Dear Parishioners:
We continue to live a new way of life as a result of the Cornavirus Pandemic. We don’t socialize the way we once did instead we now text, call, email or Zoom! Zoom is a way for many people to talk live together online. It is being used by our OLM School Faculty for the new way we teach school children now with distance learning. We don’t shop the way we once did as now we keep “social distance” and those over 60 have special hours. We don’t drive the way we once did as now we only go out for the basics and watch New Yorkers being pulled over and told to quarantine.
The government has now deemed many businesses and activities as non-essential. The list of essential and critical businesses seems to be a reflection perhaps of what our society truly values. Among the critical businesses are gun shops, liquor stores, and marijuana centers. They along with hospitals, grocery stores, and pharmacies are essential to surviving the pandemic! Sadly missing from the list of essentials is the worship of God.
Yes the Church wishes to comply with public safety concerns and seeks not to spread the virus. Prayer, however, is essential! Thus OLM Church is open every day for private prayer. Confessions are still heard so sinners might be forgiven! This certainly is not an irresponsible act of defiance but rather because we know God is truly essential and quite critical in these days despite what any elected official or government bureaucrat decides!
Daily the priests of OLM offer Mass for you and your intentions. Daily the good sisters of OLM pray before the Eucharistic Lord for your well being and for an end to this pandemic. Daily individuals make their way into OLM to kneel before God and offer prayers. This is critical and essential and must continue!
On this Palm Sunday we begin the holiest week of the year. It is perhaps the strangest of Holy Weeks any of us may ever experience. The glorious and solemn ceremonies of the Triduum now to be celebrated with simplicity in empty churches. The RCIA candidates are not be baptized and confirmed at the Easter Vigil. A strange Holy Week lay ahead of us! However, it does not mean we must not celebrate it with prayerfulness and holiness even if from a distance. The Holy Week Services at OLM are available online so that all our parishioners can and should participate from home.
We must prepare for this Holy Week by ensuring we set aside the proper time and space in our homes to watch and pray together. While we are not physically together in the same building, we are truly united as the Body of Christ in faith, hope and love. So mark your calendar for Holy Week, and take the time needed to prayerfully enter into the great mysteries of our faith.
In many ways this Holy Week each one of us is on retreat in a monastery albeit one with all the comforts of home! While it is comfortable for us we must strive all the more to make it more prayerful and holy! It has been said that the contemplative life of the monastery is the highest form of life that a Christian may live. For in responding to God’s call to holiness, a contemplative monk or nun fulfills an important role in the Church: they visibly witnesses by a life of prayer and contemplation to the absolute priority of God. It is often called “the angelic life,” because the contemplation of God continues in heaven and throughout all eternity. The life of the monastery is already a foretaste of what is to come as we contemplate our great and loving God.
This Holy Week make your home a monastery for contemplation and prayer. Turn off the computer and cell phone. Disconnect from the worldly distractions! Prayerfully enter into the contemplation of the mysteries of the Sacred Triduum. On Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter stop to contemplate in prayer and worship the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
St. Benedict said the monastery is “the family of love.” Make your home that monastery this Holy Week, worship with us online, and pray for an increase of faith, hope and love in our world. Lift up your hearts and give thanks to the Lord our God. For it isn't only right and just it is truly essential! Be well. Do Good! Stay safe. God Bless. Oremus pro invicem! A Blessed Holy Week!