Greetings in Christ, all!
This Sunday we celebrate the Feast of the Pentecost: our Church’s birthday! Praise God. This will conclude our Easter Season and, as a result, you should see the procession of the Easter Candle out of the Church after each Mass this weekend. As you see it walk by, thank the Lord for the wonder of the Easter Season and ask God to fill all of us with His Holy Spirit!
I’ve noticed we have a goodly amount of people who receive The Eucharist kneeling. I honor this practice as a blessing and a great sign of reverence. At the same time, I recognize that it can be hard on the knees. As a result, I’m going to place a kneeler in front of my communion station at Masses throughout the next few weeks during our daily Mass. I’d love to hear from those of you who receive or wish to receive kneeling about where we place it. We’ll try a few things and see what works best. Then, on the Feast of Corpus Christi (June 23), we’ll bring it out for the Sunday Masses. To be clear, if you do not prefer to kneel, you certainly don’t need to. Simply receive communion over the kneeler as opposed to on it. However, for those who prefer to receive the Holy Eucharist this way, I’m hoping I’ve just made it way easier.
As I approach one year here with you all, I want to pause and acknowledge how difficult it has been for everyone to move to sharing a priest with another parish. This is actually the third time I have been assigned somewhere that requires me to introduce God’s People to this reality and I know it’s hard on you.
One of the things I’m realizing I didn’t prepare you for in sharing your priests revolves around after Mass and I’d like to run that by you now. Many Catholics are used to the practice of the priest staying after Mass, talking and greeting people and, when the priest doesn’t do it, it seems odd. Here, in our current reality, I find I am not usually able to hang out as much as I like to after Mass and apparently, some people are hurt/bothered by it, wondering if I care enough.
I’m sorry I didn’t run this by you all right away. Schedule and fatigue are the two realities that tend to dictate when I am able to “hang out” and when I am not. Priests do a lot and need to be a lot of places and, as a general rule, what we do is very emotional and demands a lot of our internal resources. As a result, sometimes we have to run right out after Mass and sometimes we’re just plain wiped out after Mass! I’ve combated this reality by arriving early for my Masses whenever possible and chatting people up then or simply staying after Mass when it is possible. Please keep me in your prayers that, if I’m doing it wrong, I listen to the Lord and adjust things accordingly.
Finally, what I’d like to do is take a look at our daily Mass schedule. On social media, there was a great deal of discussion around daily Mass times and how inconvenient they are to young families and it got me thinking. What I want to do is offer a sort of poll to allow us to collect data and, if necessary, change daily Mass times or even add if it is possible. So, here is what I am asking; below this is a form that I ask you to fill out and submit. Your goal is to fill this form out as if the weekday Mass schedule was totally built around you: when would you have Mass be so you could come? Please only offer your opinion if you would actually go to the daily Mass time you are asking for.
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