Looking back at the weekly messages of Father Paul Counce, first published in The Carpenter, our weekly Parish Bulletin
Published: April 19, 2020
I’m sitting down to write this column a couple of hours after Bishop Duca and I finished up the televised Easter Sunday morning Mass. I hope you knew – by word of mouth or from our website or from our social media notices on Facebook and Twitter – that our private services of Holy Week were televised and livestreamed. This means that our Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday (the Easter Vigil), and Easter Sunday liturgies were made electronically available to you. In fact, the whole world could watch, although I’m not sure how many people outside of the Diocese of Baton Rouge tuned in!
In any case, I am surprisingly exhausted. Not from the liturgies per se, for celebrating Mass is not usually nerve-wracking or particularly tiring (especially when not preaching!). No, it was the preparation for them. First of all, due to the scaffolds up in the main body of the Cathedral while we change lightbulbs, we could only use the small Blessed Sacrament Chapel for our services. That means there was a lot to do: we had to move everything we needed for prayer and television into that space, decorate and do the worship, and then “deconstruct” the chapel at the end of the service. We couldn’t leave expensive stuff – from chalices and religious articles to television cameras and microphones – or clean stuff like altar linens just lying around. And we never leave the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle when construction work is happening in church. Some of the religious “furniture” that we had to move in and out, such as the Paschal Candle’s stand and potted palm trees, are heavy and awkward to handle. It all took extra time and care, not an easy thing for our skeleton crew!
I also had to try to foresee what the liturgies would look like and prepare the checklists, texts and worship aids for Bishop Duca and for our “virtual congregation” who would be watching. The bishop and I didn’t even know we were going to attempt it a week earlier. It was a lot of imagining and then typing, let me tell you! I couldn’t depend on prior years’ files since the services were so different, involving so few ministers!
But it all worked. We have no way of knowing how many people tuned in on cable TV, but thousands did via YouTube and Facebook! Bishop Duca’s email and mine have been flooded with notes of gratitude: “watching church” sure comforted a lot of folks who never thought they’d be “shut-ins” right now! I hope everyone felt connected not just to our Parish and diocese but also to the Church universal. If you’ve seen pictures of Pope Francis alone in St. Peter’s Square or in the Basilica there, you know that in many ways he’s going through what we’re going through too. We’re all in this together!
But before I reach the bottom of the page, let me add two more things. I want to thank, on behalf of the bishop and in my own name, the little crew that put together our Holy Week liturgies this year: our Director of Music, David Summers; our Cantor, Andy Plaisance; the two “guest musicians” who were out-of-sight but who also helped: soprano Shelby Aydell and trumpeter David Perkins; and the team from CatholicLife Television, Steve Lee and Jeff Cotten. Our maintenance crew of Carla Kennedy and Ben Dunbar also helped beforehand, especially with cleaning. Thank you, gang! Let’s pray that we don’t have to do Holy Week that way again!
And lastly, while our Parish’s Food Pantry has to remain shut down during our “stay-at-home” time, the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank still needs our help. They supply us in ordinary circumstances, and now are doing their best to offer food directly to the resident poor and some of our homeless citizens. But they’re running out of help to give. They need both food and donations at this critical time. So if you can help, go to http://brfoodbank.org and click on either “Give Funds” or “Give Food.” There is no better way to be a Catholic Christian than to provide for the needs of the poor.
In the Risen Lord,
Rev. Paul D. Counce
