Liturgy Committee Meeting March 10, 2021 Members Present: Anne Carlson, Denise Simeone, Robert Basolo, Bob Anderson
We met via zoom.
We began with a discussion of the proposed letter to be sent to St. James’ parishioners before March 21st so that people will receive it a week before Holy Week begins.
We discussed the lector list for Holy Week. There will be sign-up sheets and we’ll ask those who have been lecturing to do so during Holy Week.
Robert is also concerned about cantors being available.
For Palm Sunday, we will just do our own. Ushers will use disposable gloves to distribute palms. We will add a pause to remember the other churches who usually meet with us for the Blessing of Palms. We decided to use the shorter form of the Passion for mass that day. We will have a single use copy of the Passion for those in church which can then be recycled after mass.
For Holy Thursday, we will receive new oils from the diocese. We’ll have them in a procession at the beginning of the service, but we’ll not have a special song for that since we don’t have enough choir members attending. There’ll be a water display in the front of church, but no washing of feet. We will have a short meditation for this time.
Good Friday will go as usual. During the adoration of the cross, no one can touch the cross. For Holy Saturday, we decided to have 4 Old Testament readings: Genesis 1:1 – 2:2, Ex. 14:15 – 15:1 (sung), Is. 54: 5-14, and Ez. 16-17a, 18-28. We will have a silent reflection after the 3rd reading. We will have a sprinkling rite instead of inviting people to come forward and dip their hands in the font. Fr. Garry will walk around the church to sprinkle the congregation rather than having them come forward.
For Easter Sunday mass, we’ll us the 1 Corinthians 5:6b – 8 reading for the 2nd reading. The sprinkling rite will be as done at the Vigil.
We discussed reviving the “coffee chats” after mass online. Denise will help to facilitate them, but we need to have them set up through the parish account now. Denise also wants to have a LT member present to somewhat be the host. It hasn’t been decided how often these should be.
A parishioner had approached Bob about having Pentecost as a “welcome back” time for members to return to the church mass. We didn’t choose to do that since returning is an individual choice.
It had also been suggested that we use Memorial Day and have a mass to remember all those we have lost during the pandemic. Instead, we’d like to use all the masses in June for this.
We decided to meet again on April 21st.