Sunday was Pentecost for Western Christians, a holy day commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ’s apostles. Its associations with fire have become the cruelest of ironies.
The Basilica of Saint Mary in Minneapolis confirmed over the weekend that it had suffered minor fire damage ignited during violent protests in its city. A fire set in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church spread into the church’s basement. Fire aside, St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York was vandalized with paint.
Where the sacred wasn’t superficially assaulted, it was disrupted in places.
The Basilica of Saint Peter, a Catholic parish in Columbia, South Carolina, canceled Sunday masses following violence on Saturday in the state’s capital city, wherein several police officers were injured and one local news reporter bloodied by a thrown rock. The parish had just resumed Sunday services on May 17, following months of Facebook Live-only services.
“I am deeply saddened that once again, we are precluded by external factors, from coming together,” said parish rector, Rev. Gary Linsky, in a letter to parishioners Saturday evening.
Church burnings and the destruction of businesses alongside are far from a necessary extension of what began in so many cities as legitimately peaceful protests. And my impression is that most of the protesters would condemn those assaults.
Still, that the sacred would be destroyed, even as protesters march against the destruction of life, is a dreadful juxtaposition.
The weekend’s violence was an assault on two essential components of that solution, which will progressively help remediate our monthslong, collective grief. Once a critical mass of us are permitted to participate again, the grounding experiences of religion and commerce will offer us relief, affording us opportunities for actual, incarnated fellowship, as distinct from the adequate but nebulous communities of the digital realm. They will be a healing source, a balm, for the wounds caused by the COVID-19 virus, and those caused by George Floyd’s death, too.
Those sacred activities, so central to civilized life, have been trampled underfoot by a few rogues who care not for justice. It hardly takes courage to condemn the vandalism of churches and businesses, but that such a devolution of weekend protests should happen just as parishioners begin to trickle back into their pews and as shut-in businesses work overtime to ramp up service again strikes the lowest of blows when we can hardly tolerate them.
