RIDING THROUGH THE PANDEMIC TO DAILY MASS

Photo by Michael McCarthy

Riding up the highway to daily mass again this early morning, the wind is neutral and bike shocks disengaged for easier miles on main road blacktop shoulder.  Five miles to St. Eds and five miles back.  It's one of about 3 different morning mass treks I try to do regularly.  Mass schedules are fluctuant with the pandemic, and the priest shortages.  Still good exercise for body and soul.

Having been an episodic daily mass goer since early childhood, I’ve been well blessed with health work and family.  Looking about the other faithful attendees I’ve always thought I was amongst the youngest there, so much grey hair about.  Now at age 72 I’m still pushing youngest, but most all of us grey heading towards eternity.

As I pedal along Lake Huron shores I pass by a hundred long little lanes leading to houses on the lake.  These entries wind through the forest that borders the shore.  Bright green narrow passages each leading to a sunburst lake household of individual lives.  Beautiful expensive and difficult to sustain.

n the highway’s other side I see, many less spectacular dwellings, and two spacious nursing home complexes, open and communal, front sides blazing in the morning sun, no tree canopy shading access.  Many of us are on the route there, together yet more isolated from the rest of society.

At mass the sun pierces the stained glass, and ancient scripture enlightens the current political darkness and our individual quandaries.  Familiar faces now wear masks to protect each other.  There is no sermon, but the Gospel is from the Sermon on the Mount, my favorite.  God continues to confound, and inspire.  In this time our Catholic church launches a New Evangelization to promote this Good News, we are all pummeled with the pandemic.

In our local parishes a full year before this health crisis, the intentions of the Prayers of the Faithful, which had invited the people to voice their personal petitions, have now been sanitized to only the pre-prepared list.  This verbal social distancing discourages an evangelical spirit.  With the pandemic the congregation’s interaction to greet each other with a sign of peace, has been dropped altogether.  The common handshake could have been supplanted by an open-palmed acknowledgement of each other from our 6 feet spacings.  Instead, we’ve quickly kissed goodbye to the Kiss of Peace.

Skywriting above St. Peters, Rome, Italy

So I’m missing some of the “open windows and doors” of Vatican II inspired church celebrations.   Riding the miles home the wind is at my back, and I’m confident the all-merciful God will heal us all if we’ll only listen to God’s Word, and live God’s socially unifying justice.

Full disclosure—I live on this lakeshore, in an old-school comfortable home built in 1925. [First photo above -- taken from our house]

Illumination by Kathy Brahney