Laetare! And Covid shutdown anniversary - Rector's Rambling for March 15, 2026

     Today we take the opportunity to ‘lighten up’ a bit with the celebration of Laetare Sunday, also known as Rose Sunday because of the rose colored vestments used at today’s Masses. After six weeks of the heavy purple of the three pre-Lenten gesimas and first three Sundays in Lent, we get to lighten up just a bit before going headlong into the much deeper next two weeks of Passiontide and Holy Week!

To help with lightening things up, we will be having a Corned Beef luncheon downstairs following the 10 AM Service.  I hope you can join us!

Recently a friend noted on social media that he was having the “Lentiest of Lents" he could possibly be having.  I immediately thought back to the last time I heard someone say that!  It was this week, six years ago, that the Covid Shutdowns began!  As I wrote in the Chronicle for that Sunday in 2020 (which was only published online for people to see since we couldn’t actually be here in Church)

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“On Tuesday, March 17, (2020) the bishops of the four Episcopal Church dioceses in Michigan issued a Pastoral Directive, stating,

In addition to continuing to forgo all public, in-person worship services, we direct you to cease all other Sunday, Saturday and weekday in-person gatherings, including weddings, funerals, memorial services, bible studies, prayer meetings, and non-emergency baptisms, and place all of the groups that gather at your congregation on hiatus for the CDC’s recommended eight weeks, or until May 10th, including both Holy Week and Easter.”

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Those eight weeks of mandated shutdown were extended into over fifteen weeks as we went from trying to slow the spread to trying to stop the spread.  Reopening happened July 1 with all sorts of restrictions over the next year.  St. John’s was the only parish of the diocese in the city of Detroit to open for an entire year, and did so without a single outbreak in the parish.

In some ways is seems like ages ago, and other times the pain of it quite fresh.  Some parishioners never returned from the shut down, and the addition of regular livestreaming and the morning meditations allowed for others to join us electronically.  Just last week I got an email from another person in England thanking us for our YouTube channel.

I am so grateful for the faithfulness of this parish, for the many people who wanted to get back to worship, to being with each other, and to receive The Blessed Sacrament.  May we never find ourselves in this situation again!.