April 2020
Dear Friends,
I hope you, your family and your friends are staying safe as we navigate life during this pandemic. Never in my lifetime have I found myself in such uncharted waters. Perhaps this is true for you as well.  As often is the case in times like these, however, we learn a lot about ourselves and even more about the things that are most important to us – the love of family and friends, and gathering with community. 

As Catholics, we believe that the Eucharistic celebration is the source, the beginning, the fountain of our life in Christ and the highest expression of our intimacy with God. There we remember what God has done in our lives and our world, and we give thanks for the gift of life itself, no matter the difficulties we endure.  We do not gather at the Eucharist to learn about God, but rather to experience God in the laughter of the community, in the Word proclaimed to us so boldly by our lectors, in the ancient prayers of the Church, in the music that touches our hearts (and sometimes rips them apart), and in the taste and touch of the sacraments.  While our on-line attempts to remain connected are the best we can do under the circumstances, those attempts cannot take the place of our being in the presence of one another, because all of us mediate the presence of God. And our tradition insists that we are most powerfully connected to God and to one another by our touching and hearing and tasting the goodness of God in the presence of one another. 

That being said, the Church throughout the ages has recognized the domestic church –  that is, the church of our homes and our families – as an important setting in which we experience God’s presence.  There, foundations are laid and our religious traditions are lived, or not.  This pandemic encourages us to seek new ways to pray together. It encourages us to experience God’s Word in our homes and to introduce new rituals at meal times and quiet times.  If you are living alone, now may be a time to discover a new prayer method or an online Catholic resource (go to www.ctk.org) and to reach out to someone else who is alone and share your experiences or a book you recently read.  The book Sadhana: A Way to God by the Jesuit priest Anthony De Mello teaches not only a way to stillness and contemplation, but it collects in one place many of the Church’s prayer traditions and instructs the reader in those traditions.

We will gather again as a parish community and as Church.  Until then, know that you are not alone.  Here at the rectory, Fr. Phan, Fr. Mark Simpson, Prudence and I are united with you in prayer. We pray for the end of the pandemic and for the mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing of everyone everywhere.  It is my hope that you will be with us on that day when we gather to rejoice at the end of all this.  It is in your faces, gathered at mass, that I see God, and so I very much look forward to celebrating the Eucharist with you again.

In Christ,