Gifts

In crisis, opportunity.  I attend Mass online these days.  I don't go many places and I don't go lightly.  Mass concerns me even though there are so many safety precautions.  I worry because of other people, I can't control other people and some people are not as concerned as I am.  So, I watch Mass and long for the Body and Blood of Christ.  I am thankful for the online Masses.

That being said, my own parish has chosen to do YouTube as the online Mass host.  I suppose if you count all the Masses on all the days there haven't been that many glitches. But when you are me, on the receiving end and you can't attend a Mass that you had planned for it feels like a lot of glitches.  This Sunday for example, I couldn't get on 7:30 Mass.  Since it doesn't appear on the YouTube channel used by my church, I suppose it didn't broadcast for some reason.  Since 7:30 is the only Mass my church broadcasts, I was out of luck.

Fortunately, I knew of other churches that had Masses.  I had marked in my mind the televised Mass at 8:30 and I watched that one.  Nice homily, beautiful church in Wisconsin and so I attended Mass.  Still, I was feeling frustration that I couldn't be at the Mass I wanted to attend.  I knew that at 9 there would be a Facebook Mass at a church I used to attend.  I tuned in and prayed that I would find the peace I hoped for. 

I was surprised to see that the son of an acquaintance of mine who had become a priest was the celebrant at this Mass.  It was a lovely Mass.  I recognized many faces and I loved seeing my old church.  By the time Mass was complete I had achieved the peace I had hoped to find. 

Afterwards, I thanked God for the gift of the Masses.  If my regular church had broadcast Mass as usual I would not have had the opportunity to "visit" these other churches.  I could have, but I wouldn't have.  The glitch in the Mass from my home parish was a gift.  It didn't feel that way when I was frantically uploading YouTube at 7:30, but when all is said and done, it was a gift.