Fr. Don’s Weekly Letter ~ 12 July 2026

Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,

One of the facts of life today is that security cameras are everywhere. It is the same for our campus. Each time we evaluate our security it seems we add more.

Usually when I’m working at my desk, especially on weekends, I have the cameras up on one of my desktop screens to keep an eye on things. It is also very handy to know when it is time to come over to church to help with Holy Communions.

For this reason I was checking the camera during the 9am Mass last weekend from the back of the church. I noticed an interesting thing. I wondered if this was the way it always has been, or is this still a leftover from the pandemic? Literally, people and groups were seated consistently six feet apart.

The tragedy of social distancing is the effect it had on keeping people separated. I don’t think it was always this way, because at the beginning of the pandemic it seemed so unnatural to be avoiding each other in such a measured, intentional way. The crazy thing was we didn’t know whether or not our lives depended on it. At the time we were fortunate to have such a vast church to accommodate as many for Masses as we could (many churches could only admit a much smaller number), but now I wish we had a smaller church. We would need to sit closer together.

We are as spread out as we can be. There is a scientific explanation for this principle called the principle of diffusion. According to Fick’s First Law of Diffusion, molecules floating on the surface of water will always find the the maximum distance from each other, straining to be apart. This is “driven by the continuous random motion of the molecules (Brownian motion) and the thermodynamic tendency of a system to move toward a state of maximum disorder.” In other words, if we weren’t contained by walls we would blast as far apart as possible. The Church, literally, saves us from our chaos (the equation is at left, for you math people.)

Please don’t misunderstand my point: as a congregation we have found such growth in unity and the way we participate in the Mass -- fully, actively, consciously -- and I love how we have become a singing parish. I wish you could hear you as you sound from the altar, it is so beautiful. But liturgical prayer has to do with the way in which we are conscious of each other and the way we come together to experience community during the sacred rites of the Church. It is experiential not as an individual activity, but one that can only happen when we are together.

The Mass is the dialogue between Jesus and the Father. It is not a devotional form of prayer, that is to say, a dialogue between me and God. We join our voices and our hearts as the one voice and heart of Jesus, becoming something so much greater and salvific than I could do alone.

This is the difference between liturgical and devotional prayer. In liturgy it is we who become Christ.

Imagine this. You are at the airport, a vast waiting area with a lot of seating. Every person is on their individual cell phone talking to God. We don’t know what each other is saying, or even if our messages contradict each other. I’m focused on me. The Mass is intended to get us out of ourselves and, literally, into Christ. It isn’t a time to be doing our own thing.

Here comes another memory as the renewal of Vatican II was taking place. I remember the priest actually leaving the sanctuary during Mass and taking rosaries out of peoples’ hands. It seemed very rude, definitely not pastoral, one of those things that gave Vatican II a black eye.

Before, the Mass was not understood as something for the people, it was the priest’s prayer and people came, in their own words, to “hear” Mass, what little they could hear. There was not a sense of coming together to participate in a shared work of salvation. The priest did his thing, we prayed the rosary. And it was obligatory “under pain of mortal sin.”

Well, there still is the Catholic obligation to attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days but the “why?” needs to be explained. If the work of the salvation of the world (which is the Mass) is something that is placed in our hands (not just the priests’), then you can see why it is a gift we are obliged to practice, together as one Body of Christ and united in prayer, song, and gesture.

The Lord be with you,