At least during the pandemic, we don’t have the weekly argument about going to Mass, or the complaints that it’s boring. That doesn’t exactly comprise a silver lining, though: when we (the parents) tune in to Mass at Blackfriars (Oxford), the kids get on with other things. The 16-year-old is asleep, the 13-year-old is watching YouTube, the 9-year-old is skating around the house on her roller blades, and my eldest is listening to music and humming along. This is better than the nerf war that was going on during the Liturgy of the Word. (It may also be noted that one of the adults is asleep on the sofa during the Eucharistic Prayer and the other is writing this blog.)

Keeping the feasts and fasts while physically separated from the Church is tough. We fail a lot. And regular prayer is hard, too. I thought that one of the redeeming things about the pandemic would be the possibility of praying Compline ‘with’ the community in Kent I so enjoy visiting. But it is often impossible to follow along–we can’t understand the sung words, and the video lags. I don’t mind. The rest of the family does, and so we haven’t been joining in. Universalis has continued to be a lifeline for me. I stay connected by knowing what day it is–today is the feast of the Most Holy Trinity; were it not a Sunday, we would remember St Robert of Newminster today. When the kids are out of school, holidays are cancelled, work is squished in around lessons, and the usual schedule of activities and appointments is suspended, it is easy to get lost–hardly remembering what day of the week it is, much less the month and date. Tomorrow there will be no school run, and we won’t go to work. It will still be Monday, though: Monday of week 10 in ordinary time (or St William of York, if you observe his memorial). Liturgical time goes on, pandemic or no pandemic, lockdown or no lockdown. I am grateful for that.

And I am grateful, more grateful than ever, for communities like the Dominican friars we join for Sunday Mass and the Benedictine nuns I like to visit at Minster Abbey. A few years ago, I wrote about the nuns, reflecting that my misunderstanding of Sr Johanna revealed an important truth about the relationship of the wider Church with such communities. ‘I’ve got your back,’ I thought she said. That wasn’t what she said, but it was true. While I am here, with my family, loosely following the Sunday Mass, it is happening, just as it always has, at Blackfriars and everywhere that religious communities gather for the celebration of the Eucharist.

I would rather be there, of course. And I would rather wrestle the kids out the door of the house and into the door of St Bede’s than listen to them running up and down while I try to follow the homily. But in these strange times, it is good to know that we are the Body of Christ: we are incorporated at baptism and we members are nourished by our participation in the Eucharist. And yet, we remain joined to the Body even at this distance. The regular communion of the nuns, the monks, and the friars benefits us; we participate in a mystical way. So the act of spiritual communion that we make (thanks to the prayer given us by the friars) is real. It’s just not physical.

I think what I have been doing for the last hour, since the beginning of the Eucharistic prayer, is considering why I keep on sitting here, while Mass is going on somewhere else. While my participation in the liturgy is rather two-dimensional, involving two senses rather than the usual 5, it helps me to make the spiritual act of communion. And so I will tune in again next week.