“When the days for his being taken up were fulfilled, Jesus resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem.” Lk 9,51

Dear parishioners,

In the same way that Jesus resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem, it is with a similar sense of grim resolve that I turn toward the Easter Triduum. As you have no doubt heard by now, Dr. Bonnie Henry has authorized us to open for gatherings of no more than 50 people on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, for the Easter Vigil, Easter Sunday, and the following Sunday, which is Divine Mercy Sunday. As I watch the numbers going up every day, and the variants going up as a proportion of daily new cases, I have to make a leap of faith that our Triduum celebrations will go well, and that they will be inspiring and prayerful, in spite of everything, and a leap of hope that St. Mary’s parish won’t be the place where you caught the coronavirus. 

And so we are preparing. You will find a schedule of our Holy Triduum celebrations, as well as confession/communion times on all our sites, and on the pre-registration page which you access from our parish website. If we are able to run them safely on Palm Sunday, and if there isn’t an alarming increase in new cases, we will post in addition a series of “walk-throughs” for which pre-registration will also be required. I will get back to you again between now and then for more details on the Triduum. In today’s pastor’s corner, I want to focus anew, since we are re-opening, on the provisions with which we must comply, if our re-opening is to be safe. They may seem overwhelming. They come straight out of the conditions of re-opening that Dr. Bonnie Henry issued to the churches. Here they are:

We ask that you please not come to church:

If you are 70 years of age or older, even if you have been immunized against Covid-19;

If you have an underlying medical condition or a compromised immune system;

If you have travelled outside of Canada within the last 14 days;

If you have been in contact in the last 14 days with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19;

If you have any one of the following symptoms associated with Covid-19: fever or chills, cough, loss of sense of smell or taste, difficulty breathing, sore throat, loss of appetite, extreme fatigue or tiredness, headache, body aches, nausea or vomiting, diarrhea.

If you live with someone who fits one of the descriptions above.

These are more relevant than ever, what with the rising number of new cases, and the community transmission of the more transmissible, and apparently more virulent variants of the virus.

As before, if you meet the conditions for in-person presence, you will need to pre-register for every event on our schedule.

To provide an opportunity for as many people as possible to participate in our Holy Week and Holy Triduum celebrations, we ask that you pre-register for only one of the following: Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday (mass of the Lord’s Supper), Good Friday (Celebration of the Lord’s Passion), Holy Saturday (Easter Vigil), and Easter Sunday (one of the four masses scheduled for Sunday).

Before attending any service, you must carry out a personal health check. We are using the health check prepared by WorksafeBC, which you can read by clicking here. It will also be posted on our pre-registration page, and on all our sites. 

Perhaps most importantly, we are asking you to please – hard as this might be – not gather or socially engage with other participants who are not members of your household, during, before, or after a worship service on the parish grounds. In the same vein, we ask that you please disperse immediately after a worship service, and not congregate with other participants who are leaving the service, or arriving to attend a subsequent service.

That’s pretty well it, in terms of safety parameters for our re-opening. I’ll be back, as I mentioned above, with information about certain features of our celebration of the Holy Triduum.

To conclude, a bit of good news, in case you missed it last Sunday. Today, Palm Sunday, marks the first-year anniversary of live streaming at St. Mary’s! To mark this event, our ever industrious live streaming team has found a way of making our live streaming even more accessible than it already is. In addition to Youtube and Facebook, it is now possible to watch our live streamed events on television! We have our very own TV channel. If your television provider is Telus-Optik TV, all you need to do is go to channel 876. Easy to remember! Just note that you can watch only live streaming on this channel. To view a pre-recorded live stream, you still have to go to Youtube or Facebook. Thank you to Joere and our live streaming team for this wonderful initiative!

We have entered Holy Week. We will celebrate it, by and large, in our families, as a domestic Church. May this experience enhance our awareness of ourselves as domestic Church, and may God find ways to touch us with Easter graces, as only He knows how.

God keep us all safe and well during this Holy Week, 

Fr. Guy