Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

I hope this Lent is well underway in your life, and that the time we are given has offered opportunities for you to do some serious work on turning back to God, in whatever way you might need that to happen. Every year there are those who are troubled by slow starts, or early failings in the plans they had made for Lent: if that is you, don’t give up. There is still time: start again, maybe with something you can do more realistically. It is my experience that, if people fail in their Lenten resolutions, it is most often because they find themselves unable or unwilling to take something away from their regular routine, usually something to eat or drink, or a form of entertainment. Maybe you realize that it just isn’t realistic at this point in your life to give up Brussels sprouts? Try something else. Or, better, rather than giving up something, make a resolution to do something positive, maybe something that isn’t so focused on self.

I think this was the spirit of the Church when she made changes to the regular rule for Fridays. Most people are still aware that Fridays in Lent (and Ash Wednesday) are days that we must abstain from meat in our diets. But most people aren’t aware any more that the dietary discipline wasn’t simply done away with—it is still very much in force—but the suggestion was made by the Church 50 years ago that we consider a corporal or spiritual work of mercy instead (a “pious or charitable act”), in place of the dietary restriction. This is for every other Friday of the year: we are expected to do one of these instead of abstaining from meat, if we choose to eat meat. Local bishops’ conferences (our USCCB, for example) were left with the role of teaching people about this.

It was one of those things that seemed to “go away” and everyone just said, “Well, that’s Vatican II…” though this discipline wasn’t actually dealt with in the documents of the Council at all, but by a 1966 Apostolic Constitution by Blessed Pope Paul VI. Fridays are still, very much, days of penance for Catholics, and we should take it
seriously. Many simply decide to continue to eat fish instead, though I believe that all-you-can-eat seafood platters don’t actually work according to the spirit of the law. And what about vegetarians? Are they penitential by nature? It is true, in past generations meat was considered much more of a luxury item—as it would be in many
of the poorer parts of the world today—then this sort of dietary discipline makes more sense.

So here are the classic substitutes for meat on Fridays. It gives new life to the whole idea of parish  ministry and community values: these are not just nice things to do, they are required:

C O R P O R A L W O R K S O F M E R C Y
1. To feed the hungry.
2. To give drink to the thirsty.
3. To clothe the naked.
4. To shelter the homeless.
5. To visit the sick.
6. To visit the imprisoned.
7. To bury the dead.

S P I R I T U A L W O R K S O F M E R C Y
1. To instruct the ignorant.
2. To counsel the doubtful.
3. To admonish sinners.
4. To bear wrongs patiently.
5. To forgive offenses willingly.
6. To comfort the afflicted.
7. To pray for the living and the dead

You can’t help but notice, in this extraordinary year of mercy with our parish theme, “…Sowing seeds of Mercy,” that we have meaningful work to do. In the long run, you might be healthier for not eating that hamburger, and you might really enjoy lobster and it could still be on the menu, but wouldn’t you—and, in turn, others—be much more likely to be touched by the life of Jesus if we made mercy our sacrifice of praise? No meat every Friday? Or mercy? You decide.

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

This weekend I am giving the homily at all Masses as the first installment of two other talks I will offer on Monday and Tuesday nights at 7:30pm, our Parish Mission during our annual tradition of 40 Hours’ Eucharistic Adoration. Please come.

“Rediscover, Reconnect.” This is the Mission title because I believe that there is a whole lot about our Faith that many of us either never got, or have forgotten about ourselves and spirituality. How can self-knowledge and self-love be so key to our understanding of our relationship with God and still so unhealthy in our own understanding of ourselves and how we are made? How would we ever “love our neighbor as we love ourselves” if we don’t even have a healthy understanding of what that means? And how do we get ourselves to a place where we can have even an hour of uninterrupted time to just sit and reflect on our lives, our life with God, and where we are headed?

Of course, Lent is a time to scale back the demands, turn down the volume, focus, really focus. Silence is not emptiness: we don’t need to be constantly stimulated, entertained, satisfied. This has become the expectation of so many in the way we approach life. But the truth is, such pursuits actually produce an emptiness, because we realize that these are things that never satisfy, they only cause us to seek more entertainment and greater stimulation. So we just use more, consume more, always more… It can become a never-ending spiral; it often results in desolation and despair, addiction or indifference.

