That long-ago Thursday brought the announcement from Governor Hogan; then Friday came the directives from the Archdiocese, and Saturday morning, 14 March 2020, was the last permitted public Mass here. I remember how moved I was by the presence and attitude of the people here that day, in more than double the usual number, savoring a moment of intimacy and grief as at a farewell for an innocent dear one departing for prison. It was astonishing that nobody cried, though many were on the verge.
That Friday was a scheduled day of for the students and professional-improvement day for the teachers. They used it to prepare, and Monday morning our school began its euphemistically named distance-learning operations. It would be weeks, or more, before the county started theirs. Originally expected to be only for a few weeks, it stretched to the end of the school year, which culminated in parking-lot graduation ceremonies. That September, with heroic efforts by dozens of our people who know how necessary it is for children, we opened our school for in-person instruction. Well into our second school year of this, our students show all the radiant signs of having received what so many of their peers were denied. Our teachers and staff are weary but justifiably proud.
It would be more than three months before we were allowed back into the church for public Masses, and then with some of the harshest limitations and conditions in the state and the nation. By then we had all become accustomed to doing what we were told, checking the local mandates and requirements, observing new pieties that had nothing to do with our heavenly Father. Step by baby step, with the eyedropper of governmental mercy squeezing out incremental permissions along the long hard road, we returned to unimpeded worship. We could not imagine that this strangled form of society with its peculiar proscriptions would perdure for another twenty months, and counting. Even as we accommodated the new normal, we knew it was not normal.
After two full years, it seems, finally, that more and more people are entering into a sort of détente with the endemic situation, and more people are reestablishing practices and habits long set aside, but now recognized as essential, habits that include being with other people. Among them is the weekly, and daily, practice of the faith. It was exciting to see all the people who came to Mass on Ash Wednesday.
One of the many efforts we made to encourage people to feel safe at Mass was expanding our Mass schedule to allow people to spread out and avoid crowds. Now it is time to come together, and Sunday Mass is where God indicates we should be with Him and with the brethren, with the assembly, the community. We NEED this to be human; to enjoy and reveal how we are made to be like God Himself.
For that reason, the 4:30 Sunday Mass that we instituted to offer more options during the pandemic will not resume after Easter. Not only because six Sunday Masses is quite the load for us priests and all the people who help make Sunday Mass happen; not only because six Masses is rather more than a parish with only one assigned priest should undertake. But also and primarily because one of the chief goods of Sunday Mass is to bring people together, not spread them out. Come, be together before the Lord; keep alive the bonds of faith that bind us not only to God, but to one another. It is time to close the distance, no longer to maintain it.
The austerities of Lent have awakened in us a hunger for all that truly gives us life. Spring is coming, and it feels good to be alive. We look out and realize nobody is shelling our city and bombing our hospitals. Maybe we have less to fear than we once thought. Maybe we have more to lose than we had realized. May this be the last anniversary we observe this way.
Monsignor Smith
