Dear brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Blessed Holy Week to You! This Flocknote contains some new items and also a detailed attached OPV Triduum Virtual Retreat, a collection of all the prayers and activities for the events available to you for Holy Week and Easter Weekend.
I am only sending out one of these notes each week during the corona virus crisis to "Everyone" in our Flocknote system. If you want more frequent updates, either subscribe to the Covid-19 OPV Updates in Flocknote or check our website regularly for the latest during this time: https://www.opvcatholic.org/calendar-events
Please try to make this Holy Week and Three Triduum days specially prayerful, offering as intentions to God all our prayer time in the retreat events for an end to this crisis. I encourage you to print out if you can, or keep available in your email or smartphone log, the attachment. It has all the events and links for everything during these Holy days including: Zoom Class on Triduum, Morning Prayers, Virtual Seven Church Tour, Mass of the Lord's Supper, Passion & Veneration of the Cross on Good Friday, Easter Basket Blessing, Easter Vigil Mass, Easter Morning Masses and a special Easter Greeting and Blessing for all in OPV, explained below, and more.
Two Special Easter Week Events
1.On Easter Sunday, at 3 PM, I will offer a brief Easter Greeting and Blessing over the bell tower loudspeakers at St. John the Baptist Church. The four speakers in each compass direction are used for the carillon (church bells) that can be heard several streets away. So, at 3 PM Easter, either drive nearby St. John, or if you live near there, step outside and listen for the brief blessing that I will offer for our Oakmont, Plum & Verona communities. It will also be livestreamed on our website under Special Events.
2.Also, on the Second Sunday of Easter, April 19, 2020, also at 3 PM we will offer a livestreamed, sung Divine Mercy Chaplet and Holy Hour. Two of our OPV cantors are a married couple with excellent voices and offered to sing the Divine Mercy Chaplet, while I will continue with prayers and devotions before the Blessed Sacrament and concluding with Benediction. Joins us. I will send the link details next week.
By now, we’ve all become aware that a whole lot changes in a whole week during this crisis time, so this message may become outdated in details as changes come about throughout this week. Last week, I am sorry for those who received a copy of the bulletin, or last week's Flocknote to everyone about the times when blessed palms could be picked up. Last Thursday, I found out we were not permitted to distribute Palms, for concern that the virus can spread on such items. For this same reason, we are not able to distribute special Easter gifts to children this Easter weekend either. I’ll continue to send out a weekly update in Flocknote to everyone, along the lines of the bulletin information.
We are looking into ways for those who do not have internet access, to listen by phone, to our Masses. I hope for those not able to communicate other than by phone, that someone from our parishes has reached out to them by phone by now – we started that effort almost two weeks ago, to check in on every parish home. For those you may know who are NOT getting these messages or a bulletin, please alert them to the We Are One Body - WAOB Radio channel on 860 AM and 106.7 FM. They have Mass at 5 PM Sunday, 8 AM and 6 PM weekdays and 10 AM Saturday.
Our hope continues to be that this crisis will end in April. Our OPV parishes will continue to look to ways to share our faith in as many avenues as possible. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to help you during this crisis or if there are any suggestions you have for how our OPV parishes can continue to serve our communities, please reply.
May you and all those you love have a blessed Easter and continue to hope in the Resurrection for all!
In Christ's love
Father Kevin
