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Dear Friends and Parishioners of St. Alban's Catholic Church,
In this unprecedented time of global sickness and social distancing, I want to write to you to offer further pastoral encouragement and clarification regarding the observance of the divine command: “Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.” Since our church, our community, and much of our state is under lock down, I want to encourage all of you and exhort you to devoutly keep the Sabbath day.
In one of Bishop Lopes’ most recent communications to the priest of the Ordinariate, he first made the distinction clear between dispensing with one’s Sunday obligation and commuting that same obligation. We do not want simply to dispense with our observance of the Sabbath, but rather find some other way to honor the Lord each week on the day we commemorate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. To commute your Sunday obligation means, that you deliberately substitute your baptismal responsibility by assisting at Mass with another pious practice by which the Church universal is manifested in a small way. Your baptismal identity as priests, prophets, and kings demands that we take an active and living responsibility to add our prayers, needs, intentions, and sacrifices to the Mass which is your spiritual worship. (cf. Romans 12:1)
We might, for example:
Pray the Rosary with the entire family present, by which the domestic church reflects in some measure the devotion of the entire Church.
Or:
We can prayerfully reflect upon the Scripture readings from each Sunday's Mass.
We join ourselves this way to the whole Church in her liturgical prayer. I would commend both of these to each household in the parish, as we exercise restraint in our social interactions and avoid one another by distancing ourselves in an effort to reduce the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
Bishop Lopes goes on to explain that the closure of our churches and the temporary suspension of the public celebration of the Mass are sacrifices on our part, acts of charity undertaken out of love and concern for the most vulnerable among us, the elderly and sick who are most likely to be adversely affected by this contagion. He knows how difficult it is for you to be away from our Lord, as do I, and he offers the consolation that our deprivation in this circumstance is in fact a self-oblation for our brothers and sisters in Christ.
During these days when we cannot sacramentally receive our Lord, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, we are able, nevertheless, to receive Him spiritually. During the course of meditating on the liturgical reading of the day or praying the Rosary as a family make time to specifically pray an Act of Spiritual Communion:
In union, dear Lord with all the faithful at every altar of thy Church where the blessed Body and Blood are being offered to the Father, I desire to offer thee praise and thanksgiving. I believe thou art truly present in the Most Holy Sacrament. And since I cannot now receive thee sacramentally, I beseech thee to come spiritually into my heart. I unite myself unto thee, and embrace thee with all the affections of my soul. Let me never be separated from thee. Let me live and die in thy love. Amen.
In this time of great suffering allow your sacrifices to be united to the wounds of Christ and presented as a deliberate self-offering of your faith. In this witness to Christ you will be bound all the more directly with the martyrdom of our spiritual patron, St. Alban.
May we all with one voice be able to declare:
I worship and adore the true and living God who created all things. -St. Alban
Faithfully yours,
Fr. Evan Simington, Parochial Administrator
St. Alban's Catholic Church
Parish clerk's note: St. Alban's will have 11 AM Sunday Mass broadcast here on the home page of our website, YouTube channel (subscribe!), and Facebook page until the coronavirus pandemic passes and public Mass resumes. Here is the Mass from Passion Sunday, March 29, 2020.
