Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

We Arlington priests were at our annual convocation last week, half of the priests of the diocese for the first half of the week, the second half for the second. We go to a place near Emmitsburg MD, a ski resort that apparently has good prices in the summer for such meetings. We usually listen to a speaker give presentations on a certain topic. This year, a Dominican priest spoke to all the priests in the diocese on giving better homilies.

I found what he had to say rang true, it was a talk that we needed to hear as a diocesan presbyterate. I came away with a lot of good reflections, one in particular that I wanted to share with you today that I found particularly compelling.

He said that each homily must actualize Sacred Scripture as a gift that is meant especially for us, an inspired text that is able to speak to each of us in the way in which each of us needs to be answered. Each of us brings something to Mass that is real, that needs to be respected, that seeks an answer. He said—and this is the point—that the act of preaching has to be the act of giving people back their heart.

It spoke to me in a way that seemed so familiar, in a way that I believe the Gospel empowers us as adults to make sense of our lives and find God at the center. That we become thrown off center by the world, that we have our hearts stolen in so many ways by our own sin, and by the confusion and cruelty and inhumanity of the world—not to begin speaking of the absence of grace—that we encounter every day, nearly everywhere we go. Sometimes people begin to feel that God is far away, when it is really our own hearts to which we have become estranged. We are meant for better!

To get back our hearts by the unfolding of the Word of God, and then to have his body and blood literally become the life that flows in our veins. Only then can we have the courage, the confidence, to go and be true disciples. The Word of God is spoken from a loving Father: all that the Son has, the Father has given. It makes for a powerful reflection on Mothers’ Day. Isn’t this the love that gives you back your hearts, the place you can always go when all else in the passing world leaves us unsatisfied and broken? There is a love that endures.

We first come to know this love from our parents, if we are lucky. But even our parents may not have come to learn this from their parents, the brokenness of our humanity is something that can be handed for many years, unless the love of Christ enters and transforms.

Jesus speaks of his relationship in the Trinity as the relationship of himself to a parent, his Father. Of course, his Father isn’t a man (or a woman), but he reveals the relationship as one of a son to a father, the image of God and his sons and daughters. This parenthood is one of perfect love, absolute gift, constant and eternal giving of life and receiving of life, perfect joy. We can see clearly in Jesus how to be a good son, but it is not so clear how to be a good parent. So here, a perfect mother is included in God’s plan so that the relationship of parent to child is perfectly given, to give us hope as well as the reassurance of possibility. Mary is given to Jesus, and Jesus gives Mary to us in just the same way he hands over to us everything else that the Father is and has given to him. On the cross, Jesus’ heart is pierced in order to be raised. Mary is given the beautiful role of the one to whom we can always go whenever we need to get back our heart, her perfect love and welcome home is offered to each of us. It is the heart of Jesus himself, to which she gave birth, formed in youth, cared for in his greatest suffering, to whom she brings us back in her role as our Mother.

Mothers of Saint Mary, consider this incomparable role that teaches us to know Mary and approach the love of Jesus: you have always been the place we can go to get back our hearts. May mothers today learn this most exalted role as the one they best can fulfill, and bring all us children back to the love of Jesus by first revealing this love to us in our hearts. May God bless our families, especially you moms, all of you, whether you are still with us or have gone on to know the perfect love of heaven. Happy Mothers’ Day.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

I would like to comment a bit on how beautiful our First Communions have been this year. I realize that we have heard from a few people who are very upset that we have changed the practice from previous years, but the overwhelming response has been one of great happiness, and thanks, for an opportunity to receive Communion in a liturgy that is reverent, connected intimately with the family, and in the context of the community. It is interesting—I also have heard from a great number of parishioners about how this First Communion year is so meaningful to them, it was almost as if it has happened for the first time this year for the parish. To see the
children at Mass is a source of great hope for us.

Well, there is a lot written about how the celebration of the Sacrament should happen on Sunday,and in the context of the community, and I can only say that massive Saturday First Communion liturgies developed out of convenience for the clergy and staff and somehow became “tradition.” It was getting it done. In most parishes where groups were smaller, this was observed always during a Sunday Mass, much in the same way as we are doing it this Easter Season, maybe as many as 16 or 20 children and their families would make the Mass a little more crowded, but the parish survived it. My older brother, Fr. John, has a small parish, average to his diocese,and as is the custom, he will celebrate First Communion with five children this year at a Sunday Mass. You might say that is a perfect world.

