What are your churches doing for Holy Week?

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Tis_Bearself

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Been checking out the Holy Week options near me in hopes of not having to drive a long distance.
Found one church that’s handing out blessed palms in the narthex for Palm Sunday, if we socially distance ourselves while getting one.

Another church is having a Eucharistic Procession in the parking lot on Holy Thursday and a procession with the Cross on Good Friday. We are to park in the lot with our windows up for both events, and pray the Divine Mercy during the cross procession.
On Easter that church is inviting everyone to come park in the lot with the windows up again and the priest will bless us in our cars with Easter holy water.

A church about an hour away is having drive-through palm distribution and drive-by veneration of a cross in the parking lot (with your windows up, no getting out of the car) while listening to a prayer service from the pastor on car radios. I don’t think I want to drive that far.

This Holy Week is really going to be one for the books. Can’t help but remember last year when I did the Seven Churches on Holy Thursday. Good thing I did it then as it’s certainly not happening this year.
 
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Our Bishop has explicitly forbidden “parking lot “ activities, including palm distributing or any Masses. The diocese is entirely shut down for Holy Week. Only exception are churches doing Adoration from a window where people remain in their closed cars.
 
We’re not allowed to have any Masses.
Not every church is doing the parking lot stuff. I suspect a couple church’s lots are nowhere near big enough to accommodate everyone who would likely show up.
 
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From what I understand, the parishes near me in the Philly Archdiocese are doing everything online.

Palms will be distributed at an undermined time in the future, after the thread of COVID-19 has has passed us.
 
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I found an outdoor Stations of the Cross near me so I can probably go do that on Good Friday. (Or any day of the week now that I know it’s there.)
 
Holy Week services will be streamed from a few parishes within our diocese, so we must be content. So far, I’ve seen no mention of Palm Sunday.

We have outdoor stations year round, so I’d hoped to walk through them at some point, if no one is present, but we’ve had too much rain, and I don’t want to get my walker hung up in the soil.

We had flood alerts via our cell phones these past few days, and with all this water, the worldwide virus, the locusts in Africa, and an inundation of texts and emails about this scourge being part of the staging for a One World government, actually being in church would be comforting.

But, on Friday our rural county had one case; yesterday, three, and today, six. People need to
be scrupulous about these quarantining guidelines.
 
At my parish, the palms blessed on Palm Sunday will be left in the back of Church so that people may come and pick one up at any time. Everyone is asked to use the hand sanitizer provided before touching any of the palms in the basket. I do hope that I will be able to get a palm.
 
My archdiocese has announced a Holy Week retreat: morning Mass, evening talk–all virtual, of course. So far that’s all I’ve seen. It hit me like a brick yesterday when I realized it might be my first Palm Sunday without a Palm. My bedroom Crucifix has a blessed palm on it for most of every year…
 
My state is shelter at home for all but essential work and procurement of needs. Much as my heart says physical participation is a need, my head knows it’s just a want. I haven’t been searching out any options other than plotting out times for local parish streaming and EWTN streaming. I’ve been blessed that after some trial and error my priest has perfected (nearly :-)) live streaming so I have a familiar face and setting as I participate from home. Sigh…I guess it’s possible to feel sad and blessed at the same time. Sometimes my heart sinks so far when I think about these spiritual losses but we really are blessed that we have online and tv options to help us through this. I think we’ll emerge more grateful.
 
Anybody know if it’s wrong to just keep up last year’s palms?
 
Our Bishop has instructed the parishes to have a blessing of palms outside of Mass, and for the palms to be distributed outdoors.

For the Triduum, parishes are to stream the services and encourage people watching online to:

Wash the feet of the others in their home after Holy Thursday liturgy.

Venerate a Crucifix in their home during veneration on Good Friday broadcast.

Easter Vigil will be done privately, and again, broadcast.
 
I know the Chrism Mass will not include all the priests, who will pick up their oils outside of Mass. We will still hold Triduum Masses, rotating who is assisting. I have Holy Saturday, as I am most familiar with all the parts. Thursday is bilingual so someone else is helping with that one. I have not heard how we are going to scale back altar servers to meet the proper safety criteria. All services will be recorded for the whole parish.
 
We’re in total lockdown so no services or activities of any kind - even live-streaming mass from the Church is out since that might encourage people to gather (presumably in the hope of being allowed in. Pre-recorded is fine, so I’ll do that (provided the technology co-operates) and hopefully a few catechetical videos too about Holy Week. Aside from that, I can’t distribute palms (because it would again encourage people to congregate - it’s what congregations do after all) but I will put a couple of large ones at the gates of both my churches and make sure these some around the altar/sanctuary for the filming of Palm Sunday mass. I’ll also put the cross at the gate on Good Friday and leave it up there for a while as a visible witness to passers-by.
 
I would also add that it is important to remember that the parish still needs money to operate. Bills still must be paid. This is especially important for as too many will simply not give anything, and too many more will not be able to due to job loss. Those of us still working and drawing a check need to remember our responsibility.
 
InThePew said:
even live-streaming mass from the Church is out since that might encourage people to gather
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That’s some unusual reasoning. I know you didn’t come up with it, so I’m not blaming you, but there are live streaming Masses going on all over the USA now daily, and there will be live-streamed Easter Masses broadcast from many churches and locations. In fact, some of the churches that are not normally livestreaming are making special arrangements to do so for the Easter Triduum. I don’t expect anyone to be wanting to gather simply because a live stream is going on; people realize that the live stream is being broadcast because we’re supposed to be doing social distancing.

A pre-recorded Mass just doesn’t do it for me. No live Consecration, no live blessing, no thanks.
 
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pnewton said:
I would also add that it is important to remember that the parish still needs money to operate. Bills still must be paid.
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While I don’t disagree, why would you think it was necessary to remind the people on this forum and this thread about this fact? I am sure that people who are “into Catholicism” enough to be reading here already support their parishes regularly, are well aware of the financial issues created by the current situation - most of the churches I frequent have posted things on their website, Facebook, in the bulletin etc about it already - and were already planning to give as generously as they are able.

It’s not like we all forgot about giving just because we’re not going physically to Mass, especially since many of us don’t drop envelopes in a collection any more but rather have set up some kind of online giving a long time ago.

Likewise, there are also a lot of folks who are out of work right now (several of my friends were posting today about having just received their first unemployment checks from the state) so if they are not giving to the church it’s likely because they may not have the money and are worried about their own bills.
 
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The Cathedral will be streaming the Chrism Mass. I may actually get to watch it live this year. Usually I would be at our extra pre-Triduum choir practice.

Our parish is live-streaming the Triduum. I haven’t heard anything about Palm Sunday. Our church and adoration chapel are locked. I would be surprised if more than a few palms are blessed.

We has outdoor Stations of the Cross available for anyone who wants to walk them privately. But the stations are fairly close together and the path crosses over itself in a couple of places so that makes it hard for more than one household to be there at a time.
 
I could conceivably go do Stations inside a church as well, since most of them are open, but I’m a little fussy about where I do them since some of the local churches have modern-art stations which do not have a cross for each station as the Manual of Indulgences says they should, and another local church which is open has Adoration going on in it all day now and I usually am not going to walk between stations when Jesus is exposed on the altar, I feel like I should be paying attention to the Eucharist. The outdoor stations probably have the crosses and are quite close to my house also.
 
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