wake up.