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Michael Sandel writes:

Mobilizing to confront the pandemic and, eventually, to reconstruct the shattered economy, requires not only medical and economic expertise but moral and political renewal. We need to ask a basic question that we have evaded over these last decades: What do we owe one another as citizens?…

We need to better reward the social and economic contributions of work done by the majority of Americans, who don’t have college degrees. And we need to reckon with the morally corrosive downsides of meritocracy….

But as an answer to inequality, the rhetoric of rising — the promise that the talented will be able to climb the ladder of success — has a dark side. Part of the problem is that we fail to live up to the meritocratic principles we proclaim. For example, most students at highly selective colleges and universities come from affluent families. At many elite colleges, including Yale and Princeton, there are more students from the top 1 percent than from the entire bottom 60 percent of the country.

There is also a deeper problem: Even a perfect meritocracy, in which opportunities for advancement were truly equal, would corrode solidarity. Focusing on helping the talented clamber up the ladder of success can keep us from noticing that the rungs on the ladder are growing further and further apart.

Meritocracies also produce morally unattractive attitudes among those who make it to the top. The more we believe that our success is our own doing, the less likely we are to feel indebted to, and therefore obligated to, our fellow citizens. The relentless emphasis on rising and striving encourages the winners to inhale too deeply of their success, and to look down on those who lack meritocratic credentials….

Meritocratic hubris and the resentment it provokes are at the heart of the populist backlash against elites. They are also potent sources of social and political polarization. One of the deepest political divides in politics today is between those with and those without a four-year college degree.

In recent decades, governing elites have done little to make life better for the nearly two-thirds of Americans who do not have a college degree. And they have failed to confront what should be one of the central questions of our politics: How can we ensure that Americans who do not inhabit the privileged ranks of the professional classes find dignified work that enables them to support a family, contribute to their community and win social esteem?…

At a time when finance has claimed a greater share of corporate profits, many who labor in the real economy, producing useful goods and services, have not only endured stagnant wages and uncertain job prospects; they have also come to feel that society accords less respect to the kind of work they do.

The coronavirus pandemic has suddenly forced us to reconsider what social and economic roles matter most.

Many of the essential workers during this crisis are performing jobs that do not require college degrees; they are truckers, warehouse workers, delivery workers, police officers, fire fighters, utility maintenance workers, sanitation workers, supermarket cashiers, stock clerks, nurse assistants, hospital orderlies and home care providers….

Beyond thanking them for their service, we should reconfigure our economy and society to accord such workers the compensation and recognition that reflects the true value of their contributions — not only in an emergency but in our everyday lives….

It requires deliberating as democratic citizens about what constitutes a contribution to the common good, and how such contributions should be rewarded — without assuming that markets can decide these questions on their own….

We need to ask whether reopening the economy means going back to a system that, over the past four decades, pulled us apart, or whether we can emerge from this crisis with an economy that enables us to say, and to believe, that we are all in this together.

Why does God love me? Why does God forgive sins? Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? Jesuit Autocomplete hosts Fr. Paddy Gilger and Fr. Eric Sundrup answer some of the Internet’s most-searched questions about God:

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Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and President of Caritas Internationalis, in Novena:

The pandemic is making the suffering of vulnerable people – migrants and refugees, the elderly, the sick, the poor and unemployed – even deeper.

We urge our governments to ensure access to healthcare and social protection for everyone – particularly the most vulnerable.

We pray that our leaders rise to the challenge of promoting unity and a shared responsibility in all of our countries….

Can our governments admit that many of them got it wrong when they didn’t allow everyone to belong to the human family in a dignified way?

Can our societies put aside economic concerns and show that they care for everyone without exception?

In the midst of loss, uncertainty and suffering, something incredible is happening: we are noticing the bonds which form our human family. Bonds that we previously took for granted or ignored.

As we live in isolation and we all become marginalised and vulnerable, the global suffering we are seeing has made it startlingly apparent to us that we need other people and other people need us too.

via the Vatican:

God saved us by serving us. We often think we are the ones who serve God. No, he is the one who freely chose to serve us, for he loved us first. It is difficult to love and not be loved in return. And it is even more difficult to serve if we do not let ourselves be served by God….

We can think of all the small or great betrayals that we have suffered in life. It is terrible to discover that a firmly placed trust has been betrayed. From deep within our heart a disappointment surges up that can even make life seem meaningless. This happens because we were born to be loved and to love, and the most painful thing is to be betrayed by someone who promised to be loyal and close to us. We cannot even imagine how painful it was for God who is love….

