Social Distance Confessions by Appointment
text me 706-267-1073
or in the Meeting Room at 5pm on Saturday
 
Mass for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Livestreamed at 9am on Sunday, July 26th
Followed by drive through Communion at 10am
(drive South on Lovell Ave from 7th St. to the front of the Rectory)
This Mass will also be simulcast to the carport.
 
Praise and Worship on Sunday at 5pm
Via livestream and on demand
 
Reopening of Public Masses
Monday through Thursday at 8am
 
School for Disciples on Wednesday
Join us with social distancing in the Churchyard at 5:30pm for Prayer and Cocktails
We share our experience of Week #12 of the Ignatian Adventure
 
Mass for the 18^th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Saturday, August 1 ^st, Vigil Mass at 6pm
Sunday, August 2 ^nd, Morning Mass at 8am and 11am
Three options for participation:

1. In Church 2.  In the Churchyard (during 6pm and 11am) 3.  At Home via livestream

 
Next week I’ll have to return to the more limited space of a printed bulletin.  I’ll continue to share articles that I find of interest in my Tuesday notes.  But this will be my last super-sized bulletin.  As we reopen once again to public worship this coming Monday, I am going to turn to the words and wisdom of our Bishop-elect, Fr. Stephen D. Parkes as he reminded his parish of the Annunciation in Altamonte Springs, Florida:
 
Dear Friends in Christ:
 
I am excited to continue to share with you information for the re-opening of our Church building, leading to a return to our weekend Masses on August 1 ^st and 2nd.
 
Please know that we have structured and specific procedures so that we can adhere to the guidelines for minimizing the spread of COVID 19, trying to create a safe environment for all. As such, we all have a responsibility to practice the measures that have been recommended by the CDC including staying at home if you are experiencing flu like symptoms or if you are in a high-risk population.
 
As we begin to reopen the Church building and re-institute the public sacramental life of our parish, I invite you to reflect upon finding God in Beauty, Truth and Goodness.  In my own personal spiritual life, I try each day to reflect and find moments to Discover Beauty, Understand Truth, and Inspire Goodness.
 
A great place to reflect upon the Beauty is in nature, but I also invite you to find His Holy Presence and peace here in our Church through a short period of private prayer and devotion.
 
During these past weeks, I know that the inability to fully participate in the Sacraments has brought forth various emotions.  As the Sacramental life of our parish is re-instituted, I hope that this will be a chance for you to understand more fully the Truth of the Sacraments… how your participation in them are opportunities for God’s grace which lead to deeper love and service to God and others.
 
It is in a spirit of charity and Goodness that I ask you to please be attentive to the guidelines and protocols that are being put into place here in our parish for visits to the Church for private prayer and devotion or for participation in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. When you are able, ready, and comfortable to return to our church, I ask for your cooperation so that together we can promote a healthy environment.
 
I look forward to continuing to grow in faith with you and your loved ones.  Your decision to come to our parish church is an acceptance of your personal responsibility to respect the guidelines of social distancing and also respecting the health and wellbeing of others.  Perhaps you have heard me say at some point that ‘good boundaries make for good relationships’.  The guidelines and protocols being put into place at this time are so that we as a community can be blessed in our relationships with God and one another.
   
St. Corona: Pray for us!
 
By Renée K. Gadoua | Contributing writer for The Catholic Sun
 
Some Catholics seeking spiritual solace during the coronavirus pandemic are turning to the 2nd century St. Corona (d. C. 170) as patron saint of plagues and epidemics.  St. Corona and St. Victor, a soldier who may have been her husband, were tortured and killed around 170 at the order of a Roman judge, according to an account that dates to the 4th century.
 
Their feast day is May 14, according to the Roman Martyrology, the Catholic Church’s official list of recognized saints and people who have been beatified. As Corona was dying, she “saw two crowns falling from Heaven, one for Victor, the other for herself,” the martyrology says.
 
Coronaviruses are named for the crown-like spikes on their surface, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Corona means “crown” in Latin.  While several Catholic publications in recent days have connected St. Corona to the coronavirus outbreak, sources including Catholic Online identify her as patron saint of gambling.
 
It’s unclear when people began associating St. Corona with plagues, given limited first-hand records of early saints. Sts. Victor and Corona were recognized as saints before the Catholic Church standardized its canonization process in the 10th century.  But St. Corona’s name, the reference to crowns in the martyrology, and accounts of her suffering seem to provide reasonable justification to call on her intercession during today’s unprecedented global health crisis.
 
Other saints affiliated with illness or difficult times include:
 
• St. Jude: Patron of lost causes
 
• St. Anthony of Egypt: Patron of people affected by skin diseases or infectious diseases
 
• St. Edmund: Patron for victims of pandemics
 
• The Fourteen Holy Helpers: Includes St. Blaise, St. Christopher, and St. Margaret, patrons of plague and sudden death, beginning with the Black Death (bubonic plague) during the 14th century
 
And don’t forget St. Marianne Cope (1838-1918), the Franciscan leader who lived and ministered in the diocese and who was canonized in 2012, the 11th American named a Catholic saint. The patron saint of outcasts, she ministered to people with leprosy from 1883 to 1918 in Hawaii. Her constant mandate to patients and caregivers: Wash your hands.
 
