All Services are Closed to the Public Until Further Notice

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On March 17, the Latin Rite Diocese of Green Bay suspended all public attendance at weekday and weekend masses. The situation will be reviewed in mid-April and certain provisions are being made for broadcasting of services (click)
 
Strictly speaking, since our Monastery belongs to a separate jurisdiction, we are not bound by this rule. But our own Bishop has issued a similar decree, and which we are adapting as best we can for our own situation.
 
It follows that Abbot Nicholas has decided to close our divine services to non-monastics beginning March 20th, so that we can all make our necessary plans we have definitively canceled public celebrations of Holy Week and Pascha Services (which in our Monastery are observed on the Revised Julian or “Old” Calendar). The services themselves will go on, but only the monks will be present in Church.
 
The Guest House will also be closed during this period, for which we profoundly apologize. All guests currently with reservations should either contact, or will be contacted by, our Guest Master, Hierodeacon Paiisi on (920) 881-4009, monks@hrmonline.org.
 
During this period we will take especial care to broadcast all our services, including the Small Hours, so as many people can join us in their homes. We will keep our schedule of services on our website so you can join in virtually.
 
At this point we see no reason to close the Monastery Chapel during the daytime to visitors for those who wish to make private prayers. But please no more than 5 people at a time outside of services!
 
By appointment monks with the appropriate blessing will continue to give spiritual direction and hear Confessions, though there may be some adjustments in ritual and routine to give effect to social distancing norms and other common-sense measures while not sacrificing proper confidentiality.
 
All of this is subject to review, even on a daily basis, but we will try to make major announcements as soon as we can.
 
A Reflection
 
For the next few weeks, or even possibly months an extraordinary shift will take place in the Church in many parts of the world. In this shift those of us who live in Monasteries will carry both an incredible burden and a profound privilege. We don’t really have the concept of the Monastic veil in the East as they do in some Western Orders like that of the Carmelite or Poor Clare Nuns. But in one sense now we do. Except in reverse. It’s the people in parishes who find themselves suddenly behind a kind of veil. Yet for them the reality is even more stark than even the first generation of desert monastics! Even they had the Eucharist on Sundays. Parishioners for now have their devotional life, the Divine Office and their prayer books. They have nothing else.
 
It is those of us who live in Monasteries, who will continue for a little while to have unfettered access to both the Sacred Mysteries and the Prayer of the Church upon which they sit. For miles around our Monastery this and succeeding Sundays  only the 9 men of Holy Resurrection Monastery and a few other priests and religious will be receiving Holy Communion. Hundreds of lay people will not. 
 
For 25 years this Monastery has thought of itself as being a “peoples’ Monastery.” We’ve always thought that meant being a place where people can come join us in prayer and see, smell, taste, touch, hear the services for themselves. And so it has, and so it will again, God willing.
 
But for this little while, for this period in which we must all cooperate in a common effort to defeat the natural evil of a virus and the supernatural evil of selfishness to have our own wills catered to even in our piety, in this period to be a peoples’ Monastery means to be something even more profound. It means to take the people into our prayer.
 
To the author of this reflection this means something he is struggling to put into words but cannot quite do so at the moment. So, let him make it practical.
 
SEND US YOUR NAMES ON YOUR PRAYER LISTS! NO NEED FOR DONATIONS! JUST NAMES! CALL THEM IN! EMAIL THEM! MAIL THEM! We will read them out in our services. Let us bring you into the Lord’s presence that way.
 
Finally, a word about Holy Communion and disease. Roman Catholics have a clear theological distinction that enables them to distinguish the various elements of the Sacred Mysteries. It’s not so clear cut for Eastern Christians and so some (mostly Orthodox) have even gone so far as to say it’s a sin to claim you can get sick from receiving Holy Communion. I don’t particularly want to mock this attitude. I recently read a heartbreaking article by a Coptic Orthodox Bishop, a representative of one of the most persecuted Christian groups on earth, who said we now have a virus doing what generations of bombs and terrorists and governments could not do: close the Churches.
 
No, I don’t want to belittle this at all. But the reality is, as any newly ordained Deacon will tell you drinking the Consecrated Wine can make you drunk. And as the Most Holy Mother of God can tell you standing at the foot of her bloody Son will pierce your heart with grief.
 
That’s the point of the Incarnation, of which the Sacraments are the ongoing continuation. Through these Mysteries, God enters into our life and draws us up into His. We are not rendered immune from suffering. We are accompanied through it, accompanied all the way into the Kingdom.
 
So, this is our generation’s particular redemptive suffering. It’s an odd one we think, when we have to close Churches. But then it also speaks of the fact that we’ve never before in human history understood more of the way in which diseases spread. Our understanding of the relationship of science and faith in the 21^st century is better than ever. We should be grateful for this. To turn this knowledge away is not an act of faith, but of its opposite.
 

In the tradition of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church here in America.
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