Fridays are known for social hours. There’s even a catchphrase to go along with the day — “Thank God it’s Friday” or “TGIF.” Even during these seemingly long days of quarantine, Sean, a resident of the Kelleher Apartments, operated by the Department for Persons with Disabilities’ (DPD), looks forward to Fridays. For the past few weeks, DPD has been engaging its service recipients to a “TGIF” social happy hour via video conferencing every Friday.

Father John Catoir, a retired priest of the Diocese of Paterson, is celebrating 25 years as president and founder of St. Jude Media Ministry. The ministry, which began with national radio “spots” produced and distributed throughout the country, has today expanded to include worldwide outreach with uplifting messages via video and social media. His online Christmas and Easter prayer marathons have reached more than four million viewers across the globe.

Losing my mother to COVID-19 has been the most difficult experience of my life and nothing will be the same again in the world, personally and literally. My mom went home to heaven on April 30. She experienced her first symptoms of the disease some time during Holy Week.

In no time, “virtual classrooms” on video-conferencing platforms for St. Vincent Martyr School in Madison started to resemble real physical classrooms. The teachers and students quickly got acclimated to the dynamics of online classes — like learning how to ask and answer questions in the virtual space — all while continuing to miss the classrooms that they left temporarily seven weeks ago when New Jersey closed schools due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Bishop Serratelli reminded the faithful, “God remains with us and strengthens us” in this time of pandemic, as he celebrated a Mass at St. Paul Inside the Walls: the Diocesan Evangelization Center in Madison, on May 1, the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker. The Mass was celebrated to honor and pray for those who labor for others, especially those who work on the front lines of this crisis for the health, safety, security, service and essential needs of all.

One good thing that has evolved during the pandemic is that telemedicine has started to become more prevalent as patients are now able to have appointments with their doctors and interact with them over their smart phone, tablet or home computer. This digital linking of physicians and patients has become a much-needed staple since the pandemic that has separated patients from visits to their doctor’s office due to shelter-in-place edicts.