Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

This season we are in the middle of one of the most spiritually powerful times that a parish can experience. How many sacraments have we received this year! I consider the shower of grace and blessings we have experienced as God has given us so many gifts. Nearly 200 children with Confirmation—that is a lot of Holy Spirit! About 60 adults and children who were fully initiated in the Church at the Easter Vigil. We watched  throughout the season of Easter as over 200 children in our midst received Holy Communion for the first time, week after week we were reminded how the parish grows in grace.

We are constantly reminded that God doesn’t give sacraments for the sake of individuals alone (in fact, individualism is what is eroding the fabric of religious practice in the world today), but he gives the gifts of the sacraments that the whole Body of Christ is built up “to full stature,” as Saint Paul says, to fulfill the plan of God for his people. Each one of those sacraments was a gift to all of us, we are all touched by hundreds of gifts in these past weeks.

Often we see that the reception of a sacrament in a family touches all the members in a spiritual,  beautiful way. Hearts are turned back to God, old differences are reconciled, a knowledge of the love of God comes under our roof and we are more deeply aware of his presence with us.

This year, one of our own parishioners is being ordained to the priesthood of Jesus Christ. By the time you are reading this, Fr. Joe Farrell will be a priest of our diocese of Arlington. But not only him: others we have gotten to know in their summer assignments will also be ordained. We will have the privilege of celebrating and thanking God for the gift of priesthood also for Fr. Rich Miserendino and Fr. Kevin Dansereau, who spent summers with us.

We look to welcome back our parishioner Joseph Townsend who currently attends the Josephinum this summer, and will welcome another seminarian to our parish for this summer, Joseph Rampino, who has one more year at the North American College in Rome. Like many priests who have spent their last seminarian assignment with us, Joseph Rampino will be ordained a deacon in Rome this October.

I have a reason behind listing all of these priests and seminarians who have been with us over the years (let’s not forget also Fr. Jeb Donelan, Fr. David Dufresne, Fr. Steven Walker and Fr. Tony Killian): God has blessed us. And we grow in Christ, specifically in our common priesthood of the faithful, these sacraments are showered not only on the priests themselves, but their families and their communities. We don’t pray intentionally often enough that God will multiply these vocations in our midst: this weekend, this is our task. To ask God to allow the grace of this sacrament to touch every person in this parish.

Five years before I was ordained I was driving from Dallas to Lincoln, Nebraska for my brother’s ordination. I was angry that he might be throwing his life away, he had a very promising career as a physicist and I wasn’t so sure that he was making the right decision. I wasn’t a big fan of the Church, there had been too many confusing messages in the first two decades of my life. To whose Catholic Church were we supposed to belong, anyway?

But I arrived at the ordination, the liturgy began. We got to the point where my brother and his classmates prostrated (lay face-down on the floor), a sign of them giving their life to God, dying to themselves. We sang the litany of saints.They rose from the floor, new creations. I saw it all so clearly, tears came. He hadn’t given himself to the Church, he had finally given himself to God and the people who God placed in his life. To make a complicated story short, I returned to Dallas, did what was necessary to close my advertising design firm, had a big yard sale and reported to seminary by September of that same summer.

To all you young men and women who might still have persevered in reading this far: I challenge you to respond to the call you hear. I have not looked back. Sure, there have been times when I wondered if I did the right thing, or I have known great frustration and even difficulty. But I don’t know a married person who wouldn’t say the same thing. That is life. But this life is so great. I have a family of 15,000+ people and more  opportunity than I ever might have imagined in the summer of 1989. And God is truly good.

Pray that even the tiniest piece of all this ordination goodness might touch your heart this week.Let God’s grace do its work, and open to him.

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

It’s that time of year, transitions are taking place all over the place. Already many plans are taking shape for what a lot of our family members will be doing at the end of the summer, which goes faster and faster each year. Already people who are being relocated for their jobs are saying goodbye, students graduating are looking forward to their next steps in life, most people are just hoping for a break this summer to catch their breath and step back and sit down and put up their feet. A mom, standing next to her son after Mass last week told me her son was getting ready to go away for college. “Tell him,” she said, “that he isn’t going away to college to find himself. He already knows who he is!”

