For decades a story persisted about Abraham Lincoln’s gold pocket watch housed at the Smithsonian. Finally, in 2009 the watch was very carefully opened. On April 13, 1861, the morning that the Civil War began, Jonathan Dillon, an immigrant watchmaker cleaning the watch, placed a secret message: “Fort Sumpter [sic] was attacked by the rebels on the above date. Thank God we have a government.”
Fighting COVID-19 has been compared to a war except it is an unseen enemy, attacks indiscriminately, and so potentially is an even greater threat. Our country has had to mobilize all its talent, manufacturing, and expertise to combat it, and whatever your feelings about politics, Mr. Dillon’s sentiment is just as relevant today.
Nevertheless, our form of government depends upon us – the People. And here, whether religious or not, Pope Francis’ words last week have great meaning:
. . .our lives are woven together and sustained by ordinary people – often forgotten people – who do not appear in newspaper and magazine headlines nor on the grand catwalks of the latest show, but who without any doubt are in these very days writing the decisive events of our time: doctors, nurses, supermarket employees, cleaners, caregivers, providers of transport, law and order forces, volunteers, priests, religious men and women and so very many others . . .
And to those I add the readers of this blog: those hardworking men and women who build and support out infrastructure, our sanitation systems, our hospitals, who mine the minerals, drive the trucks, enhance the environment, discover and implement new technologies, protect biological resources, reclaim land and work with multiple agencies and diverse interests.
Know that you too are “writing the decisive events of our time.”