Updated - June 25, 2020
To the Community of Old St. Pat’s,
It’s hard to believe it’s been over three months since we made the decision to suspend masses and shut down the Old St. Pat's campus due to COVID-19. The onset of shelter-in-place presented us with innumerable challenges for which we had no blueprint. Our biggest challenge was to figure out how to continue to bring Church to our community during these times when our community cannot come to church. We are proud of the ways that our staff has come together, and we want to keep you updated on the elements of our response.
Perhaps the most obvious example of our success has been our livestream liturgies. We have continued to pull together livestream events that have reached far beyond the West Loop in nourishing the spiritual appetites of people during these strange days. Since March 15, over 218,000 unique devices have joined us on Livestream from all across the country and with participants on almost every continent. Our Easter Sunday Mass alone was viewed nearly 30,000 times.
In addition, we are continuing far-reaching, creative efforts to stay connected and bring Old St. Pat's to the community. It is important for us to thank the Old St. Pat’s community for not only joining us on Sundays but for sharing your treasures with our people through weekly giving as well as COVID relief donations. This allows us to continue reaching out to those in need without significant stress for the future.
Below we will continue to provide updates on the things we are doing as a staff and as a greater community.
We are fortunate that we serve such an appreciative and generous community. We also benefit from having a high percentage of our donations come in the form of recurring, scheduled gifts, a factor that lends us stability in these uncertain times. The absence of masses obviously impacts our basket collections, but this shortfall has been partially offset by the generous response from the many people viewing our livestream broadcasts. While we may still have months to go before life returns to normal, and the economic impacts of the pandemic are likely to persist, the response of the community so far has been a relief.
Our staff meets collectively via Zoom every Thursday morning to talk about additional ways we can creatively come together as a faith community. We are so grateful to each of you for supporting us and look forward to the time when we can all be together again.
To the Community of Old St. Pat’s,
It’s hard to believe it’s been over three months since we made the decision to suspend masses and shut down the Old St. Pat's campus due to COVID-19. The onset of shelter-in-place presented us with innumerable challenges for which we had no blueprint. Our biggest challenge was to figure out how to continue to bring Church to our community during these times when our community cannot come to church. We are proud of the ways that our staff has come together, and we want to keep you updated on the elements of our response.
Perhaps the most obvious example of our success has been our livestream liturgies. We have continued to pull together livestream events that have reached far beyond the West Loop in nourishing the spiritual appetites of people during these strange days. Since March 15, over 218,000 unique devices have joined us on Livestream from all across the country and with participants on almost every continent. Our Easter Sunday Mass alone was viewed nearly 30,000 times.
In addition, we are continuing far-reaching, creative efforts to stay connected and bring Old St. Pat's to the community. It is important for us to thank the Old St. Pat’s community for not only joining us on Sundays but for sharing your treasures with our people through weekly giving as well as COVID relief donations. This allows us to continue reaching out to those in need without significant stress for the future.
Below we will continue to provide updates on the things we are doing as a staff and as a greater community.
- Continuing to share weekly Musical livestream masses to hold and pray for our community.
- Maintaining our OSP COVID-19 Crisis Assistance/Response Form for folks who need to ask for help.
- Offering people ways to continue to support Old St. Pat's including our COVID-19 Relief Fund.
- Our Director of Pastoral Care, Bernadette Gibson, and her team have been able to deliver prescription medications to 38 homes and purchase over 1000 delivered meals for our homebound ministry which includes meals for families and individuals through May 7, provide 156 prayer packages to families with members in hospice, and purchase and distribute hundreds of masks to our partners in North Lawndale to help them stay safe.
- We are currently working with other organizations to compile existing resources outside of Old St. Pat's to help people with debt relief, hunger, and other needed resources.
- We have accompanied three couples as they celebrated their vows with a few intimate family members. We are working now to help others who have been forced to reschedule their unions to get through this trying and emotional time.
