The garden shears in the pew was a clear sign that reserving seats had reached a new level. 

Unfortunately for those who wanted to attend the Easter Vigil Mass at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church on March 30, turning up on time was not sufficient. Turning up 30 minutes early was not even sufficient. 

If you arrived three hours early, you would not have been the first — because the piles of coats beat you there. 

It would be fine if hordes of people were saving seats, but they weren’t.

They came into the building to see hordes of coats. And a pair of garden shears. 

Now, having so many people turn up to mass on Easter weekend is actually a good thing. 

Reserving pews in the front for those receiving baptism or communion for the very first time is perfectly all right. 

And if people had the endurance and the dedication to sit in their seat for five hours, they at least have my respect. And they deserve their seats.

But when tons of people have reserved their pews with a sweater or some such outer garment hours before the service is going to start, we have an issue. 

This is a potential violation of the “treat your brother as yourself’ command, but mostly it’s just plain rude. 

Having the decency to not save your spot obscenely early is one of those rules that can be broken if one person does it. 

I mean, even if a couple people do it, the world moves on. 

But when everyone does it?

Then you get a situation like on Saturday. 

People only had to save seats that early because they knew other people were doing it too. And the unfortunate who were out of the loop were seatless. 

So, next year, let’s not save seats starting at 1 p.m. for a vigil at 9.