Dear Friends,
The most sacred week of the year is here. I hope your Lent was holy and that your relationship with the Lord has deepened. I hope, too, that it has prepared you for walking with Jesus during the Triduum when we remember the gift of the Eucharist, the Passion and Death of Jesus, and celebrate the dawn of eternal life at the Easter Vigil. We are truly blessed this year with a good number of adults and children to be baptized at the Easter Vigil.
On Easter Sunday, we have added another morning Mass at 7:00, but we will not be doing our regular Sunday afternoon Mass at 5:30. For those of you planning to attend one of those morning Masses, let me give you a heads up with what we are planning in regard to social distancing and accommodating the numbers of people.
The front one-third of the church will remain spaced every-other-pew. If you wish to be assured that you will have social distance, please come early and sit in the front third of the church. In the back two-thirds of the church, once we have reached capacity by filling every-other-pew, we will begin taking down the ropes from the rear of the church moving forward as it is needed. I am not sure what to expect for numbers, but I do know at some recent Masses we have reached seating capacity with the every-other-pew arrangement. If you still feel you are not able to return to closer social settings, the 7:00 am Mass will be a live broadcast and will be available afterwards on our website.
The Archbishop announced this week that if vaccinations continue at the present pace and Covid numbers continue to fall, then the dispensation from Mass attendance will end on Pentecost Sunday, May 23rd. Over the next month or two, we will be giving you further information about this and how we as a parish plan to celebrate.
There was an article in The Wall Street Journal this past week titled The Joy of Returning to In-Person Teaching by Katie Roiphe. In it she talks about the joy she feels in returning to in-person teaching after a year of Zoom teaching. She shares what some of us have been experiencing with celebrating Mass in-person. Here is a bit of her experience:
Something mysterious happens. It is physical. It is an energy you can fake or aspire to but never actually have in a Zoom class. You can cover your material. You can make an interesting point. But the feeling of a live class can never be reproduced, and the effort of trying or hoping for it exhausts you, depresses you and diminishes you in tiny but cumulative ways.
After a Zoom class I always thought, “Now that wasn’t so terrible.” I was too relieved at the okayness, the perfectly adequate effort at continuity, to fully allow myself to investigate or inhabit the lack. The feeling that Zoom is “fine” entailed a surrender to the barest bones of education, a terrible settling…
But in the classroom, I can feel when it is time to push farther into an idea. I can feel which students have something to say. I have not understood how much of teaching takes place outside of words. I can feel when it is time to elaborate a point, take a break, switch modes.
And then there are the unofficial minutes—before and after class, during break…Another tells me about something a professor said in another class. There is something important in the hanging around, the idle, casual, totally random snippets of conversation.
While I am packing up my books, I send one of my friends a giddy text about how happy I am: “It’s like a drug.”
I recognize my 11-year-old’s elation on the first day back in brick and mortar after dragging weeks of remote school. The crazy adrenaline of just regular boring old school. The palpably healthy feeling of watching kids in backpacks stream into the gates. After many remote months, a teenager I know comes home from school and tells her mother about every minor interaction she had with her teachers, because of how luxurious all of this feels.
I am careful walking down the stairs not to touch the railing. But when I walk out onto the street I am overwhelmed with gratitude.
Hopefully, your return to Mass in person will bring you the same joy. Many people have already returned. I look forward to everyone’s return. To hear our voices collectively rise up in unison as we recite the sacred liturgy. To see your reactions in prayer. To be able to greet each other after Mass. While we will all continue to be careful, we will continue to be a community, a parish community, rooted in the love of Jesus Christ and sharing that love with one another.
Peace,
Fr. Damian