Pandemic Easter
Pandemic Easter is so unlike every other single Easter that ever has been. In our church the Triduum, the celebration of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil, is a time of great planning and preparation. Things move very quickly in these three days. Every day has a very different aspect that only happens this day at this time of year. Pandemic Easter scratches a lot of them.
We have still met for many staff meetings to plan how this would work to make it the most it could possibly be for the parishioners. How do you celebrate our holiest time of year without the people? Thankfully, we have a wonderful AV team who does a remarkable job at Livestreaming all our important events. They have been called into service now more than ever.
Next come the directives from the Bishop’s office telling us what should be cut from the normal events and what can stay. Add in the amount of people allowed in one gathering, and you need to figure out what a team of people used to do and bring it down to a handful.
For the past two nights and again tonight, I will sit in an empty church with only a few people and do my best at things I have never done before to try and make our community know just how very important they are to all of us. I have been called in to jobs of Altar Server, Lector, light turner on. Some of have done and others never. Some I have done but never on a timed response.
I feel so sad as I sit in the empty church and remember just back to Christmas and how we sat crammed into the pews celebrating the birth of Jesus. Last Holy Thursday at the repose of the Blessed Sacrament there were hundreds of us squished into the chapel for the celebration. This year about six of us. The power of the moment was not there.
However, I have heard from parishioners who have said how beautiful the services were and how much they appreciated being able to share in them though not as we want to. They appreciate though that through technology they were still able to be a part of it.
Today on Facebook I saw multiple families preparing Easter dinner a day early. They were packaging it up and delivering it to family members they could physically be with. Some plan to livestream everyone in to share the dinner “together” tomorrow. There were also many posts of the Easter bunny traveling through neighborhoods to let the kids now he knew where they lived.
I find joy in how in a time we cannot be together so many have adapted and found ways to show love, to come together and to remember what and who are important.
Our parish hosted our very first “Fill the Hill” event. Two weeks ago we asked anyone who wanted to make a cross and decorate it to then come and stick it in the hill. In the past week we have been overjoyed to see more and more crosses on the hill. It is yet just one more way to show we are in this together even if we are not physically together. But I still want a typical Easter celebration next year.
