Please see the article below.
Fr Patrick.
Our Nomadic Pascha
To quote Fr Anthony Hughes in our issue of 25th April, 'Each Holy Week is different.’ Well, Holy Week and Pascha have certainly felt very different for us from last year to this. Last year, we were in the depths of the first Covid lockdown. Celia had come up with the idea of putting out a weekly newsletter to keep us in touch with one another, and since we could not go to church, we turned small corners of our houses into churches. Father Peter, so recently ordained, gave huge comfort by livestreaming services from Barnfield Road not only to us in the parish but to a much wider circle. Some of us quietly read the services from the Triodion. On Easter Day many of us joined a Zoom party which was the nearest we could get to greeting one another with a kiss.
The most obvious practical difference this Pascha was that churches could open for public worship. This presented problems for us, though. Not only was Saint Anne's quite unsuitable for any gathering with social distancing, but – and this was much more difficult – Fr Peter was hugely absent. As Lent proceeded it seemed we had nowhere to meet and no-one to lead us.