St Cuthbert’s Church has a fine hanging sanctuary lamp, suspended from the church ceiling by an elegant mechanism of chains and pulleys. In early April, a week into the UK’s first lockdown, the light had burned out and needed replacing; so, in the absence of our efficient sacristan, I tackled the job myself. Unfortunately, I pulled the lamp down too hard and brought the chains off their pulleys. For the next four months, as I celebrated Mass and prayed the Divine Office, alone in an empty church, the sanctuary lamp hung there, unbalanced and awry. It was a visible reminder of my mishap, and seemed a symbol of the dislocated times that we were living in.
Vatican II tells us that the Church is the Body of Christ (Lumen Gentium, no. 7) and that the Eucharist is the summit and source of our life as a Church (Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 10.) The unity of the members of the Body is both expressed and brought about in the sacrament of the Eucharist (LG, no. 3). So how do we sustain the Body of Christ when we can no longer celebrate Mass together? That was the question that we were suddenly and unexpectedly faced with when, of necessity, we were forbidden to gather in our churches.
Priests were instructed to celebrate daily Mass alone, without even a deacon or altar server, and to pray for our people. The gathered assembly – one of the modes in which Christ is really present in the Mass, according to Vatican II (SC, no. 7) was temporarily dispensed with. The people were urged to join prayerfully with their pastors’ celebration of Mass, and to make an act of Spiritual Communion. Their obligation to attend Sunday Mass was suspended.
Necessary as these measures were, they were a harsh blow to the life of our communities. We lost our central, communal act of worship. The people were deprived of sacramental Communion, and the clergy were deprived of the presence of Christ in the people we serve. How would the Body of Christ be sustained? The answer that came back from the people of my parish was: by the care of the members of the body for one another. I soon had a list of volunteers who were ready to help quarantined parishioners with shopping and prescriptions, and a list of those who should be telephoned regularly. I did not see my parishioners’ faces for months, but I heard their voices almost every day.
Social media are often a mixed blessing, but they became a crucial tool for maintaining contact. The new parish Facebook group soon topped 100 members, some over 80 years old. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints became my best friend, as I looked for stories for the daily social media post.
The live streaming of Mass opened up new possibilities. I heard that you could find ‘a lovely Mass’ as far afield as San Francisco. Tellingly, religious communities such as the Oxford Dominicans, who formed a single household and so could still celebrate with a congregation, were popular – watching their live stream felt ‘more like a proper Mass.’ Good preaching was popular, too.
But communication via Facebook and live streaming is essentially a monologue. To establish something more like a real interaction with the community, I turned to the video conferencing platform Zoom. Like most people, I had never heard of Zoom before the pandemic struck, but it allowed us to establish a weekly ‘virtual coffee morning’ and a Sunday morning Gospel reflection, where we shared our thoughts on that week’s Scripture readings. These two moments in the week became precious.
St Cuthbert’s also houses the Catholic Chaplaincy serving Durham University. For our students, the university year was cut short a week before the scheduled beginning of the Easter holiday, when they were sent home and told that their lectures, seminars and exams would be moved online. For some, it was the brutal end to their Durham degree; no graduations, no balls, no proper farewells to the friends who had shared those joyful and intense years. In a matter of days, our student community was dispersed around the country and around the world. As digital natives, they were better able than the older generation to keep in touch with one another, but the same question arose for them as for the parish; how to maintain a sense of community. The regular Wednesday ‘CathSoc night’ moved online too, and continued, via Zoom, until the end of July, well past the normal end of term. For the small number of students who took part, the regular virtual gathering seemed an important means of keeping in touch.
Spring turned into summer. The lockdown regulations were eased, and we were able to celebrate Mass publicly again. The sanctuary lamp was restored to balance. (Scaffolding was required.) But it was a strange new world of risk assessments, barrier tape and masks. The Eucharist brings about communion; vertically, as it were, between the worshipper and God, and horizontally, among the members of the congregation. The social distancing measures made necessary by COVID-19 have the opposite effect; they impose a physical separation between us, making the experience of worship less communal and more individual. The elements that were stripped out of the Mass were all gestures that express and build communion: shared singing of hymns and responses; the Prayer of the Faithful; the procession with the gifts of bread and wine; the Sign of Peace. The sharing of coffee and conversation that feels like an extension of the Sunday liturgy was replaced by chilly outdoor chats, and even that felt furtive, an interaction on the edge of the law. But I was again impressed, and humbled, by the parishioners’ generous response to the new situation. Many willingly took up the cleaning cloths and sanitising sprays, to make it possible for us to continue celebrating Mass together.
In due course, the students returned, to a strange and unprecedented reality. Online learning, socially distanced eating, isolation when a housemate showed symptoms; it was not the experience of university that they had expected, or indeed paid for. But their response, too, showed generosity and adaptability. They took their turn at cleaning.
As I write, lockdown has returned. I am, once again, celebrating daily Mass in an empty church. The discovery of a vaccine offers hope, but the immediate future is uncertain. What is the Spirit saying to the Church in these strange days?
A return to the Church of 2019 is not an option. For many Catholics, the habit of weekly Mass has been broken, and it may never be restored. We can lament the loss of a sense of obligation, or we can try to develop a sense of invitation to the celebration of the Eucharist.
The move to online events has been an equaliser. When I ‘preach’ to my parishioners on Zoom, they have the right of reply – the right to question and clarify, to expand and disagree. This has been a marvellously enriching experience; the reflections of lay women and men on the Scriptures can be heard in conversation with those of the ordained minister. It is a gift too precious to lose, if and when we go back to ‘normal.’
Rather than focusing on Spiritual Communion, the people responded to the Lord’s commandment of love by collecting shopping for their neighbours. This generous, practical response of service has been one of the signs of the Holy Spirit at work, and we should encourage and celebrate it. It may be tempting to agitate for the reopening of church buildings and the restoration of public worship, but it would be a tone-deaf response to this crisis. Our call as a Church is to witness to Christ in the world. ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’ (John 13:35)
Fr Andrew Downie is parish priest at St Cuthbert’s Church, Durham, and Catholic Chaplain to Durham University. He is also studying for a PhD in the Department of Theology and Religion, and is a member of the Centre for Catholic Studies.