We’ll leave the light on for you →

We celebrated Mass this St. Patrick’s Day, Msgr. Campion and I, once again in a darkened chapel. Just minutes before we walked down the hall to the chapel, we received notice that Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend had suspended all public Masses “until further notice.”

While ours was a private Mass, Monsignor made the prudent decision to make it the last one in the chapel. He will be celebrating his private Masses elsewhere without a server until public Masses can be resumed.

Tomorrow, the only lights in the chapel will once again be the sanctuary candle and the spotlight on the crucifix.

Living in service of others →

Mass this morning at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Huntington was no more sparsely attended than any previous Saturday morning. But following the guidelines established by the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, the faithful dutifully staggered themselves among the pews. Families sat together, but everyone else maintained a healthy distance of more than 6 feet.

As in other dioceses, Bishop Kevin Rhoades has ordered the removal of missalettes and hymnals from all of the pews. I brought my copy of the March issue of Magnificat to Mass and noticed a few others who did the same, and a couple of people had their own daily missals. Seeing the hymnal board with no numbers on it was a bit more jarring than I expected, but since traditional Lenten hymns such as “These 40 Days of Lent,” “The Glory of These 40 Days,” and “O Sacred Head Surrounded” are so well known, there’s reason to hope that music will return soon to our celebration of Mass. If not, that will be one more thing that we can offer up in a spirit of Lenten sacrifice, and for the sake of all of those affected — physically, emotionally and spiritually — by the coronavirus and the measures put in place to combat it.