Grateful Catholics return to larger congregations at public Mass

Andrea and Pete Barrett held hands as they walked into St. Casimir Church in St. Paul May 31 for the first time in more than two months, and their hands remained clasped throughout the Mass.

“I’m so deeply grateful to be able to be here and to receive Christ in the Eucharist,” said Andrea, 53. “I have missed that so much.”

They and their three youngest children, Matthew, Max and Maria, were among a larger congregation allowed at public Masses in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for the first weekend since public Masses were suspended March 18. For now, attendance is capped at 25 percent capacity to continue helping stem the tide of the novel coronavirus.

Andrea said she had been attending Mass daily online, but that was not the same.

“Each time we come to the spiritual communion, I just had this… heaviness and sadness of not being able to receive him (Jesus) sacramentally,” she said. “And to finally be able to do that means everything, it really does, because he’s the center of everything.”

Similar scenes played out in parishes across the archdiocese, including St. Albert the Great in Minneapolis and St. Michael in Stillwater. At St. Albert, Mass was held against a backdrop of destruction due to rioting, arson and looting in its neighborhood as people reacted to the May 25 death of George Floyd, an African American, as he was pinned to the ground by Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer who is white and has been fired and charged with third-degree murder. The church campus is mere blocks from the Minneapolis Police Third Precinct building, which demonstrators burned May 27.

In his homily for the May 30-31 weekend, Father Joe Gillespie, the Dominican pastor of St. Albert, focused on the theme “welcome home.” As Father Gillespie talked with parishioners after the Saturday evening Mass, helicopters whirled overhead. But he said it was good to look out and see people in the pews again, after celebrating Mass before a camera each week since March.

To stay under 25% church capacity, St. Albert assigned people by last name to one of its three weekend Masses. On Saturday night, 11 people attended the parish’s first public Mass following the lifting of the state’s stay-at-home order. It was small, but that didn’t bother Father Gillespie.

“I kept thinking of the parallel with early Christian communities, where Mass was celebrated with maybe no more than 20 people, 30 people, maybe at someone’s home,” he said. “So that homecoming feeling would be what I was seeking.”

After Mass, parishioners Karen Bohaty, 69, and Mary Daugherty, 61, chatted with each other from across the street. “It was awesome” to be back, Daugherty said.

“To be here,” was important, she said. “Father Joe has been surrounded by tear gas for the past three nights and smoke. And be able to come and see that it’s OK,” she said.

“It’s nice to be back,” Bohaty agreed.

Some parishes celebrated public Masses when they first became possible May 18 with up to 10 people in a church. But St. Michael in Stillwater wasn’t one of those churches.

In fact, parishioners had not worshipped in the church since December because of a renovation project. Until public Masses were suspended, they attended Mass at the parish social hall or nearby St. Mary’s a few blocks away.

So when the doors opened May 27, parishioners not only enjoyed the resumption of public Mass, they were able to see the inside of their beautifully renovated church.

One element is a new painting representing the Holy Spirit on the sanctuary’s domed ceiling, which replaced a plain surface. Resuming public Mass with broadened participation just before Pentecost Sunday, the birthday of the Church, wasn’t lost on the parish pastor, Father Michael Izen.

“The fruits and the gifts of the Spirit struck me as I was praying with these readings (for Pentecost, May 31) that … we obviously need peace, whether it’s peace from the virus or peace from violence,” he said.

Parishioners were chomping at the bit to get back to Mass, Father Izen said. Attendance has been strong, although it has not approached the 25 percent limit.

Parishioner Annie Berthiaume, 35, said she has seen her older children’s longing to attend Mass in person. For one, her 8-year-old daughter has been waiting to make her first Communion. “I had mixed feelings when I saw (how they felt) but, honestly, seeing that longing in my children is a gift,” she said. Berthiaume and her husband, David, have six children, ages 12 to nine months.

Before the restrictions, Berthiaume attended Mass every Sunday and most weekdays. She is grateful that even when public Mass was suspended, she never felt separated from God. “I felt my relationship with him remained the whole time, but what I noticed most is that Mass is such a ‘real event’ that you can’t replicate it. I miss this encounter I have with him. There’s absolutely no substitute for it.”

Berthiaume also said she is grateful to Archbishop Bernard Hebda and others who worked with Gov. Tim Walz to broaden access to public Mass, and for those involved in developing protocols and guidelines to safely re-open churches.

The opportunity to again worship God with his community was beautiful and a blessing, said Jon O’Malley, 44.

St. Michael staff did a good job using the means they had to keep parishioners connected the past few months, he said, including use of Flocknote. “But there’s nothing that can take the place of the communal aspect of the church in coming together. Like Father said in his homily, there’s an aspect to the Eucharist that you can’t get virtually.”

O’Malley added that, “You come to appreciate the richness of the saying, ‘You don’t appreciate what you have until you lose it.’”

Parishioner Tom Hooley, 57, returned to the renovated church May 28, for his son-in-law’s confirmation. “That was very powerful,” he said, “and kind of a return to normalcy a little bit. It was different but it was one more thing that’s back to goodness.”