We arrived, as usual, just in time for the opening notes of the first hymn. But on this Sunday, we didn’t have to hunt for a seat.
We had the couch. And the ottoman. And the kid chairs that, until this morning, had held up the blanket fort our sons built after a day at their new homeschool in the dining room. Student body: one second-grader and one prekindergartner.
I’d always imagined I’d take my family to Mass for the first time at my alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, on a home football weekend in the fall, when there’s always an extra, early service to accommodate the throngs that flock to pray in the shadow of the Golden Dome.
Most Sunday mornings in my adopted hometown of Atlanta, we rush to the nearby parish of St. Thomas More, the patron of politicians and difficult marriages. But this week, when perhaps our faith in civil servants and our generally untroubled union was tested more than usual, all the Masses were canceled: coronavirus.
There in my inbox, though, along with notices from every vendor I’ve ever engaged, was an invitation from the University of Notre Dame’s president to join in Mass remotely at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.
At first, I just left it in the queue out of what, other than Catholic guilt. But later, it caught my eye in the same glance as the latest installment of the chain email that had been bouncing among 10 friends who met on that Indiana campus some two decades ago. We’re now all working moms and span the map from California to New Jersey.
Coronavirus in our world
Then, it struck me: What if I went to Mass with “my girls?” In this time of social distancing, virtual faith services have grown almost universal. The Temple, just a few miles away, offers virtual Shabbat and Torah study, and the shuttered Al-Farooq Masjid of Atlanta has posted prayers on its website. My friends and I might link up online so we could share a comforting tradition at this strange and anxious time. Together again at the place where we met – but still safely apart.
We left it to the CPA to set up the virtual meeting. “I’m on it (literally on Zoom 8 hours a day…),” she confirmed via text from suburban Chicago.
Four of us opted in, and without planning, three wore green: Go Irish. From our Brady Bunch-style boxes, we tuned in separately to Catholic TV, which I’d always considered a destination for the elderly faithful, too frail to tempt the ordinary ailments of the herd. Now here we were.
At my house, the 8-year-old sat on the floor, twirling a foam football. The 4-year-old, much as he might in the pews, drew with colored pencils: a rocket, a football, a brown-petaled flower. We soon gathered in a couch cuddle. As the first reading ended, our older son got clever: “Notre Den!” We sang along, in whispers, with the cantor, one of just a dozen or so people visible on the screen – each at least 6 feet from the next. The priest read from John: “Night is coming, when no one can work.”
Looking out at the empty pews was the Rev. Greg Haake, a native of Kansas City, Kansas, who’d graduated Notre Dame just a year ahead of our group. He’d been slated to celebrate this service weeks ago, long before the pandemic touched South Bend. A day earlier, he’d acknowledged some apprehension. Preaching to a congregation is “how … you gain energy and even grace,” as a priest, he explained to me. I told him about our meet-up.
In his homily, Haake mentioned “friends who decided to watch simultaneously to capture a sense of still being the body of Christ in a time whose conditions preclude our physical presence with one another.” We offered petitions that civil leaders will be “compassionate and just” in facing Covid-19. We prayed for scientists, physicians and all health care workers: “May the Lord strengthen their resolve and sustain them in their exhaustion.”
On my other screen, our virtual meeting rectangles mostly stayed quiet, save the occasional hollering child or nonspecific crash. When it came time for the sign of peace, we waved to each other. “Peace, Bill!” “Peace, Eileen!” “Peace, Jess!”
Then Mass ended, and my husband hit the power button; no rush to be first to the parking lot. But on Zoom, our reunion continued, turning into an hourlong brunch that served up as much compassion, faith and love as the service we’d just attended.
None of us goes to work in real life anymore, we established, and we all have to manage some homeschooling.
The CPA works as an accountant for a trading firm, watching every hour as the virus takes its toll on the economy. Two sons, both in grade school, do worksheets and shoot baskets on a hoop that hooks over a door in the basement.
The exhibit designer in Denver still has some planning in the works, but “all my museums are closed, so all our projects are kind of shut down. And no one wants to give $1 million to a museum right now,” she said. It might be just as well, since if her young daughter and son “have to do six hours of school work, I can’t do my work,” she added.
The nonprofit whiz in New Jersey just filed for unemployment so she can become a full-time teacher for three kids, first grade and younger. One child requires intensive behavioral, occupational and speech therapy. “And I’m, like, the crappiest teacher,” she said.
A friendly reply came from the rectangles: “I don’t think anyone is judging right now.”
We agreed this new world order demands new skills, new perspectives and more flexibility than any of us saw coming, even a week ago. Maybe we’ll do Mass again, at some point, though “seeing that giant basilica empty is sort of sad,” someone lamented. At least on this Sunday, the first of an untold number to come in the era of coronavirus, my den and our rectangles were full.