In the same way, solitude is not loneliness. Many of us don’t like to be alone because we don’t like our own company. A spiritual director asked me once, early in formation, “Would you enjoy sitting down and talking with yourself?” “Would you hire yourself?” “Would you recommend yourself to serve someone in need?” Many people today don’t even know who they are, or never had a quiet enough moment to think about it. We are bundles of other peoples’ expectations and society’s rules (beyond immoral, now mostly amoral). We need to feel that we belong, that our existence is relevant—but to what, or to whom? All things, all situations, all structures are man-made and are only temporary—are things. Wouldn’t it make sense to pledge our allegiance (we, who are not things, but persons made for eternity) to the One Who Is always and forever?

Is it any wonder that families are confused, marriages fail, the last two generations of youth have just grown numb? Pope Francis says that indifference is the biggest enemy of our time, it is killing spiritual growth. Young people, especially, I’m calling on you: know yourself, and learn that we can’t know who we are unless we also know God, who made us and whose love keeps us in existence from moment to moment. Young people: rediscover your Church and come alive in the life of God. If he didn’t remember us every minute of the day, we would cease to be. We must remember him. This time of 40 Hours and Parish Mission is for you, especially. We older members of the Church can still change and turn our hearts  back to God. You don’t need to turn away! Come and show us how to start on the right path!

This is sure: you can’t hear the voice of God if there is no silence, no solitude in your life. Then—in the humility that you find there—you discover his mercy. The prayer of adoration is key to this formula. Then comes gratitude. Pope Francis said to the people of Chiapas, Mexico, last week: “Today’s world, overcome by convenience, needs to learn anew the value of gratitude!” We have to correct our throwaway culture. The place to begin is to realize that we can’t allow our own goodness, our own belonging to God to be  thrown away. Not by me, not by anyone who doesn’t know God or who I am. Then we become people of his mercy, people who speak his Word. Come, join us.

God bless you,

Wednesday Noon Lenten Ecumenical Prayer Services
Micah Churches gather for prayer and almsgiving to the homeless. Light lunch receptions follow.

February 24 Rev. Joe Hensley (St. George Episcopal) preaches at St. Mary Catholic Church.
March 2 Rev. Don Rooney (St. Mary Catholic) preaches at St. George Episcopal Church.
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.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

Our Music Director, David Mathers, and I finally had a chance to sit down and talk about the shape of our liturgical expression this year during the season of Lent. Often, I think, we seek to express a somberness, maybe it is a sobriety from all our everyday distractions and entertainments that brings us to our senses and makes us realize that we have to change. You notice, probably, that music often changes key to minor chords, a “darker” sound, a greater austerity in the way we celebrate Mass. The General Instruction even goes so far as to say that use of instrumental music as an embellishment is to be avoided, that our singing is more bare, and simpler.

However, sometimes the word “grim” comes to mind. While there might be a sincere and appropriate sadness in our hearts when we finally begin to realize how far we have allowed our hearts to wander away from God and how much we need to come home, I think that “grim” isn’t necessarily the right response. Because that moment that we realize we are far away from God—even if that distance may seem insurmountable—we also realize that it is a moment of grace from God that allows us to see it, and therefore God is at  work. God is calling. In that moment there can never be the grimness of living without hope: the moment of grace when we realize we must return to God fills us with the realization that God’s mercy calls us home, not his judgment.

It is almost as simple as the two options the minister of ashes may use while administering ashes on Ash Wednesday. “Remember, man, you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (somewhat grim, if that is all there is), or “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” There is more than the inevitability of human death. In our class on the existence of God last week we talked a lot about what it meant to say that Jesus died on the Cross—both as God and man. When Jesus died, he really died. He really entered into the mystery of what it means to be forsaken by God, who is love. To say that God and man died isn’t to say that God or man ceased to be: when we die, we don’t cease to exist, we are very much still alive, simply in a different state of existence, no longer limited by the time and space of this world. What that looks like, exactly, we don’t really know. But what we do know is that God’s lifeline for us is his mercy, and that his mercy is the source of our hope, even in what may be the darkest days of our lives.

