There is a moving black-and-white photo taken in San Francisco in 1918 during the Spanish flu pandemic. The photo shows a crowd of men and women, soberly dressed, standing and kneeling on the steps of the Cathedral of Mary of the Assumption. In the foreground, a lone man kneels on one knee, his head bowed solemnly, with one hand grasping the wheel well of an old car for support.
The Spanish flu was a highly contagious and deadly form of the flu that spread rapidly around the globe. When all was said and done, the dead numbered as many as 50-100 million. Furthermore, unlike the virus that is making the news these days, the Spanish flu did not spare the young or the healthy; nobody was safe. Because of the fear of contagion during the 1918 pandemic, authorities in many jurisdictions either completely banned all public events or recommended that public events be held outdoors. Hence, the presence of the worshippers on the steps of the church.
Perhaps it was not “wise”—in one sense of the word—for the people in that photo to be there, in a crowd, in the midst of an outbreak of an infectious disease. Wise or not, however, this photo stands to me as a powerful witness to the universal human tendency in times of great trial to come together and to turn our hearts and minds as one toward the transcendent, to seek wisdom from the Almighty, to humble ourselves in the face of the great mysteries of suffering and death, to worship Him who made heaven and earth, and to beg for His mercy.
Or rather, the almost universal human tendency. . .
