St. Joseph of the Lakes

When I was pastor of St. Bernard’s there came a time when it became obvious that we were going to have to close the school. The population of students had dropped quite low and with that, the amount of money coming in also dropped. Over several years we tried managing what we could to stave off that reality, but it was a slowly growing situation that at first put us into debt and then finally lead us to announce the closure. We made the announcement in October and then struggled throughout the rest of the year to teach the students we had still attending. There were all sorts of questions that flowed out of the announcement and almost all of them surrounded what would happen in the future, I had no answers; and through that experience I learned that sometimes you just have to wait until the answers come.

With the coronavirus pandemic I find that I was well schooled by my earlier experience. I have received many questions from staff members, parishioners, and family members about what is going to happen in the future. The most abundant question is when will we begin public Masses. My answer is I do not know. What will happen with Confirmations and First Communions; again, my answer is that I do not know. What about parish programs? At least with these I can point to the work that some of our staff members are doing distantly saying we are doing the best we can as the disease allows. I know that there are parish volunteers calling our older parishioners on a weekly basis. As you know we are recording a Sunday Mass each week. I am saying Mass at my house and including the Mass intentions. We are holding some virtual meetings with staff and parishioners using an app called Zoom. Yet the big question: when does it return to normal? This is unanswerable.

In conversations with my priest friends there is a struggle to come up with answers to these questions right now, and I find myself very much at peace with the unknown. From my earlier schooling I know the answers will come in their own time and when they do, we will take appropriate actions to react to them. I have not lived through anything like this before, but I read an article about the Spanish flu pandemic. In 1917-18 churches were closed and there could not be any gatherings of more than ten people. We recovered from that time and we will recover from this.