Please read the Scripture passage first.
We have started to enter a new era, the post-coronavirus era. Life will not be the same. How it will change, we do not know.
St Paul addressed the presbyters, those who were overseeing the Church in Ephesus. The times had started changing. The age of the Apostles was about to end. Presbyters, a fancy word for elders, were assuming roles of leadership in the Church. (Eventually we shall know these elders and overseers as priests and bishops. Our word priest comes from the Greek word for elder, presbyter. Our word bishop comes from the Greek word for overseer.)
Paul the Apostle warned the new leadership to be watchful, to stay alert because “savage wolves” wanted to attack the Church. Paul briefly summed up his conduct among the people and encouraged them to support the weak and helpless of society.
Paul’s faith in the new leadership was based, not on the abilities of the leaders, but on the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit had anointed them to tend to the Church of God, not their own church, but God’s Church, the Church which Christ has acquired with his own Blood.
What could Paul offer as a farewell gift or charge? He commended them to God and to the Word of God. He did not entrust them with the Word, but entrusted the Word with them.
What difference did it make for Paul to entrust them with the Word or to have the Word given to them as a gift? When we receive something valuable as a family heirloom, we tend to store it safely and take it out once in a while to admire. Paul did not want the Church to consider the Word of God such a treasure, something kept under lock and key and never used. Rather, Paul wanted this living Word of God to guide the Church in her daily life down through the centuries.
It is this living and dynamic Word of God that still guides the Church. It is the same living Word that inspired the Second Vatican Council, the same Word that speaks through the Church of today.
The age of the Apostles was almost over for Paul. It has ended for us a long time ago. Paul commended the Church to the living Word and this Word of God has continues to live up to its responsibility to the Church.
I cannot tell you what life will be like in the post-coronavirus age, but I do know that the Word of God will continue to guide the Church.