Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

Happy Easter to you! Our Lord Jesus, the fullness of life and love, conquers the worst of sin and death and carries us with him over death to eternal life. Today is the beginning of all the rest there is: let us rejoice!

First of all, I want to thank you for coming to Mass this Easter day. I know it must seem strange for some of you gathering for Easter in the Expo Center—that is, if you  weren’t here ten years ago when we attempted Easter Sunday at the church for the last time! Imagine: you can only have one Vigil, and we see about 7,500-8,000 people at the three Masses on Easter. Everyone would need to come, and get in and out of the parking lot 11 or 12 times on Easter morning! And, by the way, everyone likes the 10:30 Mass!

I was talking about this last week and was telling someone who had never been to our Easter Masses at “Saint Expo” how much fun it was to celebrate Mass there. They stopped, and looked at me strangely. Can Mass be fun? Well, maybe I haven’t always had the greatest of word choices, but I was trying to express something maybe
with a word that doesn’t really exist.

Mass at Expo is remarkable. Listen to the sound of 3,500 people singing. Just look around and get a sense of how profound is the Body of Christ in Fredericksburg. So present. It is uncommon. It is also a whole lot of fun to celebrate it with you.

I’ll never forget, I had been here at Saint Mary only a short time and someone sent me a not-sonice email about how I had to stop smiling when I was distributing Eucharist at Mass! I mean, I wasn’t being goofy or anything. Still, I can’t imagine anything that could make us happier. Yet for them it was somehow diminishing the solemnity of the moment. But what other emotion  could be more right? Isn’t it true? Somewhere inside us we have been convinced that being reverent isn’t something you really, down deep enjoy… there must be something wrong. It’s like if the music is a little quicker and brighter, back in the back of our minds we could think that it is somehow less sacred. Is it possible that there is no other day in which we would be more joyful—in our whole lives—than today? The day when you and I, members of the Body of Christ, celebrate the resurrection of the Body of Christ.

Really, at every Mass—but especially at Easter—we should be singing our loudest, like it might be the last time we get to sing praise. It doesn’t make any sense at all to hold back. And it always sounds so beautiful, because it is the voice of the Body of Christ singing to the Father.

At Easter Masses when we renew our baptismal promises: Do you believe…? The “I DO”” should take the roof off of Saint Expo. Because there is nothing more important to be said at that moment, or any moment of our whole life. I say this sometimes at baptisms: “Say it like you mean it!”

It’s true, sometimes our thoughts are elsewhere. Maybe we don’t feel like singing, or maybe we would like a different song. As one of our former music directors told me one time (not David!) when I told them I really didn’t like a particular song and would prefer we not use it, I was told, “Well, isn’t it a good thing that it’s not all about you?!” No one had ever told me that before. I learned a lesson, point taken. (It might have been delivered a bit more respectfully, but point taken.) When we participate, it is not I who live, it is Christ who lives in me—in a most perfect way when we gather in Jesus’ name and pray, and celebrate. It fulfills us, and the by-product is our joy.

Maybe people just need permission. I give it. t is okay to be so filled with joy today because f the gift of mercy and new life and salvation bought about by Jesus’ Passion, Death and Resurrection: you can sing like mad. You may have ears. You may become absolutely lost in the love of God and discover something new about ourselves and our parish family. That we are a people called through the Resurrection of Jesus to be people who celebrate life for God and for one another. And celebrate it with every ounce of our gratitude and love.

And there is no one who is excluded from this invitation to discover this remarkable, profound, uncommon presence—both of God in our lives, but also our life in God. It is where we come together to be most completely who we are, undeserving sinners though we probably remain, to learn to forgive by being forgiven, how to love
by coming to know one another and how to serve by our being near him. Let this joy overflow, and transform all the days to come as we live it.

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

He is our Passover. The words hang in the air as we pray the first Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation. “Indeed, though we once were lost and could not approach you, you loved us with the greatest love: for your Son, who alone is just, handed himself over to death, and did not disdain to be nailed for our sake to the wood of the Cross. But before his arms were outstretched between heaven and earth to become the lasting sign of your covenant, he desired to celebrate the Passover with his disciples…”

He is Lord of the Passover, God who became Man for this moment when he could become the fulfillment of Creation’s deliverance. He becomes the Lamb of the Passover meal, prescribed so carefully by God in the meal of the flight from Egypt, now in the form of unleavened bread, because the people of Israel have no time to wait for the yeast to rise… we must flee from our captivity and come to know the freedom of the daughters and sons of God who is life. Now, take haste. To God, whose love is greater than any sin. God, who is love, must redeem his beloved.

“Therefore, as we celebrate the memorial of your Son Jesus Christ, who is our Passover and our surest peace, we celebrate his Death and Resurrection from the dead, and looking forward to his blessed Coming, we offer you, who are our faithful and merciful God, this sacrificial Victim who reconciles to you the human race.” And from the second prayer, “Accept us also, together with your Son, and in this saving banquet graciously endow us with his very Spirit, who takes away everything that  estranges us from one another.”

