It’s raining in the sacristy!
Nothing like being told of changing weather patterns in one of the liturgist’s most vital rooms. And one minute before a Mass with six baptisms, to boot.
The early diagnosis (I was accompanying 10:30 Mass so the repair guys and our business manager had vacated by the end of the second liturgy) was a broken radiator on the second floor. Water was pouring out of the bottom of the unit, thus into the sacristy, and from there, into the youth minister’s office and storage room in the basement.
Roman Missal 3 escaped damage, as did the pew cards. So there’s no accounting for serendipity. Thankfully, the new Advent vestment that just arrived was hanging on the dry end of the room.
But what happens in your parish if “rain” or some other calamity takes out your sacristy? Has it ever happened? Do you have an emergency plan for mishap?
21 November 2011 at 6:40 pm
Well, I guess one can always fall back on the time-honored approach:
When in wonder, when in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout!
That always works for me.
Happy Thanksgiving, one and all.
21 November 2011 at 7:24 pm
It hasn’t happened at my church, but it did at my house …. massive tarping ensued.
22 November 2011 at 6:34 pm
Had a hot water heater in a closet off the sacristy decide to empty its contents all over the floor when I was a much younger priest. What I didn’t realize when I came upon the scene was that the lowering water level in the tank would trigger more water to enter the tank, which would then further spill out onto the sacristy floor, ad infinitum. Fortunately, the pastor, being a much more-handier man, quickly located the isolation valve upstream of the hot water heater and all we had to do is a very thorough mopping with maybe 100-200 gallons of water on the floor and spilling outside.