Worst Day of My Life

08-22-2021Pastor's LetterFr. John Bonavitacola

Dear Friends,

The worst day of my life was always the first day of school. I hated going to school as a child. I was just a giant heap of anxiety. At first when they took me to school, I would sneak out the door and run home. Then they started locking the door. Then I would cry. After a few rounds of the that the kindergarten teacher would put me in the restroom and I could not come out until I stopped crying. Then I would just make myself sick, literally, and vomit so they would send me home. They caught on to that as well and just made me sit in the nurse’s office till I would go back to class. That didn't take long as the nurse must have been related to Nurse Ratched. I think it was around the time I got to High School that I finally liked school.

The irony of all that was that for the past 21 yrs I ran a school! I admit on the first day of school, I always felt a twinge of guilt and would think, “sorry kids for doing this to you but…” So, I find myself thinking about all those children, like me, who really can’t stomach going to school! I hope they make it.

A funny thing happened last year on the first day of school. Almost every student was thrilled to be back in school! After the shut-down in the spring of 2020, they were very happy to get away from their parents, out of the house and back with their friends and it seemed the parents were glad to send them off! Would’ve thought!

Having in-person learning during the Pandemic was no easy task. Though I had confidence in our Plan and Mitigation Strategy and in our staff, still the thought would come in the back of my head thinking” “is this the day we have a major outbreak of the virus in the school”? But then I would think how I never had that thought with colds, flu, strep throat, pink-eye, even lice. So, I just accepted the fact that we probably would have cases of the virus, despite our best efforts, and we would just have to manage the situation. Fortunately, we never did. Our protocols and mitigation efforts worked better than we had imagined.

Still there was a whole lot of back and forth as students who were exposed to the virus outside of school would stay home and use the virtual on-line Classroom and then after being cleared medically would return to the in-person option. I imagine this year schools will be doing a lot of that as well.

I want our Parish to have the same option for In-person Mass and Virtual Mass. There may be a lot of back and forth once again this year as the virus continues to do its thing. There may be times when you take yourself out of circulation until you know an exposure did not result in an infection or the circumstances may not yet be right for very vulnerable persons to attend in-person.

With that in mind, we are going to install cameras so that we can Live Stream the Mass so that if you need to stay home for a bit you can still participate virtually. Also, it will give our Parish the ability to make the Live Stream Mass available for all those who live in Care Homes located in our Parish. I don't envision any shut downs again but I want the Live Stream available for those situations for when you cannot attend because of illness and for those who are permanently home-bound.

At the moment, because of back orders and supply chain problems as well as the high demand for the Live Streaming equipment and cameras installation is taking longer than anticipated.

In the meantime, please keep in your prayers all of our schools and especially the administrators and school nurses who are once again trying to navigate keeping students in their seats during a Pandemic. And of course, pray for all those students, like me who hated being in their seat!

Love, Fr. John B.

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