I recognize that not everyone is going to feel comfortable coming back to church right away, even with safety protocols in place. Many of you may decide to continue to shelter in place and practice more stringent social distancing either out of precaution for yourselves or those you love.
If this is your plan, I want you to know that I understand and I support you. You don’t need to come to church in order to celebrate the sacraments.
You are already living the sacraments each day as you go about your lives. When you exercise charity and concern for family, friends and neighbors, you are living out your baptism in being a disciple of Jesus Christ. When you offer forgiveness to a family member, friend or roommate who trespassed against you, you extend the mercy of Christ to them and participate in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. When you exercise wisdom, prudence, temperance, right judgment or courage in dealing with this pandemic and making decisions to protect yourself and others, you are using the gifts the Holy Spirit gave you in the Sacrament of Confirmation. And when you show your spouse or your children love and take care of each other during this trying time, you are most definitely living out the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.
In short, the sacraments are not prizes to be handed out in church.
Disciples are meant to be the very embodiment of the sacraments they received. You are already living a sacramental life right now. The Eucharist, as the source and summit of our faith, helps us to be filled with grace to keep living a sacramental life. But we are not devoid of the sacraments without it. Indeed, many Christians around the world do not have the opportunity to receive the Eucharist on a regular basis because of a lack of priests, religious persecution or because of other obstacles, like pandemics, that make frequent reception of communion impossible. But they still live sacramental and saintly lives nonetheless.
I want to be clear, I eagerly look forward to celebrating the Eucharist with all of you as soon as possible, but we must proceed with prudence and with caution. We will follow every guideline that the Archdiocese of Chicago and our government leaders and health experts advise. Not because politicians tell us to, but because Jesus does, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends... this I command you: love one another.” At St. Josaphat Parish we will continue to show our love for one another by how we care for each other during this pandemic. That means following the advice of health professionals and doing all that we can to ensure a safe and healthy worship environment when we gather for prayer and to celebrate the sacraments together.
We will be opening the church by phases. There are strict criteria that need to be met in order to open and hold services. In the first phase, we are limited to 10 people in church for prayer or to celebrate the sacraments. Consequently, we will not be getting back to our normal celebration of our Sunday liturgies for quite some time. We will begin with more manageable celebrations like baptisms, reconciliation, funerals and weddings for 10 people or less. And we will be working on offering opportunities for up to 10 parishioners to come and pray for short times. All of this will happen gradually and in accordance with all of the policies and procedures outlined by the Archdiocese of Chicago in consultation with state and local authorities.
I thank all of you for your patience during this time. Your health and safety are very important to me. So I want to assure you that we will do everything that the Archdiocese asks of us to open our church safely. We will be sending emails and posting information to our website and social media with the information you will need about when the church will be open, what to expect when you come to church, and how you should prepare yourselves for entering the church and practicing healthy distancing while you are here.
I look forward to sharing more information as we plan for the reopening our church.
God Bless,