- Created 12 Tips to Survive Social Distancing with Mental Wellness.
- Supported our partner homeless shelters by sharing resources of hand sanitizer, prayerful support and companionship for our care teams in shelters.
- Monitored our phone lines, website and Facebook page, and encouraged our membership to connect and share their prayer life using the hashtags: #weareosp #stilltogether
- Continued to offer online bulletins and e-blasts, Instagram content, Facebook prayer, Zoom and contemplative prayer gatherings for many of our ministries. A new OSP Podcast series, Currents: Awakening to the Flow of Spirit in our Lives is now streaming it's first three episodes.
- Zoom gatherings are constantly being held for Spiritual Direction, Divorce Group, YANA, Beloved, PreCana, Grief Care for families, Ministry of Prayer, Foundations, Family Ministry, Music Ministry, Men’s Group, Contemplative Communities, Hospice Ministry, Pastoral Counseling and many other ministries. For directions for how to use Zoom, please see oldstpats.org/onlineresources
- Foundations Youth Ministry has hosted large group gatherings with teens on Zoom, offered Zoom prayer services and Meditation Mondays on Instagram Live, and Small Groups continued to meet virtually. Foundations launched the #whywait Service Challenge encouraging families to serve our neighbors during this time in whatever capacity they could and challenged teens to spread Easter joy through the Alleluia Prank Challenge tournament.
- Family Ministry has worked tirelessly to accompany our Partners’ families through regular Zoom gatherings. They are also working on registration for next year’s partners program. A beautiful Family Mass for Palm Sunday has been put together which can be viewed here on YouTube.
- Sarah Thompson and our Spiritual Directors have been working with many of our most vulnerable online.
- Our Music Ministry is working to continue providing Video Choir Projects in Flight which are added to the OSP online resources page. They have also offered access to the last February Wedding Fair. The link to the February event is at the top of this page: oldstpats.org/wedding-music-repertoire
- Our Special Events team successfully shared the Siamsa Na Gael Concert via video for the first time which rolled out in segments for our viewing.
- Under the direction of Dave Ryan the OSP Men's Group collected donated laptops and raised funds to purchase 25 brand new Samsung Chromebooks and distributed them to Vince Guider for delivery to North Lawndale, The Cara Program, Phillip’s High school and our refugee families.
- We have created new small pastoral care networks in the hopes of practical outcomes to feed and deliver medication for those who need some assistance. We are continuing to deliver meals, groceries, air-tanks, soap, sanitizers and aid in connecting people to healthcare home visits during this strange time.
- New Pastoral Initiatives: Ministry of Care began a campaign to share food gift cards with some of our very own first responder nurses and doctors. The first 25 gift cards have been collected and delivered during the week of April 27.
- We notified all those on our ministry of prayer and sick list that, on the advice of doctors, our ministers of care will maintain social distancing; therefore, pastoral work will be conducted by phone or other means of digital communication to protect the health of all concerned. In addition to our latest update from April 23 noted above,
- We prepared 72 Easter Baskets for delivery to long-term care facilities, prepared 125 prayer envelopes with notes of encouragement, and sent 500 Easter Cards to members in need.
- We delivered some of our tablets so that isolated members can tie into Wi-Fi to access technology without leaving their homes
- We have established prayer and email chains for most on our ministry of prayer list to check in twice a week and pray with them.
We are fortunate that we serve such an appreciative and generous community. We also benefit from having a high percentage of our donations come in the form of recurring, scheduled gifts, a factor that lends us stability in these uncertain times. The absence of masses obviously impacts our basket collections, but this shortfall has been partially offset by the generous response from the many people viewing our livestream broadcasts. While we may still have months to go before life returns to normal, and the economic impacts of the pandemic are likely to persist, the response of the community so far has been a relief.
Our staff meets collectively via Zoom every Thursday morning to talk about additional ways we can creatively come together as a faith community. We are so grateful to each of you for supporting us and look forward to the time when we can all be together again.