On a personal level

This is, for the most part, a community made up of senior priests: four of us are over 70; another, 80; only one is 30 years old. We soon became aware of the mutual support we needed. Compounding the situation was the fact that two members of the community needed special care.

The community’s confinement was a challenge for all of us. It involved real isolation, living in the same house, distancing, elimination of normal greetings, the embarrassing use of masks, not being able to dialogue with each other in a normal way, difficulties in serving disabled companions.

Only one, Father José Luis Cañavate, the 30-year-old, could provide the food and other necessary things for the community, going out to do the shopping.

However, we feel privileged to be able to count on the services of the two women who care for the community daily. It is a relief worth its weight in gold.

Each of us intensified telephone communication with loved ones and with parishioners in need of support and comfort.

On the community level

This situation of being locked in and isolated facilitated daily personal prayer, meditation, and even community celebrations. Every day we concelebrated and prayed together with special intensity, including in community prayer and in the Eucharist a particular daily intention for God’s mercy to alleviate the pain of so many people suffering from the pandemic, especially for the sick and the lonely.

Day by day, we join in the distress of the people we know and their relatives who have been infected, especially the families who lost one of their members and who was buried in the depths of solitude.

On the pastoral level

The declaration of the state of alarm, at the national level, meant the immediate, absolute cessation of all pastoral activities: the normal ones, like daily celebration in the parishes and chaplaincies in our charge, six in total, as well as the special ones: celebration of the sacraments of baptism, communions, funerals, etc. It was a real shock for us and for our faithful, even more so for those chaplaincies that included religious service to some religious communities and nursing homes.

Fortunately, the imagination and creative spirit of our founder quickly inspired us with the idea of using the technical means at our disposal. Having a young member in the community, the idea of streaming our community celebrations on Facebook came almost immediately. Two days after the declaration of the state of alarm, we already were broadcasting our community celebrations by this means. We are proud to have been the first in Albacete to do so, although other parishes soon adopted the system.

Aware that some of our people cannot use these means themselves, we, on our own, sent them, via WhatsApp, the entire celebration. It was gratifying to know that even some overseas friends were following our celebrations on Facebook.

Over the course of almost three months, we received expressions of gratitude and recognition for these concelebrated Masses. Some specifically asked us to include their deceased relatives in our Mass intentions.

Our celebrations were like in a family – close, direct – to such an extent that some came to state, over time, that they almost preferred them this way, except for the fact that, not being able to receive the Body of Christ, they had to settle for spiritual communion.

Special Celebrations of Holy Week

Celebrating Holy Week online was another difficult challenge to overcome. The celebration of Holy Week is so rooted in our people, with their visits to the Repository on Holy Thursday, their processions, the Easter Vigil, and other expressions of popular piety in this very special liturgical season.

 From the beginning, we tried to carry out all the celebrations of Holy Week with maximum fidelity to the popular piety of our tradition and to broadcast them on Facebook. And so we did.

The procession of palms was done from the courtyard to the chapel with branches and songs typical of the day. The solemn celebration of Palm Sunday, with the abrupt passage from the acclamations to the first solemn reading of the Passion of Christ…

The special celebration of Holy Thursday had its particular emphasis on the institution of the Eucharist and the priesthood. We only omitted the washing of the feet, for obvious reasons. In the evening, we had a special Holy Hour, with texts chosen from the Gospel on Christian love.

Good Friday was one of special recollection and adoration of the Cross, culminating in the evening celebration.

On Holy Saturday, following a long-standing tradition maintained by the young people at Easter, we had a day of contemplation that we call Desert Day. This week’s celebrations culminated in the great Easter Vigil in which we must highlight the readings chosen from salvation history, the baptismal liturgy, and the universal prayer of the Church.

All these celebrations also were broadcast via Facebook.

Two members of this community participated too in the early celebration, online, of the Easter of Vincentian Marian Youth of Spain, with the testimony of our personal experience in VMY.

Let all be for the greater glory of God.

 Félix Villafranca, CM
Province of Saragossa