I would propose to you that we also know a perfect world here, it just looks different. We have 240 +/- children and seek expressions that are meaningful and still consistent with the solemnity and integrity of communion. In past years we have scheduled three (four last year) Masses with 60 children each. Our church will never be big enough; the fact is, people were pretty mean about it. The Masses were so loud—even as the children came forward to receive First Communion—the level of conversation was so loud that it eclipsed the singing. Each year grew worse. And most everyone counted it as their Sunday obligation, as few children were brought back the next day to be recognized and congratulated by the parish. Everyone knows this is the case, and it couldn’t continue, even if only in the conscience of your pastor. Change was necessary, and as it
was, it was changing for the worse by the year.

When I was first ordained and assigned to All Saints, the largest parish in the diocese 21 years ago, we celebrated First Communions at Sunday Masses. Even then, it was already the norm in most dioceses and I recall them to be days of graciousness and prayerfulness.

But I guess the issue that we don’t like to address is the issue of change. It is natural to hold onto what we have if we find it comfortable. We project our own memories on our children, assuming that they will somehow miss out if it isn’t exactly the same. Sometimes we even keep an old coat in the closet that we really like or spent a lot of money on though we’ve gained weight and can’t wear it anymore without looking ridiculous (I have a few of these coats, actually). “We will lose the weight someday,” we say. But in the meantime we buy a new coat we can wear, so we don’t freeze to death on the really cold days.

I was talking to a priest who is responsible for closing / consolidating some parish churches in Manhattan. Beautiful places far too expensive to maintain; they are crumbling. One church is twice the size of our cathedral in Arlington, and has 80 members who are fighting and fighting to keep it open. Sure, I wish we could move it brick by brick, statute by statue right here—we don’t have anything like it in our diocese. But at
what cost can we afford to do it? At the end of the day, my friend said, it isn’t the change that is the problem. It’s the stained glass window that my grandparents donated (“See—there is their name”) or the baptismal font that our family was baptized in. It isn’t the change at all, it is the loss.There has to be, he said, something that we can see, touch, occupy that is a better solution, but we also must be open to see it when it comes. When we lose someone that we love, if we only see our loss we grieve until we ourselves can’t grieve anymore. But there is a better life to come, one we haven’t known yet.

Ultimately, it’s a good thing that we know what is important, not a what but a Who that we believe in, and that he continues to call, and to lead, if we will follow his call. Jesus went to a lot of trouble knowing that growth, the process of perfecting, requires change. Let us listen to his voice together.

God bless you,

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

I hope you got a chance to read the article we reprinted last week on the glorified body and the resurrection of the dead. I think I first read about the qualities of the glorified body when I was a kid and it seemed too good to be true. It seems to be the stuff of superheroes. Which of course is exactly true if you consider our saints to be superheroes.

The three properties I found the most fascinating were agility (the ability to suddenly go somewhere at the speed of thought), subtlety (as when Jesus, after the resurrection, appeared to the Apostles able to pass through doors, not limited by space) and clarity, or brilliance (like Jesus at the transfiguration, bright as the sun).

Well, I don’t know if you noticed, but since the Easter Vigil Mass this year, all the paintings of the saints in the sanctuary of the church are finished. Finally. At times I have made cracks about the unreliable artist who never seemed to get them finished. People would scowl when I would say these things, thinking I was badmouthing somebody, not knowing that the artist was me.

So here’s a quick review. First of all, they are oil on wood panel, and the background, in the tradition of iconography is 24k gold leaf, depicting heaven. The halos of the saints (or their nimbuses), symbols of holiness in art history, are white gold leaf.

We wanted people from the Old Testament, New Testament, family of Jesus and our parish family to be represented. Since the generous donations of the 12 panels ($60K) were a
significant source of funding for the pipe organ and the rededication of our church 22 November 2010, we also wanted also to have saints who have music as a part of their story.

Starting from the top left, you see Miriam, sister of Moses. She sang and played her tambourine when the Israelites came miraculously through the Red Sea, which is for us a sign of our Baptism. Next to the right is King David, of the family line of Jesus, who also played his lyre and danced at the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem. The third panel is the prophet Isaiah, holding the scroll that Jesus proclaimed at the beginning of his public ministry, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me…today this passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

As Isaiah is pointing to Jesus on the crucifix from the left, from the Old Testament side,so on the opposite side (top row) we see John the Baptist, the prophet from the New Testament who is pointing back to him. Next is the mother of Mary, Saint Anne, Jesus’ grandmother. We thought it would be great to represent the elderly in our family in this way. Finally, another musical saint, Saint Cecelia (holding a little pipe organ) is the upper right panel. She is the patron saint of musicians, and we dedicated the church on her feastday, Nov. 22.

