Outdoor Masses
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Sunday, January 31, 2021, 8:30 AM - 1:30 PMRepeats every Sunday until January 31, 2021Location: St. Anthony's Parking LotWhile the pandemic continues; St. Anthony's continues to celebrate Mass for the community. Join us in the parking lot of the church at our posted Mass Times.
During normal times, the parking lot at St. Anthony’s parish in Hughson, has been known for flooding during big rainstorms (thankfully we got that fixed) and being a little too tight for comfortable parking; but the rest of the week it goes unnoticed. During the week, delivery trucks come and go, cars are left parked and the occasional teenager is learning to drive with an anxious parent by their side.
But since July, when California banned indoor religious services in many counties in order to stop the spread of COVID-19, this parking lot became our place of worship.
Many of our parishioners still attend weekly celebrations. One recent Sunday morning, about 140 parishioners gathered at the 8:30am English Mass and 220 gathered at the 10:00am Spanish Mass. That’s not included those who joined us at the 11:30am and 1:00pm Masses. Some stayed in their cars while others came out of their cars and sat in lawn chairs they brought from home.
After California announced in July that counties on the state's coronavirus watch list would not be allowed to have indoor worship services, Stockton's bishop said Catholics could worship outdoors in affected counties. While we returned to our indoor services briefly in September within a month we were back outdoors due to an increase in the virus; but our community moved forward. St. Anthony’s has varied the sanctuary set up from a simple stage under a single tarp, to large decorated trailers for the Christmas Season celebrations to our current setup where the altar area is set up underneath three 20’x40’ tents. The hope, of course, is that we will see the inside of our church soon. However, as we wait for the government to loosen the restrictions of indoor services, we will continue to enjoy fellowship with one another as we wear masks and socially distance ourselves to maintain proper pandemic decorum.
