You may have heard that in the Diocese of Austin, at the direction of Bishop Joe Vasquez, we will no longer be able to archive recordings of live-streamed Masses, as we have done since the beginning of this pandemic. I would like to explain the reasoning behind this change.
Masses will be livestreamed at their usual times. The 8 a.m. Masses on Monday through Saturday, and the 8:45 a.m. Sunday Mass, will be livestreamed, and you can watch them on Facebook, our website, or Youtube while they are occurring.
You will be able to return later and find the saved recording of the first part of the Mass, with the readings, the homily, the Creed and Prayers of the Faithful (Universal Prayer) and even the exciting announcements. However, the Eucharistic Prayer and Commun-ion will not be saved for later viewing fortheological/liturgical reasons. This is what the Vicar General of Diocese said:
- The sacraments are fundamentally lived experiences of a lived reality in a particular time and place that are celebrated with the person of Jesus Christ in communion with his Body the Church.
- Participation in the Eucharist and maintaining the holiness of Sunday must never be a matter of convenience, but rather, a faithful response to God’s invitation to commune with Him and the assembly together.
- The liturgy experiences a poverty when it becomes an “on-demand” act.
-The liturgy is something we are invited to at a specific place and time rather than something to which we invite ourselves.
The celebration of the Eucharist is never an individual act. It is by its very nature communal. We do this as the Body of Christ to-gether. However, we are unable to gather in this time. To empha-size the essentially communal nature of the Eucharist, we gather not in location (proximity) but in time (temporally). The Eucharist is something we DO TOGETHER. Ideally, we would do that all in one space, and we look forward to when we can again do it side-by-side. In order to emphasize the collective nature of the Eucha-ristic event in the meantime, we need to do it together in time, simultaneously. And we miss being together with you, your pres-ence in time is still valuable to our celebration.
That is my understanding (for what it is worth) of what Bishop Joe is trying to achieve. You may or may not agree with the rea-soning, but Bishop Joe thinks this is what is best for the over-all spiritual health of this diocese.
I sincerely regret if this causes you or your loved ones a sense of loss. If it is simply a matter of inconvenience then I invite you to pray after you watch the archived videos, you will not be alone. We will have the readings, homily, prayers of the faithful saved and archive for you to enjoy.
We are looking at the possibility of live-streaming another Sun-day Mass, either the 11:30 or the 5:30 p.m. We have pushed our recording crew to the limit (he is also doing weddings, funerals, Baptisms, First Communions, etc,) and would probably have to hire another staff person as our videographer. Right now we don’t have the budget for that. But we are looking at ways to make that happen.
Please keep Bishop Joe and the staff at St Austin’s in your prayers as we try to figure out how to respond faithfully and with evan-gelical zeal in this unusual, difficult, and uncomfortable time. God bless!
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