A meme making the rounds on social media proclaims, “The church is not closed, it has been deployed!” The church at home is alive and finding innovative ways to pray, to celebrate Mary, and to keep children engaged.
Many gather each Sunday for the liturgy, live-streamed from churches throughout the Diocese of Camden. Each week we are invited to gather, again online, for programming that supports and strengthens the domestic church.
This month the church honors and celebrates Mary the Mother of Jesus.
Parishes and families have been finding new ways to celebrate the traditional May Procession. The faithful have celebrated while maintaining protocols, and Mary is being crowned not in the church building but in the parish garden and in homes throughout the diocese. The rosary is prayed, and colored thanks to local artist Brother Mickey McGrath, OSFS, in family gatherings, on Facebook and in group phone calls.
Flat Mary — a take-off on Flat Stanley, a children’s book character who travels the world — is everywhere. With many thanks to Melissa Kiessling of Holy Cross Parish in Bridgeton, Flat Mary is spending time with children and families all over South Jersey. She will even be part of the live-streamed Faith and Family Night on YouTube, thanks to hosts Father Joshua Nevitt and Kari Janisse.
Marian shrines are showing up all over. Some are in prayer spaces in the house and many others in the yard or on the deck. People are evangelizing even in this time of sheltering in place. As the spring weather brightens our days many people are walking running, and biking through their neighborhoods. Mary is outside and in house windows to greet them.
The Easter season is also the traditional time for the celebration of the sacrament of first Eucharist in parishes. With all the faithful currently celebrating Mass virtually and partaking of spiritual Communion, the children are waiting. Families are sharing pictures of the children all dressed up “waiting for Jesus.” Waiting in hope.
A little over one year ago, Pope Francis wrote Gaudete et Exsultate (“On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World”). In it he said his “modest goal is to repropose the call to holiness in a practical way for our own time, with all its risks, challenges, and opportunities. For the Lord has chosen each one of us…” (GE 2). He reminds us that “we are all called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do” (GE 14).
I would like to suggest that we are seeing evidence of holiness everywhere in this time, growing “in small gestures” (GE 16).
Often it is with these small gestures that we most truly find God, how we best honor Mary, live out our call to holiness and share our faith with the world.
Mary Lou Hughes is co-director of the Office of Faith, Family Life and Lay Ministry Formation, Diocese of Camden.
at the bottom and then tap “Add to Home Screen”
