Dear People of St. Paul’s,
Over the past few weeks, several of you have asked, “When are we going to be able to re-gather for worship in our church sanctuary?” After the initial lockdown in early March to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in Italy, our worship has had to move online. But now that restrictions are starting to loosen across the country, religious services are allowable following strict guidelines of social distancing.
In our worship tradition, so much of what makes our in-person celebration meaningful is now legally prohibited: choral and communal singing, normal distribution of communion, and passing the peace. But it isn’t simply this dearth of normal liturgy or the stringent precautions that are keeping us from re-gathering in the sanctuary.
Once it became clear that a return to normalcy was a long way off, I began to speak with our Wardens and the Board of St. Paul’s about moving forward with the decade-long restoration project in which we’ve been engaged. This project began with the exterior of our church buildings, restoring surfaces and replacing roofs, and has been focused on the interior ever since. Four years ago, we cleaned and re-lit the Burne Jones mosaics in the apse and arches, and from November to February, before the pandemic struck, we restored a part of the side aisles in front of the organ and the aisle on the chapel side. Our chief architect David Yager and I had been in conversation for many years about the work that remained, namely the restoration of the main part of the nave from floor to ceiling.
This work was the most challenging because it would disrupt all of the activities that take place in our church on a daily basis, from worship services to concerts for the public. And every scenario that David and I discussed was going to require us to sacrifice normalcy and be transformed for a season, both liturgically and budgetarily. For one phase, we even considered locating a temporary altar at the back of the church and facing westward, while work was being done on the first half of the nave.
And then Covid-19 came, shutting down the whole country and ending all activities in the sanctuary. Once the initial shock from this dramatic change subsided, and the heavy lift of moving to online worship from in person worship lessened, we began to imagine a new possibility. What if we could use this time of loss and the death of our old way of doing things to invest in a faithful future? What if we could advance this restoration project now, while gathering in person was still prohibited, so that our eventual regathering would be in a church that was physically transformed for whatever ministries we will pursue in life after the pandemic? After much conversation, and after a generous gift to the restoration fund that made the work possible, the Vestry and I decided to move forward with this next phase.
On the first day that construction workers were allowed to resume activities, we began installing scaffolding in the nave. Patrizia Cevoli, a mosaic restoration artist began tracing the floor in front of the chancel steps and removing the damaged mosaic for repair. We worked out sanitization responsibilities and distancing plans while the work proceeded. The big surprise was that, uninterrupted by the need to sanitize every time a member of the public entered the sanctuary, the workers were quickly ahead of schedule.
So much ahead of schedule, in fact, that we began looking into the possibility of moving beyond the initial scope of the project (which was the first third of the nave) into completing an additional third. This increased work would mean that we would have to push back our initial expectation of using the space by the beginning of September to the beginning of November. One month more for another third of the church complete. The leadership of the church said yes to this tradeoff, and we proceeded with the new plan.
But the biggest surprise to follow was that the work was continuing to proceed so much faster than expected. In fact, it became apparent that the final third of the nave could ALSO be included in the revised timeline. This means that by the end of September the entire nave—from the chancel steps to the bronze doors on Via Nazionale—will have been restored. The only remaining area for restoration is a small section of the North aisle, which will be accomplished with minimal impact at a later date. Beyond the scope of the restoration project, we are looking for ways to rewire our space for increased video streaming and audio recording capabilities that should benefit all those who virtually enter this sacred space. Having already agreed to an end date, and with another generous gift to fund the project, we enthusiastically said yes to expanding the work plan.
So that is the story of why we are not regathering in the sanctuary before the beginning of October, even though other churches in Italy are. We measured the capacity of the Crypt, we measured the capacity of the Sculpture Garden, we measured the capacity of the Parish Hall. We drafted detailed guidelines for how meeting in any alternate space on our grounds would require extraordinary work and cost from those who are able to attend, and we weighed the impact of alienation for those of us who are unable to attend in-person. Opening our gates, doors, and spaces all impact the timeline of resuming worship in the sanctuary because of the need to constantly re-sanitize for worker and visitor safety. We reviewed our mission statement, and evaluated every possible scenario against our call “[to] bear witness in Rome to a dynamic and living faith, open to all and rejecting none.”
Remarkably, the list of what we can do within the walls is so much less than what we can do without them during this time, as long as you are willing to remain part of a welcoming and dynamic faith community.
While we are not meeting each other in the building, we are looking for the best ways to gather “Beyond the Walls,” in parks and safer outdoor spaces closer to where you live. No one denies that saying yes to this restoration work requires sacrifice and flexibility on our behalf. And yet, this time of transition, brought about by Covid-19, requires us to re-think how we do church anyway.
What does it mean to be a community of faith without a central physical gathering place? Can our community find ways to deepen connection and formation through online means, rather than just lament what we’ve lost in physical gathering? How can these new ways of being with each other now, and this restored space we will return to, transform the way we face the public and do ministry together in the years to come?
None of us could have foreseen or stopped the pandemic that has altered our world. But we do have a choice in how to respond when faced with difficulty: to fixate on what is missing or to search for opportunity. Through this restoration work, and as a general faith outlook, St. Paul’s desires to be a community focused on the latter.
Yours in Christ,
Austin