Remembering those we’ve lost
Trinity Cathedral’s bell tolls 400 times to honor COVID-19 victims
It took nearly 15 minutes for the bells of Trinity Cathedral to ring 400 times Tuesday evening, with each toll of the bell representing 1,000 of the 400,000 American lives that have been lost to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Downtown Episcopal cathedral joined with Calvary Episcopal Church in Shadyside and Church of the Redeemer in Squirrel Hill to ring their bells at 5:30 p.m. as part of a national COVID-19 memorial service that included an observance at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington.
“The event itself is a nationwide event,” said Rich Creehan, director of external relations for the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. “Here in the diocese, we saw the value of calling to mind the victims who have died of COVID, not as a political statement, but out of human compassion.”
David Schaap, Trinity Cathedral’s organist and choirmaster of 17 years, led Tuesday evening’s prayer service, which was livestreamed on the church’s Facebook page.
“Normally, this is the type of thing you invite the community to,” he said, “because that’s what you do when you’re mourning: You go to church.”
Due to the nature of the pandemic, however, the community found other ways to participate.
At the beginning of the prayer service, Mr. Schaap lit 40 tea candles, each representing 10,000 of the COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. The candles spanned the length of the altar and rested on the stairs on either side of where Mr. Schaap would lead the prayers.
The service was quiet, no organ playing, no choir singing, no babies crying from the back row. The quiet seemed to fit the tone.
Near the end of the prayer titled “For Those Who Suffer of Covid-19,” Mr. Schaap paused to compose himself before reading the lines:
“Give rest to the weary; bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous.”
He spoke loudly enough to be
picked up by the microphone for the livestream but not nearly as loud as one would expect in a service with a full church. By the end of the prayer, he had shed a few tears.
“Who wouldn’t cry thinking about the enormity of that [the deaths]?” he asked after the service had ended.
After he finished the prayers, Mr. Schaap walked over to what looked like a miniature version of a keyboard — the automated board that controlled the bells. He kept track of how many times he had rung the bells on his fingers.
A microphone on a stand was
set up next to a side door that had been propped open so livestream viewers — along with a decent portion of the Downtown population — could hear the bells tolling.
Trinity Cathedral doesn’t normally do evening prayer services, Mr. Schaap said, but Tuesday’s “made perfect sense.”
On Tuesday, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 went over 400,000 while more than 24 million had contracted the disease, according to Johns Hopkins University.