Nothing Beats The Real Thing: Live-Streamed Masses and Covid-19

Dear Brothers and Sisters in the Lord:

In March of 2020, we entered into a new world of livestreaming Masses at Divine Mercy Parish due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After much prayer and appropriate consultation, I have decided to discontinue this effort on March 1, 2022, based on two factors.

First, more parishioners are returning to Church to attend Mass in-person so our online viewership is very minimal, even in the current COVID-19 climate. Secondly and more urgently, we need to return to communal worship and the reception of the sacraments. The components of the Mass are communal and personal. They are rooted in Jewish worship. The Liturgy of the Word fulfills and replaces worship in the synagogues, and the Liturgy of the Eucharist fulfills and replaces the Temple sacrifices with the One Sacrifice of Jesus. The reception of Jesus during Communion—His body, blood, soul, and divinity—prepares us to return to the world and to love others as Jesus loves us and this cannot be replaced by viewing the Liturgy virtually.

 Let’s examine this for a moment in the context of St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. 
“Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:6–11)

Biblical commentators believe this is one of the earliest New Testament texts concerning the divinity of Jesus Christ. It is often called a Christological hymn, and it is believed that the early Christians would chant these words in the liturgy as a type of Creed. The part that grabs my attention these days is about “every knee bending and confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord.” I envision a great choir kneeling, proclaiming, and confessing the Lordship of Jesus.

There really is something powerful about worshipping our Lord on bended knee. Fr. George Rutler recently wrote about a Desert Father around 300 A.D., Abba Apollo, who had a vision of Satan: “The devil has no knees. He cannot kneel; he cannot adore; he can only look down his nose in contempt. Being unwilling to bend the knee at the name of Jesus is the essence of evil.” (cf. Is. 45:23, Rm. 14:11). As creatures, we are made to adore the Lord. As creatures of body and soul, we are made to adore with bended knee. As social creatures, we are made to do this together, communally.

Just as we need to adore, and we need to adore with bended knee, so we also need to be together. And, at some point, that means coming back to in-person Masses. Chesterton said this: “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” As I think about that, and our current circumstances, I am tempted to paraphrase it this way: “A dead thing can go with the livestream, but only a living thing can go against it.” Swimming upstream takes effort. Calling people back to Mass will take an effort on the part of the entire Christian community.

As pastor, I am grateful to Deacon Larry, Austin, and our friends at Hope and Purpose Ministries for helping us over the past two years to video, edit, and livestream the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass during unpredicted times. We will continue to use our upgraded technology in the Church building to make Sunday homilies and other events available either through recordings or livestreaming as a tool for evangelization and catechesis. Sunday homilies are currently posted to the parish website ( www.divinemercyparish.org/ipadre-audio-homilies) so that the mysteries of the faith and the guiding principles of the Christian life expounded from Sacred Scripture may be made available to a wider audience. While this catechetical tool can never be a substitute for attending Mass, it is fruitful insofar as it advances the spiritual journey of the faithful towards the beatific vision.

Let us hear the words of Pope Francis: “This is the Church in a difficult situation that the Lord is allowing, but the ideal of the Church is always with the people and with the sacraments — always … The Church, the sacraments and the people of God are concrete.” The faithful’s relationship with God must also stay concrete, as the apostles lived it, as a community and with the people of God, not lived in a selfish way as individuals or lived in a “viral” way that is spread only online. “May the Lord teach us this intimacy with Him, this familiarity with Him, but in the Church, with the sacraments, with the holy faithful people of God.”