May 28, 2020
Dear Friends,
We’ve had our first weekend of Masses and I wanted to share with you how it went. First of all it was great to have people in Church. Our crowds were small. We had between 35-40 people at the 5 p.m. 7:30 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. and 75-80 at the 9:30 a.m. It was still wonderful to have people in Church. We have been averaging 10-18 at our daily Masses.
We are still asking people to make reservations for our weekend Masses. You can access the reservation page on the front page of our parish website. Once again, our purpose in doing this is two-fold. 1) It allows us to plan for the Mass better by knowing how many people will be there and, 2) it lets us know who is in attendance if we need to do contact tracing if someone at that Mass is later diagnosed with the Covid-19 virus.
We apologize for the problems with the Live stream at the 9:30 a.m. Mass. We are working this week to try to make sure we do it right this next weekend. If we continue to experience problems we will move our Live stream to Saturday night so we can still get it out in a timely fashion for all of you.
Archbishop Thompson has given us permission to take communion to our homebound parishioners (which now includes anyone who does not feel safe going to Mass at this time). These are the protocols for those wishing to receive communion at home.
1.
Be aware that it is nearly impossible to practice social distancing and receive communion at the same. Therefore, if you have a relative who you are comfortable allowing into your house that is the first person we would have you ask to bring communion to you.
2.
Archbishop Thompson has given us permission to appoint people as Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist to serve this function even if they are not currently a Eucharistic Minister.
4.
Whoever is taking communion to the homebound person should sanitize their hands both before and after the distribution of communion.
5.
Whoever is taking communion to the homebound person should wear a mask.
6.
To get Holy Communion to take to a homebound person you need to do so before or after one of our daily or weekend Masses. This is done so that there are as few as people as possible touching the tabernacle and the ciborium. Fr. Tom is at Church one half hour before all Masses. Usually there are few people if any around at that time. If you cannot make one of those times, please contact Fr. Tom by phone or email to try to arrange a time.
7.
We will have prayer cards that can be used to provide an order of service for the distribution of Holy Communion.
God bless you all and stay well.
Fr. Tom