Free time isn’t necessarily a good thing, either, unless you have a plan. Idleness can get you into a lot of trouble! If you go to places you shouldn’t be or you allow erosion to take place in the discipline that you have established in your life, then free time can become laziness. Life doesn’t have to be a two steps forward, one step back experience. How about three steps forward? Perhaps we were all so conditioned by the education system that once summer came we grew accustomed to forgetting what we learned. At one point I realized I was becoming a person who just learned for the test, if you know what I mean. Once the test was over there was a big delete button that you could push. What was it all for anyway? A grade? Or did I become a better student, better person, because of it?

So, this summer, let’s make a plan to challenge ourselves to be a better person when it’s over than we are at this moment.

Let’s start making plans for next fall. As the calendar starts filling up remember you have to keep time in the calendar for your spiritual life as well. Stay in touch with God. Don’t adopt an attitude of vacation from God like you might from your boss. Many people do this. And they teach their kids this technique. It doesn’t work in the long run.

Make sure you include Religious Education for your children in the fall schedule. You can start registering soon. Tell all your friends who are Catholic that we have this obligation to our children—that our life with God isn’t something that we just fit in when it works with everything else. I was doing a little research to see who lives in our parish and whether or not our programs were reaching everyone.

What I found was staggering. This year we had 962 students in Religious Education, which is actually down from previous years. Add to that more or less 350 registered Catholic children (probably fewer) enrolled at Holy Cross, that means we are serving 1,312 children. The real number is quite a bit less than this, because we have many families in our Religious Education program from neighboring parishes.

According to our database, 2,558 children and youth between first and 12th grades live in our parish: only 51% of the children of registered families in our parish are being formed in our Religious Education program.

If we have, roughly, 200 children per age/grade, that would mean that our high school Youth program should include 800 students who are currently attending a high school in our parish. We probably reach 100, many of them only occasionally during the year.

If the numbers are correct, we are missing the opportunity with these young people: of the men ordained to the priesthood this year, 80% of them said they were relatively sure of a vocation while they were still in high school. And of all the Catholic students who go away to college this year, 70% of them will graduate with no affiliation to a church and no regular practice of religion.

Our parish must renew our commitment to these children and young people. We have come a long way but we have so much farther to go! First thing is to somehow reach out to all the families we know in our schools and neighborhoods and tell them of the need for religious formation. It is a blessing, and young people are more equipped to deal with the secularization and unfaithfulness of the world. On our part, we also have to make holiness and faithfulness a real part of our visible lives so our words are believable.

We also must sign up to help in the programs we need to grow. We have always wondered what we would do if suddenly everyone came to Mass…15,000 people would need 23 full Masses every Sunday. If we seek out the other 1,246 students we will need teachers, and spaces, and a lot of love and patience. Let’s start planning.

God bless you,

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

Some of the last words of Jesus in the Gospel of John, which we heard on Saturday of last weekend, are:

“Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. Until now you have not asked anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete. I have told you this in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but I will tell you clearly about the Father. On that day you will ask in my name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you, for the Father himself loves you—because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God.”

This “coming to believe” seems to be very important to Jesus in these last moments of his time on earth before he ascends into heaven. In a parallel moment, before he is arrested and crucified, John’s Gospel has Jesus saying similar words:

“May they be one, as you Father and I are one, so that the world may believe that you sent me…”

Clearly, what is to be believed is Established Already. Our growth, the coming to terms with What is Established, is the work of this present age ushered in by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit of Jesus upon the earth. It is what you and I are to do now. There is no other job description for us since we are fully initiated into the one body, one spirit in Christ through the sacraments.

We do this by living out our sacramental vocation: loving God and one another, and serving the least of these our brothers and sisters in the Spirit of Christ, the spirit which is poured out already into our hearts.

