Getting acquainted: 'Lemonade on
the Lawn' brings parishioners together

By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press

WORCESTER – Hearkening back to the past, though things aren’t the same as they used to be, Blessed Sacrament Parish held a summer get-together Saturday – in and outside the church.

“Bring a Friend to Church and Lemonade on the Lawn,” said the parish’s July 6 Sunday bulletin, inviting people to stay after the 4 p.m. Lord’s Day vigil Mass, to “drink a refreshing glass of lemonade and have a few cookies. Talk to people you see at church many weeks but don’t really know. Introduce yourself. Make a new acquaintance.”

After chatting with parishioners on the lawn following Saturday’s Mass, Father Thomas G. Landry, pastor, said the idea was to do something low key and welcoming. It was “kind of a scaled down version of the parish bash,” a picnic-like event held on the church’s front lawn in the fall.

He said he’d just heard three conversations among people who didn’t really know each other, even if those they were talking with looked familiar. A couple of people who usually attend Mass on Sundays saw people they hadn’t seen in years, he added.

Speaking of the parish’s invitation to bring a friend to Mass, he said, “I didn’t see somebody genuinely unfamiliar.”

“We were enticed by the lemonade,” said Leah Perez, faith formation facilitator, who came with her husband and children to the Saturday Mass, a break from their tradition of worshipping there on Sundays.

Asked if she brought a friend, Jovermina Gomes, a Blessed Sacrament parishioner for 22 years, turned the tables.

“God brings me here every week,” she said. “First the Church, then work.” She said she didn’t bring someone else because she had to go to work after Mass and refreshments.
Nicholas Merolla said he brought someone – his father, Anthony Merolla, as he does each week.

If parishioners had brought friends, the parish would have taken advantage of the opportunity to reach out, but didn’t strenuously work for that, Father Landry said.

“We wanted this to be a pleasant experience” of meeting people you know and don’t know, he explained. He said the parish is preparing a calendar of other events for this fall through next spring.

“People are busy in the summer,” said life-long parishioner and pastoral council member Anne Reardon French. “We thought, ‘This is a very easy, inexpensive ... event.’ And who doesn’t enjoy a cold glass of lemonade on a hot summer afternoon?” She said people go to church for the liturgy, but also for a sense of community.

“It takes a lot of time and work to put together” some of the events the parish once held, she said. “We used to have the coffee shop ... coffee and pastries after all the Sunday Masses.” Now there are only two Masses on Sunday and it is hard to get people to set up and staff a coffee shop and clean up afterwards, she said. So, the parish just holds such gatherings occasionally.

“Our parish is aging,” she continued. “We don’t have as many young families” as the parish used to have and would like to have. “I said, ‘Let’s do something like this; we haven’t done it in a long time.’”

She said John and Darlene O’Connell, the finance committee chair couple, “used to do this.”
Mrs. O’Connell said she and her husband started lemonade on the lawn at Blessed Sacrament to give Saturday night Mass attendees a chance to chat with each other over a cold drink and snacks, because the coffee shop was just on Sundays.

They held it after Father Chester J. Misiewicz, who had been their pastor at St. Charles Borromeo Parish, became Blessed Sacrament’s pastor when the two parishes merged in 2010, she said.

“We did it probably two or three times a year,” she said, and continued it about twice a year when Father Richard F. Trainor became pastor of Blessed Sacrament, but they had to shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mary Ellen Stansky, a pastoral council member who worked with Ms. French on last Saturday’s lemonade on the lawn, said parishioner Sue Burns sewed the tablecloth decorated with lemons, which was spread over a table under a tent on the shady side of the church, since the hot sun was shining on the front lawn.      

There were “more people than we’ve seen on a Saturday” in the summer, she said. Her husband, John Stansky, who usually handles the livestreaming of the Mass, said 66 people attended that Mass, up from about 44 the previous Saturday. He suggested that part of the reason for the increase was the presence of a family that had the Mass celebrated for a loved one and that the lemonade perhaps drew some people.