Back to church

Our church resumed its regular weekend schedule this past weekend: a Saturday evening mass, then three Sunday morning masses.  Most weekends there also is a Sunday evening mass, but it didn't take place yesterday - the practice around here is that all the parishes cancel their Sunday evening masses on holiday weekends.

I served as a deacon at two of the masses, and played the piano at another.  Attendance was limited this past weekend to 40 persons per mass, although it will increase to 100 persons per mass by next weekend.  It's not clear to me what the next level would be after 100, but I suspect it will be quite some time before we're ready to move up to the next level.

Attendees had to register ahead of time.  They can do this either by calling the parish office or going to the parish website and using Signup Genius (a tool already familiar to any parent with school-age children - it's widely used by schools around here to recruit parents to help out with school activities).

When the attendees arrive, they must enter through the designated entrance, where they are confronted by two stations to check in and be put through a brief safety drill: have your mask on, sanitize your hands, sit where the usher tells you to sit and don't move unless/until the usher tell you.  If you have a fever or exhibit other symptoms of infection, just turn right around and march back to your car.  Put your envelope in the basket at the entrance; collections don't happen during mass these days.

Every second pew is open for seating.  Members of a household can sit together in the normal fashion, but otherwise attendees were expected to keep at least six feet distant from others in their pew.  The backs of the pews now have decals of crosses on them to help people see where to sit in relation to everyone else; the decals seemed to be some 8-10 feet apart from each other.  The off-limits pews are roped off with some cardboard signs whose friendly font and other design elements managed to convey "Not available for seating" in a way that didn't strike me as overly cold or officious.  All attendees were seated by ushers, and the attendees didn't get to sit in their favorite pews, a policy expected to create some friction.  There was one party who managed to sit in the wrong place and had to be asked to move.

As I mentioned, there was no collection during mass, and no interpersonal contact was to be made during the sign of peace (or any other time).  At communion time, ushers release one pew at a time.  Our parish has a center aisle, and during normal times two parallel lines would be shuffling up the center aisle to receive communion, but during this time, there is only one line.  So a pew on the right side is allowed to come forward; after that pew is in the aisle, a pew on the left side is then allowed to come forward.  At one mass, the ushers started at the front of the church and worked their way to the back; at the other, it was back to front.   Six foot intervals are marked in the aisle (just like at the checkout aisles in local grocery stores).

There is a hand sanitizer station some 12 feet from where the priest stands to offer communion (host only); the expectation is that the communicant sanitizes his/her hands when s/he is second from the front of the line; by the time s/he reaches the front of the line, the sanitizer would be expected to have dried, or soaked in, or evaporated, or whatever happens to it.  The recipient is to extend just one hand, and the Eucharistic minister is to place the host in the hand.  Receiving on the tongue is not permitted.  The recipient is then to step aside, pull down the mask (which should have remained in place up to that point in the proceedings) or let it dangle from one ear, consume the host, and re-mask.  The communion procedures worked just fine, although it takes a long time, even for just 40 attendees.  The musicians are going to have to plan for a lot of communion music.

At the end, everyone was told to exit through a designated exit door, which was at the other end from the designated entrance door.  It mostly worked.  After everyone has exited, a cleaning crew then came in, squirted disinfectant cleaner onto the seats, backs and kneelers of the pews which had been occupied, and then wiped them down.  It took about 10 minutes to do the disinfecting.  I asked one of the cleaners to disinfect the piano bench, piano keys and that stand-ish thing on the piano that holds the music up; I fear that whatever cleaning solution they're using marred the paint finish on the latter.

There was a fair bit of confusion among the various ministers.  The parish staff is struggling in some cases to get volunteers for the various liturgical ministries: sacristans, ushers, readers and 1-2 extraordinary eucharistic ministers; some people are being assigned but apparently are staying away.  Some ministries and other items have been eliminated: no altar servers.  No choir, but there is a cantor.  No instrumentalists besides the pianist.  No hymnals or worship aids in the pews.  Whether the people are supposed to  be singing at all is not entirely clear.  A number of other little details had to be rethought - for example, with no altar servers, one of the readers has to be enlisted to be the cross-bearer during the procession.  The gifts aren't brought up by the community during the Preparation of Gifts, so the sacristan had to set up the Eucharistic elements a little differently than before.  I spent considerable time before each mass answering questions (at least when I knew the answers).  These are all growing pains that all will be ironed out by next week. 

Those of us with speaking parts are expected to keep our face masks on at all times we're not speaking.  When I needed to speak, as for example when proclaiming the Gospel, my mask dangled from one ear.  I need to work out a few details - for example, may I reverence (kiss) the altar with my mask up?  At communion time, we put on a face shield for still another layer of protection.

It felt nice to be back.  But 40 people isn't very many.  The face masks certainly work against the sense of community - but too bad; it is what we need to do these days.  There also wasn't nearly as much camaraderie in the narthex after mass as would usually be the case.  Not sure whether that was because people were being hustled out, or they were simply fleeing the public gathering.  Again, from a health standpoint, it's probably best that people don't linger; but the bonds of community, already much frayed by the enforced stay-away-from-church policies of the last quarter or so, will not heal quickly if people can't speak with one another.