Come, gather this Thursday, as we re-present this event of our salvation, the institution of Eucharist and Priesthood when Jesus literally came into his own and fulfilled the plan formed by God from the beginning of the world. The Meal and the Cross form a unity such that they cannot be separated either from themselves or from the dawn of new life in resurrection. For this reason the three days of the Sacred Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil) cannot be separated, they form one continuous liturgy which begins with the Last Supper and ends with the Empty Tomb. The tomb makes no sense without the ultimate sacrifice; likewise, the sacrifice This is my Body, this is my Blood makes no sense without a victory, his passing over the darkness and silence of our death. You will notice we only begin once with the customary sign of the Cross, only once do we end with the final blessing after the Vigil Mass: they form a continuous whole, one liturgy of the saving Mystery of Jesus.

There is something rare about what happens on Good Friday. We observe the three hours of Jesus’ suffering and death on the Cross, and people became accustomed to the Stations of the Cross in the few centuries before Vatican II before the restoration of the ancient Triduum in 1969, but these are really private meditations and devotions. Neither of these actually belong to the particular ancient Tradition of the Church for this day. We intentionally gather in the darkness of Good Friday evening to recognize the emptiness of the church where, for one day, Jesus is not present among us. We recognize the impact of this event: no sacraments may be celebrated  because the Lord of life has died. We listen to Saint John’s account of his Passion. We venerate the wood of the Cross, the instrument of our salvation. We receive Communion, leftover from Holy Thursday which is brought into our space from outside.

The Apostles took up the commemoration of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, because his Death and Resurrection are at the heart of our salvation, our Passover. At least by the second century, Christians celebrated the Great Easter Vigil, an event which began the night of Holy Saturday, continuing until dawn on Easter morning. During this vigil, Christians commemorated salvation history, awaited the return of Jesus, and celebrated the Resurrection of Jesus at dawn on Easter Sunday. It was at the Vigil that catechumens, after a three-year period of catechesis, were baptized and received first Communion. The Easter Vigil is the most important day of the liturgical year. Imagine if our Vigil were to start at sundown and end at sunrise, as in the early Church! As it is, it lasts several hours, as we only include seven readings and psalm responses from Scripture, instead of listening to the Word of God all night until the new light of dawn. At that moment of Resurrection we sing, again, the Glory to God and the light of Christ, blessed and venerated, floods our hearts and minds with the new life of Christ himself.

Easter Sunday Masses are the celebration of our new life in Baptism as we gather for the sole purpose to proclaim the joy of our new life, as we renew our promises and are sprinkled in the waters of the Easter font of rebirth. A day of ultimate Joy, we gather for no other reason than to celebrate and give thanks. Join us for these amazing days.

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

Sisters and brothers, after this weekend you will notice that all eyes, all minds, all hearts turn now to the solitary moment which defines us as brothers and sisters. We begin the final, proximate preparation for the re-present-ing of the battle waged for our souls, the moment that evil waged his most desperate war against Love, fighting for our redemption. It seems unlikely [to say the least] that we could possibly have been worth so great a price, to have been so beloved by God while so unworthy, while we were still sinners, that God would sacrifice his own Love to gain ours. Your love, and mine.

That Word of God has his most eloquent expression of Love in the silence on the Cross. Everything the Father has, he has given to me; everything I have received from my Father I have given to you…

In this Extraordinary Year of Mercy we listen to the Passion of the Lord according to Saint Luke. Though a small comfort, it is a comfort to listen that there were people around Jesus who were willing to show him mercy. It was Pilate’s intention to let Jesus go free, having found no fault in him, though he finally gave in to the demands of the threatening mob. Simon helps Jesus (willingly?) carry the Cross. The women of Jerusalem are lamenting over his suffering. In the Gospel of Luke Mary is not mentioned meeting Jesus along the way, especially odd since Mary has a prominent presence in the story of Luke. Maybe the story was so sad to Jesus’ followers that he is merciful in not relating it.

One of the two criminals crucified with Jesus, in the middle of dying, shows Jesus the mercy of acknowledging his innocence, which leads him to make an act of faith. In that last  moment of his life, Jesus extends to him the mercy of salvation.

In Jesus’ moment of dying, he offers a prayer to the Father on behalf of those for whom he is dying – us – that we be forgiven for our ignorant sinfulness. The last words of the Word reveal God’s Mercy, the reason for all of this: “Father, forgive them…” After all is finished, the centurion comes to faith, “This man was innocent beyond doubt,” and the virtuous and righteous man Joseph came to collect Jesus’ Body and honor it with a proper burial. We do what we can, in the face of such darkness.

