by Father Andrew Heaslip,
Diocesan Director of Religious Education, Diocesan Coordinator of Digital Media, Director of the TV Mass for the Homebound
One of the unique but slightly awkward blessings that occurred in midst of the Covid pandemic is the extensive and almost universal increase of digital communications in churches and parishes throughout southern Nebraska, not to mention the nation and world.
I say unique because one would not have expected the smallest of towns, or the most old-fashioned of parishes, or the pastors who are the most disinclined to engage new media to straightaway shift, and begin utilizing livestream technologies, numerous platforms of social media, state-of-art audio-visual systems, and new video conferencing systems. It was as though nearly everyone, pastor and parishioner alike, mutually saw the immediate need for all to stay connected to parish life and above all the Sacred Liturgy, the Mass.
The availability and sheer number of regular streams of the Mass throughout the various towns in the country and world is unprecedented. The Mass has now taken its rightful share of bandwidth in the digital age. I feel a unique evangelical joy in this fact because the Word of God, the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and the remarkable diversity of parish communities is available to be heard and seen almost universally. I know of Catholics in California, New York, Texas, England, and India who like to view the livestreamed Mass from Sutton, Nebraska, of broad public sharing of links and posts of the Mass by parishioners across parishes and social platforms, a strong spike in TV Mass ratings, and I could name many more examples.
I was blessed this past year to have a small share in this development. Ever since installing after-market audio systems in high school, I have enjoyed setting up and integrating multi-component technology systems whether it be on websites, smart phones, computers, sacristies, studios, or parish churches. For some reason I take satisfaction and pleasure in making disparate technological components and products function together. I like researching them and I like installing them.
This past year has given me many opportunities to do just that. I was blessed to install a high-end livestream system at St. Mary Parish in Lincoln, my home parish growing up and my current place of residence. I was blessed to use the knowledge from this learning curve to help my priest friends in Sutton, Valparaiso, and Doniphan and several colleagues in Lincoln. I do not regret this work; it was and is a blessing.
But it is an awkward blessing. It is awkward because at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have felt the pain of not having public Masses. This was especially true in Holy Week of 2020. I have seen numerous accounts, especially on social media, of the far deeper pain of many of the lay faithful who were not able to be physically present at the Mass at all.
This awkward blessing also gave rise to very good questions, for example on Spirit Catholic Radio, about the meaning of making a “Spiritual Communion,” but also to unusual questions regarding the difference between a livestreamed Mass and being physically present at Mass. As things opened up more, I experienced the shared concern of when and whether people would be returning to Mass.
I am profoundly grateful to God that the Mass is so broadly available and being so frequently viewed on the internet, but it is no ultimate substitute for being personally present at the liturgy, body and soul whenever it is available. Both priest and the lay faithful, in whatever circumstance, know this.
This unique and awkward blessing of livestreaming the Sacred Liturgy also gave rise to good but unusual questions in my own heart. For example, what is the meaning of mediation, especially the mediation of the sacred? What is the theological and philosophical principle that necessitates the priority of being physically present at Mass, but still gives value to more a distant mediation? These questions might sound odd, but the fact is: millions of people have experienced the sacred in a mediated way though digital communications during this time of COVID-19, and that is a very good thing.
I think not only of the countless livestreamed Masses and free theological seminars and podcasts for example, but also of Pope Francis’ unprecedented Urbi et Orbi (to the City and the World) Blessing which occurred on March 27 of 2020 in an empty square at St. Peter’s. While it was occurring, it was the top option on Google’s search engine and by the diverse reports reached millions of people worldwide. I remember kneeling on the floor at an office at John XXIII—an office which then was closed to the public—while Pope Francis led a remarkable litany to which I felt deeply united in prayer.
Even more I recall when he gave the benediction with the Blessed Sacrament to the city and to the world; I know with a moral certitude that I was personally included in that blessing even though it took place so far away and even though I was watching it through a computer screen. I am not the only one who has had this kind of experience. Digital media can indeed mediate the sacred.
Nevertheless, the only reason it can do this is because the sacred, such as the sacraments, is truly present at a definite place and time and in a concrete event. The reason so many could experience Pope Francis’ Urbi et Orbi Blessing on-line is because the monstrance which holds the Blessed Sacrament was really there in the Pope’s hands at St. Peter’s square on an overcast March evening in Rome. The reason the faithful can experience a real connection to the Sacred Liturgy through a livestream or prerecorded Mass is because that particular Mass actually took place. It really exists (or really existed) and a viewer online knows that.
I’d like to use the common example of video conferencing to highlight this point better. When two people are speaking to each other on Zoom, or Skype, for example, on the one hand, they know that they are seeing a video on a screen and hearing audio from speakers yet, on the other hand, they know that this is still really an interaction because the person on the other end really exists, is really speaking and listening but in a mediated way. These same two people when seeing each other in person, however, have a far greater and more personal interaction precisely because they are actually present to one another: they see and hear not a digital and audible representation but the real and existing person who is actually present, body and soul.
Here we begin to see not only why events and personal interactions can be mediated—because they really exist—but also why there is a priority of being physically and bodily present in these events and interactions—because human beings are bodily and spiritual creatures whose interaction and communion with one another and with the Sacred take place in a full and complete way only when both of these dimensions are present and engaged.
I think of walking into a church for Mass. When this happens, one is able to take in the full beauty of the sacred space, the large or quaint expanse of the building, the stained-glass windows, the smell of candles or incense. One is able to encounter his neighbor and see his brother or sister in Christ, personally. In many cases, this is the only time that we can see certain people in our communities. During the Liturgy of the Word, the lector or reader or priest speaks directly to those who are physically there.
In the Liturgy of the Eucharist, at the consecration, people hear the bells and see the elevation of the host first-hand, knowing that Jesus is really and actually present right in their midst. Above all, our bodily presence at Mass enables us, if we are spiritually prepared, to receive Jesus in Holy Communion. This interaction and communion with Jesus not only is profoundly spiritual but also gives us physical union with Him, something that is not possible through a digital screen.
It is my hope that the basic truths in this reflection on the unique but somewhat awkward blessing of livestreaming the Mass help us to see why there is a value in mediating the sacred through digital media, but even more, why there is a real priority and why it is necessarily more valuable to be bodily and spiritually present at the Mass whenever it is available.
During the weeks of Easter, I plan on writing a small catechetical series on the Sunday and Holy Day Mass obligation, but I began with this reflection hoping to have shared something personal and helpful as we look back on this past year of the pandemic and toward the Solemnity of Pentecost when the Sunday and Holy Day Mass obligation will be restored.
Fr. Andrew Heaslip serves as Diocesan Director of Religious Education, Diocesan Coordinator of Digital Media, Director of the TV Mass for the Homebound, and as a teacher at St. Gregory the Great Seminary.
