Tuesday's Roman Catholic Run

Weather: Cloudy, 40°F, Wind West @ 5 mph, 84% Humidity.
Route: 7 mile route through east side of Rochester, New York,past a number of Catholic churches.

It occurred to me yesterday morning that Easter Sunday is coming up soon. If this were a normal school year, I would be looking forward to spending the day before returning back to school following Spring Break with my family. Of course, with all that is going on, and, as a result, not having been in the local grocery store to regularly experience the advertising blitz, thoughts of chocolate bunnies and lilies have been few and far between. More than candies and flowers, I have always associated the Easter season with Lent and Holy Week. As a child raised Roman Catholic, Lent was usually about (pretending to) give up something. As an adult, my Lenten observance often consisted of my trying to add some sort of discipline to religious practice rather than taking something away; instead of abstaining from soda, I might commit to volunteering at church or helping with Stations of the Cross.

In the last few years I have done little of anything explicitly, formally "Catholic", not that the idea hasn't crossed my mind. This morning, as I set out for a short Tuesday run, I thought of the large number of parishes and churches in the Rochester community I have had the opportunity to visit in my fifty years. Whether  as a parish member, CYO volunteer sports coach, student, parent, and friend, the Catholic Diocese of Rochester has been a significant part of my past life. As I set out, I made a point to try and pass as many as I could over the course of a 5-6 mile loop. I've always lived in the city, and have chosen to attend services in my community, so I managed to see the exteriors of a few yesterday morning.

Blessed Sacrament Church, 534 Oxford Street. (3/31/20)

Blessed Sacrament is the most recent church at which my family and I attended mass, due primarily to its proximity to the home we've lived in for the past 15(!) years. Back in the heyday of Catholicism in Rochester, Blessed Sacrament and the next two churches, St. Boniface and St. Mary's, each had their own pastors (or two!) and served their communities as independent parishes. Nowadays, with a shortage of priests, each maintains a unique identity, but share clergy between them. Cumulatively they are referred to as the Southeast Rochester Catholic Community.

St. Boniface Church, 330 Gregory Street. (3/31/20)

St. Boniface was the parish my children and I attended when we lived in the South Wedge. Both of my children served as altar servers, and I was a liturgical minister, and served on parish council for a number of years. Now, that seems like a million years ago. During my time on parish council, those churches now existing as the Southeast Rochester Catholic Community were just explore the possibility of merging services as a means of continuing to operate. Sadly, a significant loss to our Rochester community over the past twenty years is the closing a parish community elementary schools. My son and stepson met while attending pre-school there together, and it is also where my wife and I met. Lot of good memories of the parish and school (which famously has bowling lanes in the basement).

St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church and Rectory. 15 St Mary’s Place. (3/31/20)

I attended St. Mary's with my family when my son was first born and our daughter took Sunday school classes. It was always a very progressive church (we had psalms projected on the walls before the practice became standard mega-church stuff), was overtly accepting of a broad group of our community, and as a result, very welcoming. It occurs to me that we eventually found our way to St. Boniface because it was much more traditional, which means it reminded me of the parish I attended as a child (St. James at 109 Brockley Road). At the time (and they may still thought of as such for all I know), St. Mary's was also what I think of as a "commuter parish," serving folks from throughout Monroe County, not just those living in the heart of the city. I volunteered there, too, helping to clean up and set up following Sunday services, jobs my daughter would help out with. It was always neat to dispose of the remaining drops of consecrated wine from mass down the sacristy's "secret sink", where the pipe went directly into the earth. Catholics have some really neat practices and traditions...

Our Lady of Victory/St. Joseph, 210 Pleasant Street. (3/31/20)

Our Lady of The Americas Church, 864 E Main Street. (3/31/20)

Both Our Lady of Victory and Our Lady of the America's are geographically north of Main Street and for whatever reasons, I have not attended services at either. A quick check on the Diocese of Rochester's website show both to be fine parishes serving vital communities. I do seem to recall back in my parish council days there being some preliminary discussion of having St. Joseph's also align with the other three churches that eventually became the Southeast Rochester Catholic Community. I also recall their parish not being too hyped about that possibility.

As I sit here one day removed from the intended 5-6 that turned to 7 mile run, it is surprising how many memories and anecdotes I can recall from my time as an adult in each of the parishes, 99.7% of which are very positive. Most of my runs at this point are not about the physical act of running but about thinking, reflecting, and questioning. Which begs the question: why don't I still attend church services? That is an excellent question, for another run and post.