Pastoral Perspectives: Behind the Scenes 

Corona Virus, Novel Virus, Pandemic, CDC, Quarantine.  This is what we have been hearing about now for most of 2020.  Our lives seem to be, in a word from the past, in limbo.  We were told to self-isolate, had a stay at home mandate, learned the word mitigate, and were urged to flatten the curve. Our world seemed to stop.  But what about the work of the church?  What about our parish, Christ the Divine Shepherd?
 
Just because we were not coming to church, it doesn’t mean the work, especially the charity of the church stopped. We were told in the scriptures to go and spread the gospel, the good news. Every Tuesday the Parish Leadership Team has met since March via teleconference to plan just how we continue to be church in this unprecedented time.   Well we decided its time to spread the “Good News” of what has been happening behind the scenes.
 
Today we will feature The Ladies of Charity.  Three of our predecessor parishes had active Ladies of Charity, St. Bartholomew, St. Bernadette and North American Martyrs.  On February 29, 2020 those women met with the Diocesan Board to form one unified group. They discussed their individual projects and ministries in light of the new parish structure and decided what would continue and what wasn’t possible in the future. The entire Diocesan Ladies of Charity formed its own 501 (c) 3 Charitable Organization.  Although it makes them autonomous they still function within the structure of one parish. The work of the Ladies of Charity is their title, charity.  The Ladies of St. Bernadette realized they would not be able to continue their food pantry to service our entire new parish boundary.  Through your generosity they had money in their treasury to continue, in a most needed way due to the pandemic, to serve what we now call the food insecure.  They gifted the following Food Banks $250.00: Cross Roads Presbyterian, Garden City Methodist, Penn Hills Service Association, and Pitcairn’s PitCares.  They also gave $1,000.00 to the St. Vincent de Paul Societies to be split between Monroeville and Penn Hills.
 
Another part of all of the Ladies of Charity in some way or another was that of bereavement.  Since there was a ban and then a limit of who could go to funeral homes and even cemeteries, electronic condolences were sent to every funeral home obituary to be read online.
 
The tricky part of charity is that it is to be done in secret, but sometimes we have to take our candle out from under the bushel for all the world to see so that the Father may be praised!
 
Bess Biamonte, CDS Pastoral Associate