Recently we received permission from Bishop Cote to begin opening weekday Masses to public participation. While we are thrilled to be starting on our journey back to wholeness, the steps that are available to us are small and the progress may appear to be slow. There is no way to ensure the overall safety of our parish community and all of our parishioners until there is a trusted vaccine.
Our main priority is the restoration of the public worship of God through the celebration of Mass and the sacraments in a way that conforms with established liturgical norms and mandates issued by civil authorities, so that health and well-being of the faithful and clergy may be reasonably safeguarded.
The challenge for us during these trying times is to proclaim God’s love for us and for the vulnerable among us. The Church is called to witness to God’s love and concern for all of His people by the way that we carefully, in charity and peace, bring all of God’s people safely back to the table of the Lord.
This means that we are going to open our doors more slowly than we might like and in our prayerful, loving approach to bringing our community back together we will witness to the love of God and our neighbors. We will work at achieving a balance between our desire to be together and the good of our parish community.
This balance means that many things will be different as we wear masks to Church, as we maintain social distancing, as the reception of Holy Communion by the faithful is moved to the end of Mass, as we encourage our cherished and vulnerable members to continue to participate through our parish livestream.
The obligation to attend Sunday Mass will remain dispensed for all the faithful in the Diocese of Norwich until further notice. The Blessed Sacrament Parish will continue to livestream our daily and weekend Masses during all phases of this transition.
We will begin with weekday Masses, starting with Monday June 8th. Even though the weekday numbers are smaller, we have a lot to learn about this new world and must have patience with each other and show our respect for God in the way that we resume our community worship.
We have been working with the diocese and within our parish on plans that will be shared with you in much more detail over the coming weeks. In the meantime, please pray for our parish, and our community.