But Luke includes another significant detail. There is something that happens in the midst of the darkness, the storm, the confusion of pain and death: the curtain in the temple is torn in two. When I was a kid I used to wonder why he bothered with this detail. We had curtains on all our windows at home. I’m not a fan of curtains, but I guess they do keep the  neighbors from looking into your house during the day.

It wasn’t until I was in seminary that I realized the impact of this event. You see, the Holy of Holies was the center of the temple, there were layers of security and checkpoints from the streets outside to various courtyards which restricted first the gentiles, then the women, then the lay men, then the people of privileged classes, finally the priests. The holiest place was the inner sanctum, the Holy of Holies where the ark had been kept. It was the place where God dwelled. Only the high priest (Caiaphas, that year) was allowed to enter one time, to take the blood of the sacrifices and sprinkle it on the sacred stones within, a ritual of purification by which the people believed they were forgiven their sins. The curtain was the final barrier: it was made of iron links. Its purpose was to keep us out.

At the moment of Jesus’ death, the curtain is torn top to bottom. It would have taken the same force needed to split the earth, to make the cracks that you can see today in the rock at the top of Golgotha inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The curtain is torn top to bottom: God’s Love is not conquered, but by his self-sacrifice he can open himself to all people, not a privileged few or those who even might deserve it on a rare day. It is ours. It is not separate, it is approachable. It is near. And we have life.

God bless you.

Wednesday Noon Lenten Ecumenical Prayer Services

Micah Churches gather for prayer and almsgiving to the homeless. Light lunch reception follows.

March 16 Rev. Allen Fisher (Presbyterian Church) preaches at Fredericksburg Methodist Church.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

Everything we do in the spiritual life orients us both toward God and toward one another as Church; it would never be a turning inward, or a self-centered act. All God’s  many gifts are given to us as individuals to form us together as Christ (“conform” us into the person of Christ, members of his Body), which would have as the goal always to turn toward others in service (“…not to be served, but to serve“). Made in God’s image, his self-emptying love is seen in our actions of self-emptying love.

At first glance I think everyone would agree with this statement. But sometimes it isn’t, actually, the reality of our actions. And Lent is a good time for us to consider the way that God calls us together.

Take, for example, the way so many people say they don’t really need to confess sins to a priest: “I just go directly to God.” Many people can convince themselves that sin is only a personal issue and avoid sacramental reconciliation for years. But the Church has always taught that our sins have two dimensions, the vertical one where we sin against God, and the corresponding horizontal dimension where every sin we commit also impacts every other person to whom we are united, not only by our humanity, but especially in the Body of Christ. The process of reconciliation requires absolution that originates from both dimensions. Both must be healed.

For that reason, throughout the early centuries of the Church, confession of sins was always made publicly. You would, literally, stand before the entire assembly and confess. I wonder how that would go over today. Would we desire reconciliation that much that we had to admit our faults openly? It is a practice that can still be found in some religious orders today.

Thankfully, today the Church allows reconciliation to take place in absolute confidentiality, but the confession must be made out loud, still, and the absolution comes from God and the Church, through the instrumentality of the sacrament of Holy Orders, or priesthood. Aren’t you glad this changed?

But we can’t forget that the act of confession is not just a private act of forgiveness between you and Jesus, despite the fact that it is done privately. Every time, you can be certain of reconciliation to God and to the Communion of Saints.

Communion, like reconciliation, takes place on both dimensions. It can be a blind spot for me that I might focus only on the Communion that takes place between me and God, and I can ignore all those other people who surround me at that moment in church. I could actually find myself wishing that they were not there at all! How
noisy and unpleasant they can be, right?

How contrary this is to the reality of Communion! God has not called all of us into an infinite number of exclusive relationships so that we can ignore one another. Our Communion is with God in that vertical sense, certainly, but the entire action of Communion is that we are called together into a new reality: diverse members of  one Body who is Christ for the world. That is  one of the reasons we sing: like it or not, we are called to act together in the prayer of Jesus (one voice) and the mission of Jesus in the Church (one heart). It isn’t the time for self-focus.

One of the ideas called forth from the Second Vatican Council was to restore a theology of the active participation of the lay faithful in the mystery of salvation and how  the Mass constitutes that work. It is about receiving, of course, and bringing ourselves to God, present to him as he is present to us. But receiving is the means to an end that is the consecration of the world: we receive in order to become :  Christ made present to the world, Christ who will become all in all, not through me, but through us. Literally incorporated in baptism, we live the new life of the triune God.

God bless you.

Wednesday Noon Lenten Ecumenical Prayer Services
Micah Churches gather for prayer and almsgiving to the homeless. Light lunch receptions follow.
March 9 Rev. Aaron Dobynes (Shiloh Old Site Baptist) preaches at the Presbyterian Church.
March 16 Rev. Allen Fisher (Presbyterian Church) preaches at Fredericksburg Methodist Church.