How many falsehoods, hypocrisies and duplicities! How many good intentions betrayed! How many broken promises! How many resolutions left unfulfilled! The Lord knows our hearts better than we do. He knows how weak and irresolute we are, how many times we fall, how hard it is for us to get up and how difficult it is to heal certain wounds. And what did he do in order to come to our aid and serve us? He told us through the Prophet: “I will heal their faithlessness; I will love them deeply” (Hos 14:5)….

That is the extent to which Jesus served us: he descended into the abyss of our most bitter sufferings, culminating in betrayal and abandonment. Today, in the tragedy of a pandemic, in the face of the many false securities that have now crumbled, in the face of so many hopes betrayed, in the sense of abandonment that weighs upon our hearts, Jesus says to each one of us: “Courage, open your heart to my love. You will feel the consolation of God who sustains you”….

We were put in this world to love him and our neighbours. Everything else passes away, only this remains. The tragedy we are experiencing at this time summons us to take seriously the things that are serious, and not to be caught up in those that matter less; to rediscover that life is of no use if not used to serve others. For life is measured by love….

May we reach out to those who are suffering and those most in need. May we not be concerned about what we lack, but what good we can do for others….

Dear friends, look at the real heroes who come to light in these days: they are not famous, rich and successful people; rather, they are those who are giving themselves in order to serve others. Feel called yourselves to put your lives on the line. Do not be afraid to devote your life to God and to others; it pays! For life is a gift we receive only when we give ourselves away, and our deepest joy comes from saying yes to love, without ifs and buts. To truly say yes to love, without ifs and buts. As Jesus did for us.

Millennial writer Patrick Manning writes:

This moment is unlike anything that most of us have ever experienced. The tally of sick and deceased mounts higher every day. We turn on the news or look out our windows to see empty streets and darkened buildings. We are cut off from one another, passing our days in varying degrees of isolation. Worries about our health, finances, and the future we had planned dominate our thoughts. Saints like Ignatius of Loyola enjoin us to “find God in all things,” yet, in moments of crisis like the present, we may find ourselves wondering, “Where is God in all this?” It may feel to some that God is simply absent….

There is no quick fix for a global health crisis, nor for someone who has lost the sense of God’s presence. What follows are rather invitations to be transformed in the awareness and way of being we bring to the present moment. Nothing less will suffice.

#1: Be on the lookout for the unexpected ways God might be working in the crisis.

So much of our fear and anxiety arises from reactive thinking. We obsess over the terrible things that could happen: What if I or my loved ones get sick? What if my business goes under? What if the store runs out of toilet paper? We fixate on what we have lost — our routines, our plans, freedom of movement, maybe even our jobs. Imagining the good that might come out of our current situation comes less easily to us. Yet, when we look back through the history of God’s dealings with humanity, we see that God has brought good forth from evil time and again….

#2: Welcome this moment as a time of Sabbath rest. 
COVID-19 has disrupted the business of the world and forced billions of people worldwide to step outside of their normal routines. For many, this means that life has slowed down considerably. That many of us experience this slowing down as something uncomfortable should tell us something about how inhumane our lifestyles have become, how far we have strayed from God’s vision for our lives….

#3: Refocus on what is most important in life.
While the pandemic has brought additional stress and work hours upon many medical professionals and workers in essential industries, for many others much of life’s daily activity — commuting to work, attending meetings, running errands — has come to an abrupt stop. Again, this may be a gift that we never would have given ourselves. Many of us have been living like Jesus’ friend Martha, who was overwhelmed by all the work to be done. We have been so beholden to our to-do lists that we have lost sight of what is most important….

#4: Spend time with God in prayer.
The doors of retail stores are locked, tables at restaurants sit empty, the lights of Broadway’s theaters have gone down–all because of the COVID crisis. Our world has grown quieter, and, like inactivity, that quiet can be unsettling for those of us who are accustomed to constant noise. Although we may initially perceive it as a threat, this quiet is an invitation….

#5: Connect more deeply with the people in your life.
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of our current situation is the isolation many of us are enduring. The crowds that normally surround us in the office, on the train, and in coffee shops have now dispersed. We are unable to visit with friends and family. Yet there may be an opportunity even in this. If it is true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, then perhaps this time of separation will engender in us a greater appreciation for the people in our lives. And we need not wait passively for this period of separation to take its effect. We are blessed to live in an age of unprecedented connectivity wherein we have the technological capacity to see and speak with people thousands of miles away.

Today is a day that Christians historically have remembered the last meal that Jesus spent with his disciples before his crucifixion. The account of this meal in the Gospel of John is filled with some amazing moments. Perhaps the most powerful for me is the moment where Jesus kneels down and begins to wash his disciple’s feet.

This moment is scandalous to the disciples. They are horrified that their Rabbi (a highly honored position in society) is taking on a role reserved for slaves and servants.