英语访谈节目:疫情期间的牧师如何工作

Hari Sreenivasan: The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many to find new ways to work remotely. Our partners at Southern California station KCET bring us this first hand account from a priest in Santa Clarita who put his passion for technology to work for his parishioners. The story is part of their series "So-Cal Connected."

Rev. Albert Avenido: My first name is Father Albert and my last name is Avenido. Father Albert Avenido. We are at Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Catholic Church in Santa Clarita, California. So from day one, we were already able to do a livestream. And so it is truly a different situation because now we have to be here, it's an hour before to ensure the sound is OK. This is my table, this is the studio and that is the sound. Once you're live, you're live. There's no editing there. So we always try to do our best. And again, I'm enjoying it. Everything is grace. Yeah, everything is grace. This is one of the graces of COVID-19 for me to again have time with technology, with setting up all. It was a March 27 when I received a a request to do a funeral service. And then the bottom line was that I was told that I will be the only person at that service. So it was kind of a difficult situation and even after I came back to the rectory, I've been thinking of that. How many more families, how many more people will have this kind of experience? And the last time that they see their loved one was in the hospital, because the next time it's already in an urn, you know that it's already cremated. That's hard. That's very hard. Saint Kateri Tekakwitha lost her family when she was very young because of a pandemic. Yeah, like chicken pox at the time, she herself experienced what we have been experiencing right now. One of the things that I realized over here is truly the value of family. The value of family, you know, your love for one another in your family that probably during those normal times we always take that for granted. So that's that's what I'm praying for, that when we go back again to the normal, I didn't know what would that be, pretty. I hope the new normal would be work and family.