Per our conversation about Sunday mass during today’s liturgy board meeting, I have thought and consulted about it. Please share this through e-bulletin mailing list. I’ve decided that I would like to encourage people for this Sunday to assist Bishop’s mass online tomorrow 3/15/2020. I assume he will address the matter and since he is the one that made the [difficult] decision to shut down schools, churches and masses it would be important to directly hear from him.
Below is the link for the Bishop’s mass. There are other DSJ parishes that have been streaming mass before and are ready to do so. The links are there as well. I thank Nora Lundin for putting this together for us. And yes, there are other neighbor diocese’s that did not close their masses yet. We do not discourage going there this Sunday as everyone is always free to make their decisions of course. Just know that if our diocese made this decision is for serious health reasons and we want to collaborate in keeping everyone safe. Our bishop granted dispensation from our obligation to attend to Sunday mass.
I want to let everyone know that we the Saint Thomas Aquinas Parish priests will celebrate mass privately this Sunday in each site and pray for all our parish community needs. Also for the diocese and entire world.
Starting Sunday 3/22 we will start streaming as well our own local masses. But we will go through this together and will meet again soon.
Let’s stay together in prayer. Let’s not give up on our Lenten practices. Lets use this time to pause and reflect about the important things of our lives that at times we give for granted. As someone told me last night
‘it might be a good opportunity to go back to the basics’. It might be a time without public masses but a time to increase our prayer time.
We are working on keeping our Churches open through the entire week. Someone told me last night as well,
‘Church is where we go when things don’t go well’. I totally agree with that. As soon we finalize the logistics, we will inform everyone. I want to acknowledge that this will be a stressful time in many ways. We pray for one another.
Most of our public gatherings are suspended following the instructions from the Bishop and The SCC Health Department.
Finally, as I already said in our first note yesterday. If you wish and your finances allow during this crisis, please consider continuing your usual Sunday donation by mailing your gift to our office (
3290 Middlefield Rd. Palo Alto 94306) or through our online giving portal
https://paloaltocatholic.net/ . I understand we won’t be ‘providing a direct service’ but payments won’t stop either. We want to secure staff’s salaries and other parish needs. Thank you for your understanding and generosity.
We the priests are still available for emergency calls. Please refer to the emergency phone number
1-877-645-2712 (toll-free)
Please, feel free to spread this as not everyone might be on this mailing list.
Thank you, together in Christ,
Fr. Stasys, Pastor. (excuse my typos)
more updates on the status of the Coronavirus see the diocesan website at:
https://www.dsj.org/coronavirus/ _______________________________________________________________ Diocese of San Jose – This Sunday, March 15, 2020
on Sunday at 10am in English with Bishop Cantú. 11am in Spanish with Bishop Cantú and 12noon in Vietnamese with Father Dinh through facebook
. https://www.facebook.com/DioceseSanJose Holy SpiritParish – Available through their website at
https://holyspiritchurch.org/live-stream-mass/. During this suspension time Holy Spirit will be streaming at
9:30am every Sunday and then at
8:30am Monday through Friday. All in English. After the suspension the streaming video is offered on Sunday Masses.
Our Lady of La Vang – Recorded Sunday Mass Video available through their website at
https://dmlv.org/ Santa Teresa Parish – Online video of heir mass through their
Youtube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3-GuccZ_KahpZq0478tUQg St. John Vianney Parish – Live Stream at 10:30am in English and 12noon in Spanish at
https://venue.streamspot.com/c1b0b645.
St. Lucy Parish – Live Stream on their facebook page (
https://www.facebook.com/SaintLucyParish/) on
Sunday at 11am in English and
1pm in Spanish.