It s Easter outdoors! New York s famous Easter Parade hits the streets of Manhattan while churches across the country hold services outside
Christianity s most joyous feast day was celebrated with the faithful sitting far apart in pews and singing choruses of Hallelujah through face coverings on a second Easter Sunday during the pandemic
At St. Patrick s Cathedral in Manhattan, Easter Mass was held at 50% capacity compared to last year when all Easter services were held virtually and streamed online
The annual Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival, a New York City tradition that dates to the 1870s, was also held virtually on Sunday for the second consecutive year
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Archbishop Jason Gordon prays during Mass on Easter Sunday at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Port of Spain. PHOTO BY VIDYA THURAB -
LAST year, Easter Sunday saw five people in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Port of Spain with Archbishop Jason Gordon being one of them.
This year, instead of preaching to a camera, two musicians and one deacon, Gordon was able to speak to an almost full, yet socially-distanced cathedral. And his joy was palpable. Hallelujah, hallelujah, that s why it s so joyful. When you think back to last year and how it was, this year really having the congregation is amazing, he told reporters after his Easter Sunday service.
Local church ‘embracing’ online Sunday Services
elisfkc2 / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0
“This is something new we’ve never tried before,” said Pastor Jonathan Herron of Life Church.
Like last year, Life Church of Saginaw and Midland made their Easter Sunday Mass a drive-thru celebration.
“We were in the heat of the pandemic, everyone was freaking out,” Herron said.
Thanks to the vaccine and reduced guidelines, life is a little more lax than last year and Life Church could celebrate Easter Mass in person and online too.
“People were able to spread out, see each other masked,” Herron said.
This year they were also able to bring back their annual Easter Egg Hunt.
Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa blesses the congregation at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on April 4, 2021. / Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
CNA Staff, Apr 5, 2021 / 03:30 am (CNA).- The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem urged Christians in the Holy Land on Easter Sunday to take courage and believe that “nothing is impossible.”
Preaching April 4 at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa noted that the coronavirus crisis had brought suffering to the Christian community in the past year.
“That is what I would like to say to our Church: Courage! Nothing is impossible. Let us stop falling back on our wounds, looking for the living among the dead, looking back to our past, to what we were, to what we have lost,” he said in his homily at the Mass, which was also live-streamed.
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