Renée K. Gadoua is a freelance writer and editor. Follow her on Twitter @ReneeKGadoua.
 
 
 
Prayer to St. Corona in a Time of Epidemic
 
Lord, Jesus Christ, You came into this world for our salvation.
   
Their Calling Was to Lay Hands on the Sick. Then Came the Coronavirus.
 
How the pandemic transformed the lives and ministry of eight Manhattan friars, and what their example can teach the rest of us.
 
By Elizabeth Bruenig        Ms. Bruenig is an Opinion writer for The New York Times
 
Hugh Vincent Dyer, a 45-year-old Catholic friar, begins his days now in a sealed nursing home in Manhattan. He celebrates Mass in an empty chapel. The service is broadcast over closed-circuit television into residents’ rooms. “And I preach,” he told me, “because the people are listening,” even though there are no eyes in the chapel to reflect recognition, and no heads to bow in thanks. “I say a prayer of spiritual communion, because they can’t physically receive the sacrament.”
 
He spends the rest of his time making phone calls to residents and their relatives, praying the rosary or stations of the cross on the closed-circuit chapel channel, and sometimes sharing poetry, recorded concerts, or films. Signs on doors demarcate the rooms of patients suffering from the coronavirus. Father Dyer visits these patients only at a safe distance, clad in the white habit of the Dominican Order and a pale surgical mask. He tries to help residents and the staff maintain hope, even as death has become an increasingly regular occurrence.
 
“I hear from people who want to know, is this the end of the world?” he said. “And I don’t know. But in some sense, we’re to live as though it’s always the end.”
 
A few weeks ago, the apocalypse didn’t feel so near. Before the coronavirus began its sweep through the nation, Father Dyer spent roughly 20 hours a week at the nursing home. He lived in a community of eight Dominican friars at the St. Catherine of Siena religious house, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. There, the brothers lived much as Dominican friars have since the order’s founding in the 13th century: praying, eating, and ministering together.
 
For this particular community, that ministry has primarily entailed chaplaincy at local hospitals and nursing homes since the 1940s. On any given day, the brothers could expect to offer Mass at on-site chapels, anoint the sick, administer last rites to the dying and pray with patients and their families. Then they would return to their community, where they found peace, solidarity, and spiritual sustenance in their brotherhood.
 
But as the coronavirus spread, the friars realized their common life could be a source of danger. In light of his work in the nursing home, Father Dyer first stopped making hospital visits, fearing he might contract the virus and spread it to the vulnerable elderly. “Then by the 10th of March,” he said, “we figured, maybe I should just move there.”
 
The brothers also made the difficult decision to send three elderly friars away, concerned that they, too, might fall ill living in such proximity with active chaplains. In all, the number of brothers living at the residence is down to four — half of what it was in early March.
 
The loss has been difficult to bear. “Our life is founded on doing things in common,” Walter Wagner, 58, one of the remaining brothers, said. “We pray in common at least twice a day if not more, we eat in common, and we spend a lot of the day in common.” Now, with social distancing, he said, “all of those forms are challenged.”
The friars no longer gather for communal prayer or meals. Father Wagner used to be a substitute chaplain, making hospital runs when the other friars were occupied. But since medical facilities have vastly restricted entry, his visits have stopped. Father Wagner also celebrated Mass as the pastor of St. Vincent Ferrer and St. Catherine of Siena on Sundays, but with all public Masses in the Archdiocese of New York canceled, he has found himself often alone. He fills his hours with work: live-streaming Mass and prayers on Facebook, recording audio messages to his parishioners, writing letters of encouragement. “It’s been this moment of trying to figure out, how do you live the gospel when you don’t have some of the fundamental means of living it?” he said.
 
That question has weighed on lay Catholics, too, as the pandemic has withdrawn the familiar comforts of the faith, including confession, public worship and most crucially, communion. I asked Father Wagner how he would counsel them. He recalled a passage from St. Thomas Aquinas: “God is not bound by the sacraments,” he said. “God gives us tangible signs and effective signs, but God is not locked into that.”
 
John Devaney, 44, another of the brothers, has continued to venture into the city’s hospitals. Where he had once been able to stand near his patients and lay his hands on their bodies in a final gesture of solace (“Christ always laid his hands on the sick,” he reminded me), coronavirus protocols now require that he adopt gloves, gowns, masks — and usually a great deal of distance.
 
He has also wrestled with his own fear. Walking the halls of temporary coronavirus wards amid the pumping hiss of mechanical ventilators and shellshocked hospital workers, he said: “I started to think about, maybe I could get this. Maybe it could kill me.” Yet Father Devaney still finds avenues of grace. “What gives me hope is that in the Catholic funeral liturgy, it says, life hasn’t ended, it has changed. So, for me the hope is that there is a supernatural reality we can’t see, that there is eternal life, life in eternity. And that death doesn’t have the final word.”
 
Yet these sacrifices make up the core of the faith. The Gospel of John recounts that after arising from his tomb, Jesus Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene, who had come to tend to his body. He called to her by name, and recognizing her beloved teacher, she rushed to embrace him. “Do not touch me,” he said. How jarring that must have been to hear, and how painful to refrain — impossible, perhaps, save for the belief, held close in her heart, that the time would soon come to touch him again.
 
Elizabeth Bruenig (@ebruenig) is an Opinion writer.