Tagle’s message: Social distancing should not stop community caring

MANILA, Philippines — Former Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle reminded the faithful not to allow the social distancing measure to eliminate “community caring” amid the enhanced community quarantine in Luzon in a bid to contain the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

In his homily for the prayers on healing of the world at the Pontificio Collegio Filipino in Rome on Wednesday night, Tagle said the public should always observe physical distancing wherever they go, but appealed to them not to forget their ties with their neighbors amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I know, we need physical distancing and that is needed and we’re appealing to everyone to observe it where possible. Physical distancing should not lead to forgetfulness of neighbor,” said Tagle, who recently assumed his new post as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples in Vatican City.

Tagle said people might get used to physical distancing that will lead to being distant from their neighbors and would resort to name-calling and suspicions of one another.

“Or we might get used to physical distancing even without the epidemic, we will be distant with one another; we will be suspicious with one another. And we will brand people, we will blame, blame, blame – and that is a deadly virus,” he added.

“Physical distancing is for the common good, physical distancing should not eliminate community caring and that is what is needed today. This is a pandemic. This crisis, meaning pan, all demos, and people: it affects all people,” he added.

Tagle led the healing prayers of the world in the Vatican on Wednesday evening, Philippine time, where he reminded the faithful of the great renewal that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the people.

Tagle hopes that there will be a rebirth and resurgence of spirituality and mission when the COVID-19 pandemic ends, with people learning to care for each other, to be compassionate and to review their lifestyle.

The Philippine government has placed Luzon under an enhanced community quarantine in a bid to stop the spread of COVID-19 while the Philippines is under a six-month state of calamity due to the coronavirus.

Records from the Department of Health (DOH) showed that the Philippines has already more than 700 confirmed cases with 45 deaths and 26 who have recovered from the virus as of yesterday afternoon.

Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas said that health workers and other frontliners attending to COVID-19 patients are “the faces of Jesus.”

“You are taking care of God. We cannot pay back your love and service that you are giving them,” Villegas said in his message for them posted yesterday on the Facebook page of the Archdiocese of Lingayen-Dagupan.

Villegas added, “Jesus in the sick, and Jesus in you, you meet together, caring for each other.”

He remembered when Jesus touched the lepers, the blind, the deaf when he raised up the dead and showed His compassion.

Villegas narrated a story about then Pope John Paul II when he visited the Philippines in 1981 and wanted to see the lepers from the Tala Leprosarium in Caloocan.

But since it was an impossible thing to meet him there, the lepers were brought to the back of the auditorium of Radio Veritas in Fairview, Quezon City.

After the program and the pope saw the lepers at the backstage of Radio Veritas, he knelt and kissed the first leper he saw and whispered, “My Lord, my Lord.”

With Eva Visperas