Psalm 122

Psalm 122:1 I rejoiced when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”

The author is the Psalm, David, wrote this for those people going on their pilgrimage for the holy feasts. He had a picture in his mind perhaps of all the individuals coming together in the community for the gathering. To be invited to go to church in a new place is something big. I remember when I was in college, we had a small Catholic Church on campus. I didn’t know anyone on campus, and was scared to go by myself. So someone I had met at registration invited me to go to church with her on Sundays, and even though it was a church I belonged to, a church anyone could freely enter, I felt so relieved to be invited to go with someone.

I had that church in Monroe, then the church I grew up in in Erath, then a church in Lafayette when I moved there, then Shreveport, Little Rock, and now Manhattan. I love my church, St. Thomas More, in Manhattan. We have a moms group that I belong to, which made the new area so welcoming 3 years ago. This group became my extended family. Our group hosts a moms Bible study, in which we have sitters to watch the kids while we go through the Bible. We also host a Trunk or Treat in the fall and a Valentine’s Dance in the spring. And an Easter Egg hunt. Besides these events, our church hosts several other family and community events.

Now with this virus, and things being closed, and safety precautions in place, I haven’t been inside the church for Mass since March. And it hurts my heart. We do set up our basement every Sunday with chairs, and our church records the Saturday evening Mass and has it available online. So Sunday mornings, the girls and I wear our veils, get the song sheets on the iPad ready, and prepare ourselves as if we were still in the house of the Lord. There are many services available online, and when we went visit my family in Louisiana for two weeks,  my mom offered for us to watch the one she had taped that week for Mass. I politely declined, because though it was also a Catholic service,  seeing our Father Coady up on our church’s alter makes us feel closer to being where we should be.

It is very important for people to gather in prayer. Being in our church community, praying together brings so much joy to me. I know then time will come when we feel comfortable going back in public
(Masked or not), but for right now, it is too much of a risk for us to bring the virus home, then my husbands lab shutting down because he gets sick. We pray weekly while watching our Mass that Jesus comes into our hearts for a spiritual communion, since we can’t be present for the physical one. I do miss our church, but I know that God is present in my home as well, and I pray that he finds our worship acceptable during this time.

Do you have a church that you attend regularly? How do you find joy in your church?