Caring for one another

Brothers and sisters in Christ.  What a wonderful experience for me to see so many people at our drive-in Masses last weekend.  I loved hearing you pray and sing once again.  I loved hearing the voices of children in the cars.  Not sure what most of them were doing, but simply hearing their voices means we are alive. There were some families that had beverages in the car.  That may be a new experience, drinking your coffee while eating your donut at Mass.  Not sure anyone did that, but they could have.  Some parishes in the Archdiocese have chosen to open now.  We are not yet there.  We simply do not know enough about the virus to jump into that pool.  Instead we are looking at opening up the church for weekday Masses in the not too distant future.  I believe that fewer people will be able to attend and we can better manage smaller crowds for now so that when summer is over we will have a better grasp of how to do things when we have to move back inside.  We have been extremely fortunate that in these past 3 months we have had only 2 deaths of parishioners.  Both had been dying and were on Hospice.  So they died of other causes.  We have had a good number of folks who have contracted the virus and have subsequently recovered.  We must remain vigilant however because a good number of you are taking care of older parents.  That is what I see our Commitment to Parish Life embracing: care for one another.  Thank you for your commitment to the Body of Christ at St. Joe's.  Fr. Mike