What if…

…we have already received everything God, in his mercy and love, gives through Jesus?

…there is nothing more we need to ask for?

…we were to live our lives as if we have already received the fullness of truth, the totality of grace (Baptism), the real presence of Jesus (Eucharist) and the gifts to be true disciples to carry forward the ministry of the love of God in Jesus (Eucharist)?

In other words, if we really believed that we have received everything already, wouldn’t our lives be lived as expressions of gratitude, as perfect as we were able to express that to God for his goodness to us?

Wouldn’t our prayer go more like this:

God, you have given us everything. Thank you. Help us to discover the depths of your love which you have already placed in our hearts.

So let’s consider a short reflection about Pentecost. In the upper room where all the apostles have gathered in fear, praying and waiting to hear what the next step is, suddenly a noise, a roar. Flashes of light and heat, flames of fire resting upon you and your friends. What is happening to us? you ask. In a moment, a flash, all that you have learned about Jesus the past years (was it just three, or has it been many more?) makes sense, there is an insight that helps you to recognize a divine Love that has continued in a gold thread from the beginning of time to the last person who will live, a love that connects and sustains, a love that touches all hearts. A love that touches your heart. In this moment you recognize that there is nothing more important than this love within you, this life that you have been given—not for yourself, but that you might be a witness to this love. There is nothing more important. You suddenly have the courage to step outside, to begin to share with others, even  perfect, beloved strangers, to share the goodness of God. Here, you say, look, at my life and see the love of God. Put your fingers in the holes in my hands, and your hand in my side.

And believe.

We don’t get just some of the faith at Baptism. We get it all. Nor do we get a little bit of Jesus in Communion—we receive him entirely. And we don’t just get one or even a few of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in Confirmation. We get the whole Person, with his bond of love  and mercy, his reconciliation that unites, his presence in us that consecrates all that we meet. If this weren’t true, why would we take all these Sacraments so seriously? They aren’t symbols, or rites of passage, they are the real deal. And we have received it.

I tell you, if we prayed with faith the size of a mustard seed, the Holy Spirit would change our world. We just need to pray in faith, with the conviction that God will fulfill his promises and re-order, and heal the scarred face of our earth.

God bless you

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

This past week we held our first Interreligious Prayer Service in Fredericksburg at Market Square, with readings, reflections and a prayer from each of three representatives of world religion: Muslim Imam Sheikh Lamptey,  Jewish Rabbi Jeremy Weisblatt, and Christian Rev. Larry Haun of Fredericksburg Baptist Church. I was very touched with what Pastor Haun had to say, I must say I have seldom encountered a man with such authentic love of God and integrity. I wanted to share his message here for the World Day of Prayer. God bless you.

Social anthropologists tell us that humans are hardwired for worship. Evidence reveals humanity’s desire to locate a creator and offer words, songs, gestures, and ways of life in praise. Christianity, along with Judaism and Islam, trace their hopes and religious understandings to a common heritage. It is the heritage of a covenant relationship with God. This God revealed presence is to Abram, re-named Abraham, meaning “the father of multitudes.”

Abraham’s turn to the Old Testament God in Genesis 2 (vs. 1-3) is a turn from the many idolatrous gods of polytheism to the one Creator God who sustains the world. The covenant offered by God to Abraham is a promise of relationship fulfilled across future generations. It is an unconditional covenant, a gift from God.

Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’

Through this covenant God offers God’s self for the sake of the world, giving all who would turn to him from family, from land, from any and all other claims that might call forth worship, the blessing of the Creator God. This is the common beginning of the three religious expressions gathered here today for prayer—they have turned to the Creating and Sustaining God, recognizing a truth larger than what they can see or know in gratitude on faith. This is our common ground—gratitude and faith for a God who extends God’s self to us first, wanting our response, wanting our relationship.