“Grim” doesn’t work, because the hope given to us by the mercy of God is the beginning of joy, regardless of how sad the separation has been. If we believe in God—regardless of what that might look like for different people—our nature demands that we seek God, our faith compels us, our practice of religion shows us the way, and our expression in worship is anything but grim as our hearts long for the living God.

One of the thing that we talked about in our class is the difference between saying what any religion might say, “God loves me…” or “God  loves the world,” compared to the bold statement of Christianity (revealed by Christ himself), that “God is love.” Talk about a game-changer, especially if it is something you may have never really thought about before. It suddenly doesn’t work for us to convince ourselves that I might be so sinful that God can’t possibly love me anymore, or for now, or until I make some kind of dramatic overture to him. If he is love, then he can’t not love. His love is constant, despite our relative degree of faithfulness. It isn’t about me at all.

I think this gets more to the meaning of Mercy. Mercy is another word for love, particularly when we are speaking in human terms of being unloveable: God’s love endures despite us. It
is always there, always waiting for us to come home. Let us make good use of God’s love and mercy during this Lent and come home.

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

Parce Domine, parce populo tuo. Spare, O Lord, spare your people. Nothing seems to shout Lent louder for me than the simple, quiet chant of this text. Ne in aeternum, irascaris nobis. Do not be angry with us in eternity.

We are about to enter into the depths of this season (so soon?). And yet, the significance of the season has its historic origins not so much in the practice of penance, fasting, abstinence, and almsgiving for the reparation of our sins, as it does in the preparation for the reception of the sacraments of initiation—Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist. It began as a spiritual preparation for those to be incorporated into the very life of the Trinity: Sons and daughters of the Father through Baptism, tabernacles of the Son in Eucharist, temples of the Holy Spirit in Confirmation. The complete package. As the time of the catechumenate grew for those preparing for Baptism we, the Church, began to reflect on the ways in which we had not been faithful to the promises that we made / were made on our behalf at our own Baptism. And in order to renew and proclaim those vows again at the Vigil and Easter Masses, we had some self-correction to make. Lord, have mercy, for we have sinned.

The sacrament of Confession/Penance/Reconciliation (each name speaks of a different aspect of the mystery of God’s mercy and forgiveness), since the fifth century or so, has been a sacrament that we are able to celebrate frequently. It is, unfortunately for some, like a carwash. I wonder sometimes what image of God is running through the minds of people as they confess on the other side of the closed window. Is it a God of judgment, one who will be angry with me forever? Or is it the God of mercy who makes my conversion possible and our redemption a promise? Are we children before God wincing about the punishment that is to come, or do we stand, waiting for the embrace that follows our humility and contrition?

The good news is that God’s mercy is so full that even our imperfect contrition (because of his just punishments, the loss of heaven, the pains of hell) is enough. But the point of Lent is to pass from this beginner stage to where we find sorrow for our unfaithfulness to our Baptism because I love you, Lord, who are all good and deserving of all my love. I  firmly resolve…

Lent is a time to open the window in the confessional (only you have the handle in our confessionals) and trust God’s mercy that he will, indeed, spare his people  because of his great love, if our love is also true. It is a time to focus beyond our sin, to throw ourselves into a renewal of Baptism as if we are seeking the grace of God all over again for the first time! Of course, there is only one Baptism—rebaptizing is not possible, as the reality of God’s life is complete. We have received it! It is a time to consider who we are now, and who God calls us to be. It is exactly due to the fact that we are incorporated into this trinitarian family at Baptism and Communion that our reconciliation and communion isn’t only as individuals, but as a community.

We invite you to join us as a community to celebrate this Mercy of God that calls us together and reconciles us to him and one another. We will begin at 7pm with prayer and examen of conscience as a group. During Adoration we will then have individual confessions—simple, short confessions of sins, without the expectation of counseling or long questions—and individual absolution. After confessions people will be invited to tie a knot in the new Lent altar cloth, much the same way we tie prayer quilts with prayers of healing for the sick. We will gather back when the line ends, pray a penitential act and an act of contrition together, a song, and depart together in peace. Confessions will go very quickly this way, if we all come prepared, and our parish will be blessed. See you Wednesday, February 24, at 7pm.

 God bless you.