Bottom far left is Saint Joseph, to whom we entrusted all our parish renovations these past years, and to whom we entrust our families. On the lower far right is Saint Leonie Aviat, the founder of our Oblate Sisters of Saint Francis DeSales. At the dedication of the church, we installed her relic in the base of the altar stone.

The remaining middle four panels were chosen because they are the patrons of the four parishes which have been born from Saint Mary: Saints Jude, Patrick, William of York, and Matthew the Evangelist.

Finally you may notice that they are much more colorful, almost richly dressed despite the reality that most were not wealthy. They are dressed in their Sunday best, wearing their wedding garments to come to the wedding feast of the Lamb in our later days. It is the Mass! We gather as the bride of Christ, the Church, and celebrate with them already having a taste of the beauty of heaven that we hope to share with them one day.

You may notice I worked back into their garments a lot of the gold of the background. In a small way I wanted to indicate their brilliance, the ordered way of beautiful patterns, how the glory of God literally shines through them for us to see. Their garments almost dissolve in the light of heaven as they become witnesses of the beauty of Jesus, in heaven just as they were on earth. So may we also be!

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

I’ve written a number of spiritual columns lately and I’ve fallen behind on a lot of subjects. I’d like to catch up on a lot of practical matters today, with your patience.

1. TODAY we begin a new, beautiful tradition  at Saint Mary, one which has actually been the general practice of most parishes throughout  the world for years. We will fill our Sunday Masses throughout the Easter Season—when  we celebrate the presence of the risen Jesus— with our children receiving First Holy Communion with their families in the context of the community. The custom of having a special liturgy on Saturday has become so detached from the general life of the parish, and had  become so unlike our customary Sunday parish experience of the Mass that I decided we would seek a more reverent, more family-based celebration of the sacrament. So when you come to Mass and see a family with a child dressed for First Communion, be sure to affirm them, welcome them and tell them they are in your prayers. None of us receives sacraments for ourselves; it is the way that God builds up the Body of Christ, the Church, who we are.

2. Some have taken offense for being asked to wait in the vestibule at Mass after arriving after the First Reading has already begun. We ask our ushers to graciously ask all to wait until the end of the Gospel proclamation, at which time all are invited to come into the church to find seating. The reason for this is very simple: once people are seated and concentrating on listening to the Word of God, it is a major
disruption to be seeking a seat, often having to climb over people to get into the center of the pews. Neither the person climbing, nor the person being climbed over, is hearing anything of the Word of God. We put in a really good speaker in the vestibule, and we ask that everyone wait there until the proclamation is complete. We don’t intend to offend, or cause anyone to feel unwelcome; we just place that
high a priority on attention to the power of the Holy Spirit in the Word of God. At that moment there is nothing more important.

3. For our members who may be elderly or challenged physically where all this standing and kneeling is involved, please know that you  are still welcome to come to Mass and just sit. No one will judge, it is much better that you are here with us! I’ve heard lately from people who said they have stayed away for this reason. When we say, “please stand,” please know that “as you are able” is implied. Kneeling is
good, but God knows about that knee replacement that you are waiting on, or the pain you  have in your back, and would rather you be here with him than deal with hardship alone.

4. About kneeling, another subject is our  confessionals. All confessionals are equipped with both a kneeler and a chair/bench. Either  will do! Please don’t apologize about sitting. That is why you paid for seating in there. And while we are on the subject, please consider opening the little window so you can celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation face-to-face. I promise it is better. But there is only one
handle on the little sliding window and it is on your side. Please know that you are welcome to open it, in fact, I encourage it.

5. Finally, if you need pastoral care please don’t assume that we will hear about it from the hospital, or any of the rehabilitation or care facilities in the area. Most institutions today have a policy that church pastoral care is only allowed when directly requested by the patient. Even then, it is often difficult to get a current listing of all the Catholics who have self-identified as Catholics when they are admitted. If you desire a visit, or if you are in need of anointing or Holy Communion, please call the office and let us know. We have priests, deacons and very dedicated lay people who bring Communion every day to
people who need it. Also please be aware that parishes are responsible for the facilities that are within their boundaries. At Saint Mary we cover Mary Washington Hospital, Woodmont, Heartfields, Hughes, Golden Living, Greenfields, Falls Run and The Crossings with regular monthly Mass and weekly visits from Eucharistic Ministers. We come when requested to other locations. But you must ask! And we kindly ask that you give us reasonable time to respond, if possible. Thanks.

God bless you.