Religion in Response to the Plague

            I found it interesting and slightly ironic how, even in times of plague, the population does not – for the most part- turn to religion. Many people attend the Week of Prayer: the priest’s idea of battling the plague. Despite the large attendance, many people simply regarded attendance as to how “it can’t do any harm” (93). However, what I found most interesting about this section is what the priest attributes to the cause of the plague: God’s anger. He accuses the town of loving God in a way that “could not sate the fierce hunger of His love” (97). He hypothesizes (for he cannot know for sure) with much certainty that God had waited for the town to worship him, and the townspeople had been to self-absorbed to ever alter their daily patterns enough to bother with church. The priest accuses the citizens of “imaginin[ing] it was enough to visit God on Sundays, and thus [they] could make free of [their] weekdays” (97). This, through a religions perspective, is a commentary on the capitalistic nature of the town; always concerned with work and progress. From the priest’s perspective, this overall fascination with individualistic pursuits resulted in God never being worshiped to the degree He wanted, and for this reason God has “loosed on you this visitation [the plague]” (97), and he goes on to say that, because this is all a predetermined path, everyone should rejoice because nothing they can do will affect it – he is basically telling them to rejoice their impending death at the hands of an angry God. After telling the townspeople that God is killing them off because they failed to worship him enough, he then encourages them to send “prayer[s] of love” (99) to a God who he just said was allowing their slaughter. The priest’s behavior amused me because his reasoning in his sermon seems to be very flawed.