Most likely last night there were some volunteers in your
church. They came in after the last
service. For St. Sebastian that would
have been after 8:00PM Vespers and Benediction.
They carted away all of the plants in the church. The altar clothes were removed and replaced
with simple altar clothes. The ones that
were removed (for St. Sebastian this would be four of them; great swaths of
material from the two altars in use and the two side altars) were taken to be
laundered and then (God bless our volunteers) ironed and put into storage. Extra candles and all other decorations were
stored away. (I believe in undecorating
for Lent.) For those parishes that believe
in decorating for Lent, purple banners were put up, dead twigs and other
various and sundry things brought out.
Green vestments are put away and all of the purples ones are put out and
made handy.
Perhaps palms were burned to make ashes. Fr P. called yesterday to say that he had
burned his palms. I asked if he were at
the hospital. They are then placed in
containers so that they may be easily distributed today. A table is probably set up with them and the holy
water.
This was all done in order for you to have a Lenten experience
when you showed up at Mass this morning.
Say a prayer for the gremlins that just make things happen.
3 comments:
who is Father Weaver?
I am always amazed how much effort goes into making a Catholic Church operate. With work making my free mornings more scarce, my daily masses tend to be "wherever I can conveniently get that is open," and when you sample the variety of setups for Catholic Churches, you're blown away at the work involved.
No matter how hard I try, I always fight my mind always wandering off at church and I think of all the things that need done just to maintain the Church (let alone every other inch of grounds on a Catholic Campus) and how little money there is to do it all. AND YET IT ALL GETS DONE. I mean, the paint on the crossbeams at St. Augustine has to be maintained. The plaster on St. Sebastian's ceiling needs to be repaired and painted so that it looks like the stuff that was painted 10 years ago. The statues need to be dusted and the windows need washed at St. Bernard's. Kids step on pews and get salty feet all over them. The amount of salt on floors needs addressed before it corrodes the floors.. and that's for the places that don't have carpet. And there is mud and dirt and water and junk on the floor. And then there's places like IHM with carpeting! And on top of this, it's not like one of those entertainment-plex-guitar-concerts that pass for church service at some places but only for a few hours on Sunday. The Church is often in use for Mass or Prayer or Adoration... it's not exactly 7-11 where you don't need locks because the doors never close, but it ain't far off.
Anyway, the amount of sweat equity that volunteers and helpers (and staff for that not-at-all-small matter) put into making a Church work is amazing and humbling and I often think about how lucky I am that so many people at so many parishes do so much work for so little money just so that I can pray without distraction a couple times a week. I feel like I owe it to them to put the effort into prayers that justify the effort put everyone puts in to enable them. I fail often.
Burned his palms? Hospital? Huh?
Ohhhh! Those kind of palms! Too funny!!!
Took me a minute.
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