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Our COVID Response Team and Ushers Work to Help Our Community Stay Connected
MEANINGFUL CONNECTION IN THE MIDST OF SOCIAL DISTANCE
Hospitality 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.
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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.
“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 together as a community, we began to slowly reopen the church. During this time of transition, the role of our ushers has become even more crucial than in times past. And, due to the fact that many of our longtime ushers fell into the high-risk category, new volunteers have stepped forward to be trained and fill this vital role.
“Our ushers have made it possible for us to open back up and to follow the guidelines and make it a good experience for parishioners,” Monica says. “Without the ushers, it would be a bit chaotic — having the ushers there means people can come and pray.”
The role of the ushers also looks a bit different than it has in the past, with ushers participating in training on how to create a prayerful environment that still upholds the new safety guidelines. Through all of it, they have worked to generously serve our community.
“St. Therese of the Little Flower did little things with love — she did all these things in the background,” Monica says. “That’s how I see the ushers. Not everyone knows they’re staying after to clean, or that they participated in training, they studied our map of the cathedral — they’ve put time and effort in, beyond what you see there. It is a ‘little thing,’ but it has a huge impact.’”
