Confirmation practice will be held Sunday, October 25th at 10:00 am. Students should have their sponsor with them for practice.
Confirmation will be held on Tuesday, October 27th with Bishop Kettler. Student and sponsor should arrive to the Church basement at 6:15 to briefly meet with the Bishop. Mass will begin at 7:00 pm.
“Jazz vespers” in Brooklyn
It began in a Brooklyn neighborhood one afternoon during the darkest days of the pandemic. Roy Nathanson, an accomplished and honored jazz musician, came out on to his second-floor porch with his alto-saxophone and began to play “Amazing Grace.”
Roy appeared again on his porch at 5 p.m. the next day. And the next day. And the next. Soon other musicians joined him. Bass, drums, guitar, melodica, and trumpet anchored the “socially distant sidewalk ensemble.” In the days and weeks that followed, banjos, flutes, horns and the instruments indigenous to Brooklyn’s myriad of cultures made appearances.
David Gibson, director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University, lives in the neighborhood. In Commonweal Magazine [August 12, 2020], he writes about his neighborhood’s “jazz vespers”:
“They played through rain and wind. Street life hummed along with the instruments. In the first weeks, ambulance sirens were a mournful counterpoint to almost every performance. The Q train rumbled along the track behind Roy’s house, its horn blasting on occasion. Delivery vans and box trucks made their way up the block, sometimes slowing to catch a few bars of music. Pedro the postman weaved through it all to deliver the mail. Curious passersby stopped to listen. Some were strangers, some neighbors. There were skateboarders and cyclists, dog walkers and strollers. All the colors and creeds of the neighborhood would stop and listen. Some wept, all applauded, and of course everyone began taking cellphone videos. We had to capture this moment.
“As the weather improved, the onlookers increased; there were maybe twenty-five or thirty some days. In May, as the dogwood in front of Roy’s house bloomed, lockdown life began to ease. Spirits lifted: the tunes grew more up-tempo, more diverse. It was never a jam session. Each day the music was posted online for the performers. All was intentional, planned . . .
“Neighbors who knew each other by sight now knew each other by name; acquaintances became friends; friends introduced us to strangers . . . We began to collect money to help those without work and for local social-service groups . . . “
The 5 p.m. concerts continued for eighty-two days, ending with a final two-hour concert in late June, but as David Gibson writes, the 5 p.m. jazz vespers continues to bear fruit:
“The musicians created a website, 5PMPorchConcerts, to raise money for community agencies helping the neighborhood recover from the pandemic. They set up a program to give music lessons on various front porches to any kid in the neighborhood, regardless of ability to pay. Other plans are in the offing. Faith and hope are wonderful, but charity is the best.”
[Used with permission of Commonweal Magazine. To read the entire article: commonwealmagazine.org/jazz vespers.]
Brooklyn’s “jazz vespers” is the music of today’s Gospel and Jesus’ teachings on love: love that puts every talent and ability, every resource and gift we possess at the service of all God’s daughters and sons. To love with our “whole heart and soul and mind” enables us to move beyond our own fears and hurts in order to comfort and support, to forgive, to seek out and welcome back. We often underestimate what we can accomplish when we act out of love — love that is centered in the needs of another, love that has no ulterior motive except the well-being of the beloved, love that is selfless and unconditional, love that is of God.
Hailey Stommes, Brady Mergen and Lily Wills made their First Holy Communion on Saturday, June 27th after a long delay due to COVID-19. Please continue to pray for these students and their families that God will continue to Bless them and they continue to grow in love for God.
The Bishop has requested each parish to implement safety precautions and they must be approved by the Bishop before we can have public Masses again. The list has been submitted to the Bishop after discussion at the Parish Council meeting on May 11th. Here is a list of some things you may see:
* Pews will be marked where you can sit in family groups. Ushers will seat you.
* There will be hand sanitizer you will be asked to use before & after Mass
* There will be no missellettes for the time being
* There will be no Mass Servers or Extraordinary Ministers
* Ushers will tell you when to go to communion or leave the Church
* The Church will be sanitized after Mass
* We ask that you practice social distancing when entering, leaving, and during communion procession
* We ask that you not gather at the back of Church after Mass
Dave & Brook made a video of them praying the Stations of the Cross. Please click on the link to pray along with them!