Bulletin Column from April 26, 2020

Dear Friends at Saint Mary’s Immaculate Conception Parish and Saint Frances Cabrini Parish:  Praised be Jesus Christ!

“Shelter in Place” continues.   One thing I have noticed as these weeks of radically adjusted lifestyles have dragged along for all of us is that, for me anyway, all the days of the week run together.  Much of the time I am not really able to tell in an instant if I am making my way through a Tuesday, a Friday, etc, etc.  When so many of our activities that typically revolve around consistent scheduled events are removed or canceled, indeed it makes it difficult to mark time. 

Much of us are not used to such a dynamic, but the fact is that something similar happens in a monastery.  I was fortunate to experience this in an extended sense this past July on sabbatical when I spent the whole month with the Cistercian monks near Vienna.  On one level, the days in a monastery all run together because the daily schedule does not experience much variation, deliberately, due to the nature of the rules of life that govern monastic living.

However, in that same monastic setting what does become much more pronounced precisely because of what is otherwise so unaltered, is the daily and weekly cycles of the liturgy and of the Church’s calendar.  Catholics mark time in very intentional patterns and rhythms.  In the monastery I always knew which day it was because of when we were or were not eating meat, observing silence, alternating texts of meal prayers, observing a saints feast day, chanting certain psalms, hearing certain readings, practicing certain devotions, etc, etc. 

The day that was the most different was Sunday.  Not only was everything prayed with particular splendor and solemnity, but the schedule of the monastery was different then, too.  Sunday is always, always a different day of the week.  Period. 

For us right now, while it is true that we cannot gather for Mass, we are fortunate to still have access in our homes to the daily scripture readings.  If we are interested, we can access through apps and online the Liturgy of the Hours which can be prayed anywhere and puts a very deliberate mark on each week. We can of course structure our devotions.  We can still honor the Saints in our houses.

We can also think of ways to still make Sunday a different day so that as our days run together right now, we will still know which day of the week is the Lord’s Day.  Maybe on Sundays the family takes one walk together praying the rosary as you go.  Maybe your family meal is a little more festive.  Maybe if one does not read aloud the daily Scripture readings during the rest of the week, you make sure to do so, together, on Sunday.   Whatever it is, even in the face of so much that is so the same, we are fortunate, and I would say even obligated, as Catholics to mark our days with the Church’s pattern of prayer, and to make Sunday still the special day that it is.   “Shelter in Place” does not take that away.

-Father Nathan