I have recently finished editing a Vietnamese volume entitled “Pastoral Directions Post Covid-19 Pandemic: Lessons from the Signs of the Times.” When I made an announcement about this publication on my social media page, some people raised the question of whether we were in a position to speak about the post-pandemic context. After all, despite many vaccination efforts around the world, with the Delta variant of the coronavirus, and other recently discovered ones that might wreak great havoc, many countries have been experiencing new waves of the pandemic with high rates of infection. 

Needless to say, the “post-pandemic” reality which the authors in the book discussed is yet to be seen, and in some cases, seems far off in the future. Many of the authors highlighted this uncertainty in their articles. However, as the world continues to deal with the pandemic and wrestles with the virus, I think it might be important for us to reflect on the word “post-pandemic”. In reality, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 is not a new virus, but part of a large family of viruses that causes various health problems, including the common cold. The consequences brought about by sars-cov-2, however, have been much more severe, and for millions of people around the world, have proven to be deadly.