I would be unfaithful to my tradition today, however, if I failed to mention Jesus as the revelation of my Christian faith that informs my fuller knowing of God as well as the pattern of my response to God and the world. The biblical Jesus, through his life, death, and resurrection, shapes the way I know God, the way I speak of faith, and the way I love my neighbor. As Christians, the baptism with water and the Lord’s Supper at the table are distinctive acts that identify us with Jesus and should remind us of God’s love for the world—all of the world. Jesus’ living example of how to treat one another with truth, justice, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and decency helps me to know how I should be with others. The way of Jesus is not a way of separation for me but it is rather a way of loving and serving others. It is a way that benefits me as it deepens my encounter with God. And, I pray, that it is a way that benefits others, healing their hurts, and helping them to also begin to sense God’s love for them through me.

For me, as a Christian, it is Jesus who carries on the covenant of God, revealing the redemptive and sustaining care of the Creator God. Abraham is blessed so that the multitudes that come after him, through him, can bless the world. Blessing is giving. God gives to us that we might give. The distinctions between our religions could be counted as many. They could be called divisive. They could be called insurmountable. They could be called too large to be held by any one God. But, we must remember, it is the God who creates and sustains who has promised, who has covenanted to bless us for our blessing the world. That is a God greater than any difference humanity can claim. That is an overcoming God, a delivering God, capable of bringing peace, healing, and respect especially to those to whom blessing has been promised. Let us take up our blessing that we might bless the world together, realizing our common need of the sustaining God over and over and over again for the living of our days in this world. Let us lay down our suspicions, our fears, and our misunderstandings in recognition of our common humanity. Let us see one another as people who work, have families, know joy, feel pain, seek God, and have hope for a future. Although our worship lives take different turns, in different houses, with different ways, we have all received breath and being from God who creates and sustains the world. In that may we find great joy, great unity, and great humility— at least enough to keep our hands from violence, our words from hurt, and our hearts from unfounded fear toward each other. May God make it so. Amen and Amen.

Before we pray together, though, I will speak the unspoken here. The tension we feel between religions is a tension of finality, a tension of our ultimate destination, a tension of living lives directed by our end. The plurality of religions in our nation can be confusing, frightening, and insulating for those of us who profess faith; as a result, we cleave to our own and are suspicious of the other. When we who worship despise each other, religion becomes the world’s problem instead of the world’s blessing. But, I want you to consider something. I want you to consider Peter Ochs’ prayer; he is the Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia. He offered it at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture consultation in answer to the conference question, “Do we worship the same God?” He began by simply and profoundly stating, “I pray that we worship the same God.”

Take a moment and think on that. It is an answer fueled by hope in a God who would offer a human race of broken relationships and broken images the promise of blessing—the promise of being so blessed that they might bless others. In Peter Ochs’ words, “I pray that we worship the same God,” there is hope for peace; there is hope for God’s reconciling hand to come upon and between all the peoples of the world; there is hope for God’s ignoring of our more destructive prayers—prayers that would harm the other; there is hope for God’s hearing all of our hurts together as his hurting children and deciding for our mutual good, our mutual blessing.

Prayer:

Holy God, revealed most fully to we Christians through Christ of the Cross, we meet You today casting back to Your history of creating what is new from what is chaos, Your history of sustaining life in the midst of great struggle.

Help us, each one of us, to respect the other, loving the other as a child of the Covenant, a child of the Creating and Sustaining God.

Let us provoke one another to do good and not evil. Guide us to guard our ways and our words that they would be pleasing to You.

As followers of Christ, change us day-by-day into being more like the Jesus we know from Scripture.

For others, direct them to become the best of their understanding in service of others.

Hear our prayers as children that seek and acknowledge need.

We Christians, through the light of Christ, our clearest revelation of You, offer our prayers. Others pray here today as well, bringing prayers in the ways they know best. Hear us.

But truly, Holy God, we pray that it is You who will know us and claim us. We know You only as we have worshipped, but You know us beyond such earthly limitations. We give thanks for all You have provided, All You have freely given.

May our relationships with each other be worthy of Your gift of life. Amen.