“When you are before the altar where Christ reposes, you ought no longer think you are in the midst of men, but believe that there are troops of angels and archangels standing by you and trembling with respect before the sovereign master of heaven and earth. Therefore, when you are in the church, be there in silence, fear, and veneration.” ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM (347-407)
What a wonderful quote we have from St John Chrysostom, about what we should feel when we enter church and when we celebrate Mass. It has been hard during this time of pandemic, when we were not able to practice our faith in the ways that we normally do. I will never forget what it felt like commemorating Holy Week and The Triduum with face masks and an empty church. We were not even able to celebrate those liturgies in our church, but in our small chapel.
The important thing during this challenging time is to find ways to practice our faith, to keep the Lord’s day holy, to come back to church. We here at St Jude have been very diligent in sanitizing our facilities and observing protocols that will keep us all safe. When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa and a missionary in South America, there were protocols I had to observe in order to keep safe, to keep alive, really. I was very diligent about preparing clean water to drink, which included getting rain water or well water in buckets, filtering it, boiling it, and treating it with iodine or bleach. It was a ritual and protocol I had to observe very carefully. We here at St Jude are so very careful in trying to keep all of us safe in the protocols and safety measures we are observing.
I know that we all have our own realities and our own underlying vulnerabilities and medical conditions, but I want to communicate to you how safe it is to return to St Jude for Mass. Our daily masses in church are very lightly attended and you do not need to make an on-line reservation to attend, so we want to particularly invite the elderly and those who feel particularly vulnerable to those daily masses. There is currently a dispensation in place in our Diocese from attending mass on Sunday, meaning that attending a weekday mass will fulfill your weekly obligation. We are still continuing to stream our masses online on Facebook, but we want to encourage live attendance at mass as well.
We are start our adult faith formation program this week. I want to encourage all of you to attend it. I myself will be leading one of the small discussion groups. We will be using the program THE SEARCH from the Formed website. This is another way that we can continue the practice of our faith: continue to be formed in our faith and to grow in our faith.
Blessings to all of you. Have a blessed week.
Father Lincoln
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