On Wednesday, at a school mass for the students of St. Mark in Buffalo, Father Dave Richards prepared for the Prayers of the Faithful.
In a Catholic Mass, it is a time for the congregation to collectively offer up their intentions of strength, perseverance, comfort and love. They lift up their hearts in prayer to those in need of housing, to the poor and the sick. They ask for their leaders to see the job ahead clearly. They offer prayers to families, parents and children. They remember those who have come and gone.
It made sense only in that moment to add in the one person who had been on the mind of everyone in Buffalo over the course of the past 48 hours.
Richards’s schedule is relentless. On Sunday, he jetted from a new 9 a.m. service (and the delayed performance of their Christmas pageant, which was canceled by a punishing blizzard) to a 10:30 Mass. Due to a shortage of priests, he covers St. Mark, St. Rose of Lima, St. Margaret, Holy Spirit, Assumption Black Rock and All Saints. His heart was full, having seen at least 75% of the pews filled with parishioners. This kind of schedule puts him face to face with the fragility of life so often. It is so much of his job to counsel the families that come to him with stories of how their lives have completely and irreversibly changed over the course of a few short seconds. It is his job to provide some semblance of stability and assurance during the times when little makes sense. He describes a beauty in prayer, be it during church or otherwise. One of the greatest experiences of his life was his own ordination, when he felt the well-wishes of thousands praying over him, and the support of all the Saints. So it was a unique position he found himself in as a Bills fan watching Hamlin being administered CPR, watching as the world channeled its uncertainty. Some people left memorials or posted on social media. More people donated money. But many also prayed, which brought the moment to him. was plastered on digital billboards along major highways in the area, as commonplace as the gray western New York skies. It was anywhere you looked at the stadium in Orchard Park through the week and into Sunday. It was on T-shirts, at tailgates across the country, on the backs of players warming up in other NFL games, on the logos of each team’s social media account. It was in hashtags under ads for homemade No. 3 cookies being sold at the local Spot Coffee in Hamburg. It was on the lips of Bills teammates as they gathered at Josh Allen’s house. It didn’t even have to be religious in nature for anyone to get it. For anyone to feel what the priest or the teammate or the fan or the trainer or the coach felt in that moment. That’s what made the past week in Buffalo so difficult, but ultimately so incredible. So many prayed in some way Monday night into Tuesday, on to Wednesday and Thursday. Everyone felt the lift of each update, how Hamlin began to move in his hospital bed, how his father told the players Hamlin would want them out there on the field, or how he asked, in his first moments of consciousness, whether the Bills had beaten the Bengals that night. By Sunday, after a 35–23 win over the Patriots at home, Hamlin was virtually piped into the postgame locker room and broke down the team’s huddle.
