‘This is a moment we’re going to be able to celebrate some day’: Even during a time of plague, Toronto’s believers keep the faith

On Easter Sunday, at Toronto's historic St. James Anglican Cathedral on King Street East, Bishop Andrew Asbil, accompanied by the church dean, an organist and a cantor will look out, not into the uplifted faces of 1,000 followers, but into the eye of a camera, livestreaming the service to the faithful in their homes.

"The most difficult part is knowing that you are not gathering as a community," said the bishop, who has been broadcasting services to parishioners throughout the citywide lockdown, begun in mid-March, aimed at slowing the spread of an illness sweeping the world like a biblical plague.

"It feels peculiar, like everything else about this pandemic."

Leaders of three downtown Christian congregations - St. James, St. Michael's Cathedral and Metropolitan United - are preparing for an Easter Sunday that is at once like no other, and at the same time very much like all the others - a celebration of triumph over suffering and death.

We asked them, and leaders in the Jewish and Muslim communities, how they are planning to celebrate the holiest days in their religious calendars, during a pandemic.

Easter revolves around the Christian story of the crucifixion of Jesus, the earthly son of God, and his resurrection, typically played out in a pageant of services over weeks that includes processions, alms, choirs, flowers and on Easter Sunday, churches filled to overflowing with congregants.

With everyone in the city ordered indoors, Easter will take place in churches stripped of the very core of the Easter service - the congregations, confined to their homes, waiting for the pandemic to pass. In response, hundreds of churches and temples and mosques have launched YouTube channels and are reaching out to congregants through Facebook or websites.

"People need to know the Catholic Church is celebrating these great days to the full," said Cardinal Thomas Collins, Archbishop of Toronto, who will be leading the Easter service from an empty St. Michael's Cathedral on Sunday.

St. Michael's has been broadcasting services for years, but with parishioners in pews.

"The people won't be there, but the mass goes on. We never stop that."

This year, church leaders will be celebrating not only the mystical and disputed victory of life over death two millennia ago, but also the small and large victories taking place around the city: The first responders and health-care workers risking their lives on the front lines of this epidemic, the ordinary people shopping for groceries for their neighbours, the city workers still caring for the homeless. They will pray for people living alone through this long quarantine, people who have been hit hard by the loss of income, and for those who are sick, sweating through fever and struggling for breath.

For Rabbi Yossi Sapirman, of the Beth Torah Congregation in North Toronto, the parallels with Jewish Passover, which began this week, seem remarkable.

Passover is the celebration of victory over an ancient plague in Egypt, at a time when Jews were enslaved, a plague that ultimately liberated them. Told to stay indoors on the night the plague stole over Egypt and to mark the doors of their homes, Jews complied and were spared, and the next day began their exodus from Egypt and enslavement.

"The parallels are beyond astonishing - the idea that the Angel of Death is passing over us if you don't stay inside," said Sapirman.

"It's a hugely meaningful Passover, because we're literally on the doorstep of our own personal exodus - this is a moment we're going to be able to celebrate some day."

While the rabbi is broadcasting live, he has become so lonely for his congregation that he has asked them to send in family pictures, and has pinned them to chairs and delivers his sermons to the pictures.

For Rev. Karen Jessie Bowles, interim minister of the congregation for Metropolitan United Church downtown, the phrase that has been tumbling around in her head that she hopes to use on Easter Sunday is "Love in the Time of COVID-19." It's a play on "Love in the Time of Cholera," a book by Nobel Prize-winning Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

"I keep thinking along those lines - what does love look like in this time and what is the opportunity here for change, what does the new normal look like - will we learn anything from this?"

COVID-19 has thrown a spanner into the works of daily life in countries across the globe and in every major economy on earth, but it has also brought blessings, Bowles said.

Those blessings include less pollution, fewer greenhouse gases, a slower pace of life, time with family, strangers reaching out to help strangers, and appreciation for humble work and the people who carry that work out - the bus drivers and cleaners and retail workers, putting their lives on the line for less glory than medical professionals are likely to receive.

Bowles will be recording her sermon from her home, using her iPhone and a microphone she ordered from online retailer Amazon, propped on a tripod. Her prescient director of music, Patricia Wright, thought to record Easter music before people were ordered not to gather in groups. The sermon and the music will be woven together, including an excerpt from Handel's "Messiah" and a French carol, "Now the Green Blade Riseth."

Change is also in store for those looking forward to Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting and prayer, which begins April 23 or April 24, this year, depending on when the new moon is first seen.

Days of fasting during Ramadan are typically rewarded by meals after sunset with family.

Mosques in Toronto closed March 13, cancelling weekly Friday services, and adherents are being told not to meet with family during the pandemic. Like their Christian counterparts, Muslim leaders are holding prayer meetings online, using YouTube and for smaller groups, apps like Zoom.

"This is an opportunity for us to reflect and think about our relationship with God and our relationship with humanity, and to reflect on all of the bounties God has given us," said Fareed Amin, chair of the board of directors of the Islamic Institute of Toronto.

Cardinal Collins acknowledges that Easter will look different this year. In substance, it will remain the same.

"We have worshipped God with extravagant beauty - music, art - that touches the heart," said Collins, of the Catholic Church.

"But every year on Good Friday, we really strip it down to just the bare altar, no candles, no flowers, nothing. Now it's as if every day is Good Friday. And that Good Friday has a powerful beauty of its own."

Francine Kopun is a Toronto-based reporter covering city hall and municipal politics. Follow her on Twitter: @KopunF