Dear Friends,
I’m very excited that we are finally able to welcome people back to church. We had three small prayer services this past week on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night from 7:00 - 8:00 pm. This gave our Greeting and Cleaning Teams an opportunity to begin implementing the procedures outlined by Archdiocese. And we have been approved by the Archdiocese to host a public Mass for 50 people today.
Moving forward, we will be able to host up to 20% of our seating capacity, which is about 110 people. However, at this point we will not be returning to our regular Mass schedule just yet. We want to limit ourselves to one or two Masses for a few weeks to make sure we are following all of the proper procedures and aren’t encountering any problems. We want to go slow to ensure your safety.
And, in order to be able to have more public Masses, we need more volunteers who are willing to be here on Saturday or Sunday for Mass to serve on our Greeting and Cleaning Teams. So if you are under the age of 65 and in good health, please consider helping. If you are interested, please email our Reopening Team Leads, Kelly Smith kellyqtml@yahoo.com ) or Diana McCartney mccartneydiana@yahoo.com and they can give you more information. We know we have a lot of parishioners who travel during the summer. That’s ok! Just help when you can.
Since we will not be able to host Mass for more than 110 people for the foreseeable future, we will continue to livestream or post a Mass for people to watch online every Sunday. We want everyone to remain connected to St. Josaphat and to be able to continue to worship with us. And we understand that some people will not want to come back for a while because of age or other health concerns. That’s fine! You should move at a pace that you feel comfortable. Cardinal Cupich has made it clear that the obligation to attend Sunday Mass has been lifted until the COVID-19 pandemic is over. So if you are concerned about your health or if you are not feeling well, you should definitely stay home and join us for Mass online.
Having people back in church while we are filming will present some new challenges. So please be patient with us as we navigate the new reality. We are currently working on upgrading to a live-streaming camera, instead of the Surface Pro we have been using. And we are working on boosting our wifi signal to the church to improve the streaming quality as well.
Every Thursday at Noon, we will send out an email to all of our registered parishioners inviting them to make a reservation for Mass for that following Sunday. If there are any remaining spots on Friday morning, another email will be sent out, this time including everyone in our database. If there are remaining spots on Friday afternoon, an email will be sent to everyone on our newsletter (Constant Contact) list. This week, we were full before getting to send to our this list. Please be on the lookout for those emails. Not registered? That’s an easy fix! Just follow this
link. It only takes a few minutes!
And since our capacity will be limited for the first few weeks, if you were able to come to church today, please give your fellow parishioners an opportunity to come to Mass before signing up again.
I look forward to seeing all of you again soon!
Fr. Francis
