Palm Sunday From Our Pastor
Dear Folks,
Welcome to Holy Week. Not the Holy Week any of us planned, but the Holy week Jesus gave us.
Prayers. Thanks to so many of you who have reached out to us with your prayer intentions…. Facebook masses being live-streamed have been a beautiful way to stay in touch with you and to lift your prayers up to Jesus. We are a big parish, but it is inspiring to see you embracing one another’s prayer intentions especially because it is virtual / online!
Church closed to visits:
Palm Sunday – Church closed all day so that we can do the expanded live-streaming from the church. We want to maximize your ability to stay connected to your parish, and believe that on Palm Sunday it will be important that Masses are live-streamed from the church.
Triduum (Thursday 6pm through Easter Sunday) – again the church will be closed for the entirety of the Triduum. This is so that we can livestream the Holy Week liturgies on facebook. Also, because the number of visitors would likely be too many, it seems likely that we would have difficulty keeping the VA mandated maximum of ten persons.
But what about Palms? If I can’t give you the living body of Christ, the King of Kings, then I don’t want to give you dead branches. I don’t want to violate social distancing to give you a lesser good (Palms) when I can’t give you the supreme good (Jesus Himself).
However: here are some ways you can ‘decorate’ your home stream chapel to participate in Holy week:
Palm Sunday: clip a branch for a tree or bush. A flowering one would be appropriate to celebrate Jesus Trimphal entry into Jerusalem!
Holy Thursday: find a picture of the paschal lamb. Below is one of my favorites from the Ghent Altarpiece!
Good Friday: set up crucifix prominently, so that you can venerate the cross with us when we livestream the 3pm Liturgy!
Holy Saturday: get a candle ready for the Easter Vigil, preferably you or your children’s baptismal candles!
Easter Sunday: Have a small bottle or bowl of water ready, to remember the grace of our baptism!
Additionally, if you want to see the Magnifikid, they have made the April issue(s) available online. They ask that you download the month at:
Be assured of the prayers and concern of your priests! We miss you and are hoping that we can once again soon gather around the altar of the lamb who was slain for our sins!
pax,
fr mosimann
