Pastor’s Letter: June 4, 2020

Pastor’s Letter: June 4, 2020

5 Jun 2020 | Posted by: chadmin

Dear friend,

As you may know, Bishop Jenky gave permission for the churches in the Diocese of Peoria to begin offering public Mass, after completing a certification process. St. Philomena Church completed the certification process. We will begin offering public Mass again on Saturday June 6, 2020, with our normal Mass schedule. Until further notice, we are limited to 25% capacity of our full occupancy for any one liturgy. It is important that we maintain social distancing. For this reason, every other pew is blocked off. We began using Eventbrite, an online scheduling service, for parishioners to reserve a pew for Mass. Obviously, 25% capacity does not allow us to accommodate all St. Philomena parishioners each weekend. As I write this column, we are almost booked to capacity for this weekend. Our hope is to accommodate as many as parishioners as possible, as we move forward. For this reason, we ask that you consider reserving a pew at a different times each week, to allow others to attend Mass. You might consider attending Mass during the week, as we anticipate a lower demand for Mass attendance. As we move forward, we hope to be able to keep reservations for those yet to attend Mass, but those details are still in process. Please feel free to communicate with the Parish Office if we can be of assistance in answering questions.

When you enter our church building, you will notice a significant amount of signage. Each of the pews is numbered by section and row. This allows us to schedule families to pews, with Eventbrite, prior to coming to Mass so that each person knows where they will be sitting. This weekend we have scheduled every fourth pew. This process allows us to open up more pews when we are able to welcome more people into church for each Mass. It is important that we keep one another in mind as we ease back into church. Each person is at a different level of concern about the coronavirus. We know that our scientists are still learning about the best treatments, the mortality rate and seeking a vaccine. For this reason, please keep your social encounters at St. Philomena to a limit for the current time. We ask that parishioners attending Mass follow the direction of ushers, remain in your pews during the liturgy and wait for pews to be released at the end of Mass. Arrows are placed on the floors to create one way traffic in all aisles to assist us maintain social distance. It is exciting to gather again for Mass, but we all should maintain patience and care for one another, as we adjust to public Mass with social distancing limitations. Please stay tuned for further information from the parish by email, text message, and our website, www.stphils.com.

We will continue to livestream Mass at 8am each Monday-Saturday, as well as at 4:30pm on Saturday and 9am and 11am on Sunday with Communion in the parking lot after each of these Mass times.

Have a great week.

God bless,

Father David