Dear Ones of St. Columba's,

This Sunday we begin Holy Week, the most sacred days of our year, the highest feasts of all feasts we keep. And we are a people who love to feast. This year the feasts we keep will feel different, because the world we live in is different. Our feasts are marked by absence and distance. Even the safest and most privileged among us knows something about deprivation right now that wasn't known before.

As we get ready to mark and keep our holiest feasts together I want to share some thoughts with you about why we are doing it. Many churches are making difficult choices right now about how to worship on Sundays, how to keep Holy Week, how to stay church in the midst of separation and stay at home orders. Some have gone to Morning Prayer from clergy homes or on zoom, and closed their buildings entirely. Others are sending their people to watch livestreams from larger churches and focusing on pastoral care. And many, like us, are streaming worship with small low-risk crews. We have chosen this path for many reasons, not the least of which is to keep celebrating Eucharist together - so the core sacrament of our faith remains alive at St. Columba's. 

This decision is not without complexity or risk. Most of our community, most of you, cannot partake of the meal we celebrate each Sunday. There are many reasons we chose this path, but here is the most important one as we come to Holy Week. A colleague of mine articulated it clearly on facebook earlier this week. He said "I've never understood the Eucharist as something a priest does for her people. I've always understood it as something that the Church does for the life of the world." 

The Eucharist isn't something Meghan or I do for you, the people of St. Columba's. It is something that St. Columba's, as part of God's Church, does for the world. Our worship, our sacrament, feeds and sustains us. But the Eucharist is more than that - it is an offering of love for the world. The fruits of the sacrament are evident in our lives, but also somehow mysteriously present beyond the lives we live. And so despite pandemic, and for as long as we are able and allowed, St. Columba's will continue to celebrate Eucharist. I am not doing it. The seven or eight of us who gather in person on Sundays are not doing it. We, St. Columba's, are keeping the feast. 

This Holy Week I wish we could be together in the same physical space, feasting richly on the love we share and the sacrament that is the heartbeat of our life together. We cannot. But we can continue to keep our feasts - we can come together virtually and we can keep the holy days in the best ways we know to try at home. 

There are so many ways in which our community continues to offer ourselves for the life of the world during this crisis - food bank, the Reachout shelter, the continuing gifts of money and keeping of pledges by those who are able, the sacrifice of comfort and company by all staying home to protect the vulnerable. I know there are also smaller, less visible offerings being made each day: offerings of love and patience within families, phone calls and zoom dates between buddy groups and friends, prayers lifted up in moments of silence and care. 

This week we come as close as we are able, together, to the reality that Gods own self in the form of Jesus Christ was offered for the life of the world. And we keep the Eucharist in the best way we can, a visible sign that God's grace has not left us, and indeed continues to lift us up, and transform not just our individual lives or the life of St. Columba's, but that God's love is working even now to bring life to all the world. 

You are all in my heart, on my mind, and in my prayers as we walk this path together. 

With love and hope,

Alissa