We’re entering uncharted territory on our COVID-19 journey. As jurisdictions across the country roll out plans to ease pandemic restrictions, never will our faith be more needed, or tested, than in the months to come.

It’s a pandemic within a pandemic — and a damning indictment of how we’ve been failing to care for our most vulnerable. People living in seniors’ homes across Canada are being hit disproportionately hard by COVID-19.

The journey to Easter in 2020 has been a journey like no other.

It’s been a turbulent few months. Crowds blocking rail lines, protesters waving placards and RCMP officers barricading land are some of the dramatic images of discontent across Canada.

It’s an impossibly tight deadline that the Trudeau government has deliberately created, but one we must respond to with great urgency. 

Somewhere tucked between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s press conferences earlier this month about the tragedy of the Ukrainian Airlines crash was a bombshell of another kind: changes coming to federal legislation that pave the way for more Canadians to end their lives prematurely.

As Catholics, we all know Christ is the reason for the season. We try our best not to let the materialism of the moment eclipse the birth of Christ. Many of us manage to carve out time to attend midnight Mass and even participate in Advent prayers and events.

One Friday last August a Swedish schoolgirl decided not to attend her classes. Clutching her handwritten sign “School strike for climate,” she instead stood outside Sweden’s Parliament, a one-child protest against the damage humankind has wrought on the environment.

Following 29 deaths in the U.S. and at least three cases of severe illnesses in Canada, the Canadian government is stepping up efforts to speak out about vaping, defined as “the act of inhaling and exhaling an aerosol produced by a vaping product, such as an electronic cigarette.”

It’s been called a “national health crisis” and a “public emergency.” It’s a major issue in next month’s federal election.