Advent restrictions continue - Rector's Rambling for December 13, 2020

 Unless something absolutely miraculous happens in the next week, we can reasonably assume now that we will continue to be under the “nine-person plus the priest” limit for worship, not only for this Sunday and next, but also for Christmas Eve and Day.

I share your frustration with these restrictions, but as I mentioned last week, it is my greatest privilege to make present Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.  And if offering nine services on Saturday/Sunday is what it takes to make receiving Communion possible for those who want to receive it and can get here, then that is what I rejoice to be able to do!

This week we will publish a schedule for Christmas Eve and Day.  How many of these should I offer?  I am not sure yet.  I am assuming that there will be more than the 70 or 80 people who have been attending the last three weeks.  But I also think that those who make St. John’s their Special Feast Day parish will probably abstain from attending because of COVID19 precautions.  Not many other parishes can offer such a grand Christmas Eve service with a fantastic choir in a glorious 160-year-old building!  But this year we can’t have the big hurrah that we usually do because of the size restriction.

I have decided that we will sing some Christmas Carols at all the services we will offer for the Eve and Day.  Thankfully they are all familiar, and 10 of us can sing them without having to have the organist and choir with us at all the Masses (which would take up seven of the 10 spots available anyway.).  And since it will only be 10 of us at a time, we will have plenty of room to spread out in order to sing, as we did safely with 25% occupancy from July until the further restrictions were imposed three weeks ago.

Pray for a miracle that things will change ahead of all this, but also, please pray for guidance for how we can do all of this if the restrictions persist.