HOLY FAMILY CATHEDRAL MEANINGFUL CONNECTION IN THE MIDST OF Our COVID Response Team and Ushers
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ospitality plays an important role in the life of a parish. For most people, finding a community that makes them feel welcome and cared for is a significant consideration in joining a church. But what does that look like when people aren’t able to be physically present at Mass? And, how does it continue once they are able to return to the liturgy, but nothing seems quite as familiar as it once was? Here at Holy Family Cathedral, we’re finding creative ways to extend hospitality to our parish family in the midst of these unprecedented times. Early on in the pandemic, our clergy and staff came together to form a plan of how to connect with and support our parishioners, especially those who were elderly, throughout the time of quarantine. Thus, the COVID Response Team was formed, with volunteers from the parish stepping forward to help. The members of this team have called parishioners to share information about how to connect with the parish during this time, ensured that people’s needs were being met, and gathered prayer requests to pass along to our priests and Bethany Intercessors.
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“We anticipated needing to get groceries and medications and things like that, but that’s not at all what we ended up doing,” says Monica Conro, Ministry Coordinator. “Most people seemed to have the connections they needed to have their physical needs met. What we ended up doing was ministering to people’s spiritual and emotional needs, because they may have had what they needed physically, but were lonely and wanted to know how else they could connect with the parish, since they weren’t attending Mass. “A phone call seems like such a small gesture, but it really meant a lot to people,” she adds. “People said things like, ‘You don’t know how much this means to me that you took the time to make a phone call.’” In addition to phone calls, our clergy and staff collaborated to offer outdoor Confessions, virtual tours of the church construction, “fireside chats” with our priests, and Bingo nights. “We wanted them to know they weren’t forgotten,” Monica says. Then, after weeks of being unable to celebrate Mass
