Cyprian-249
By Ps. Sng Chong Hui
Long before the Spanish flu in 1918, there was a pandemic flu called the Cyprian Plague.
The outbreak started in AD 249. You might call it Cyprian-249.
It lasted for 13 years till AD 262. It was such a devastating and deadly infectious disease. At the height of the outbreak, 5000 people were said to be dying every day in Rome.
It caused widespread havoc of manpower shortages for food production. It severely weakened the Roman army, breaking the structural integrity of the imperial machinery and crumbling the frontier system. It saw the end of the Roman Empire.
The plague was named after Saint Cyprian, bishop of Carthage. He was not the cause of the outbreak. He wrote about it. But most of all, he got the church to respond in such a way the pagan world took notice.
When no one dared to go near the sick and dying, Bishop Cyprian mobilized the Christians to care for them. Where dead bodies were discarded on the streets, Bishop got the Christians to go bury them.
The entire Christian community was transformed into a battalion of nurses and undertakers.
Dionysus, a historian wrote:
Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbours and cheerfully accepting their pains.
Such faith in action and love in action moved the hearts of many and won them to Christianity.
The author of “The Rise of Christianity,” Rodney Stark writes:
Though the plague terrified the pagans, Christians greeted the epidemic as merely “schooling and testing.
Such unwavering conviction in the threat of imminent death, contributed to the growth of Christianity. The plague of Cyprian was a horrifying time but it won more Christian converts than any other times.
Today as our churches, our nation and the world face the rapid outbreak of Covid-19, may we learn something of the way the Christians responded to Cyprian-249.
May the world take notice of our faith in action and our love in action.
It is not a time to be paranoid about catching virus.
Certainly we want be protective of all our loved ones, but even more there must be a preparedness to proclaim the answer to our mortality, to show our faith by praying together, to show our love for those who have caught the virus and appreciating all our healthcare workers.
In the darkness of fear and worries, may our faith and love shine the brightest.
This article is reproduced with permission from Ps Sng Chong Hui. To read other articles by Ps Sng, please visit his blog at https://goldenapplesilversetting.wordpress.com.