Seamus Ahearne has time to de-clutter and observe and write;
"it is the cleaners, the bin men, the shelf packers, the shop servers, the drivers of the lorries, the post people, the orderlies, the receptionists taking calls, the local nurses and doctors, the shoppers for the cocooned..... We need eyes to see and to appreciate and to be grateful..... if there is an outbreak of generosity and gratitude; Eucharist is happening."

Suggestion - put a green branch on your door or window on Palm Sunday.

The risen Jesus is present in every community however small. This was captured in this saying preserved in Matthew’s gospel: ‘For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them’ (18:20). Even the smallest gathering – just two people staying two metres apart so as not to spread the virus – has the Risen Lord is among them. This might be two people in a house, or it might be people linked on the phone or on skype.

Pádraig McCarthy offers practical suggestions for an alternative style of Holy Week from the norm.

Even at this late stage, a message from the Irish Episcopal Conference would be a great help to laity and clergy alike. It would also be picked up by the media and could provide a spiritual uplift for many.

Daniel P Horan in the NCR writes on the closure of churches and the suspension of public acts of worship in this time of pandemic.
"we are all called upon to care for one another by taking extraordinary measures that includes the suspension of public worship, means learning to see our love of neighbor not only as an assent to "worldly" or "secular" medical wisdom, but also an actual exercise of our love of God. Each of the manifold ways we are sacrificing to love our neighbors — self-isolation, quarantining, tending to the sick at home, supporting first responders, avoiding public places, not hoarding supplies, working remotely and even not going physically to church buildings — is itself an expression of our love of God."

Patsy McGarry writes in The Irish Times of priests under pressure to perform funeral Masses despite Covid-19 and of significant numbers of Irish Catholic priests cocooned in their homes as they are over 70.

Katie Ascough on catholicireland.net reports on a joint statement issued by the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, Church of Ireland, Methodist Church in Ireland, Presbyterian Church in Ireland and the Irish Council of Churches.

Should Church buildings now be closed following the further severe restrictions announced last evening by An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, and Minister for Health, Simon Harris?

Seamus Ahearne is reflecting on the imposed restrictions and like many is making discoveries about himself: "I need people! The empty house. The silence. The absence of banter. The non-visiting. The non-communion (2 metres)."
But there is also the awareness that "We have been given so much. We cannot take it for granted.  The virus tells us of this being one world and that we share a common world. We all belong. We all need each other."