Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

We are in the process of final preparations for Easter Masses. Once again this year, we will be celebrating Mass at the Fredericksburg Expo Center.

For the past (how many?) years we have been gathering at the Expo Center—a lot of work—to provide a proper joyful welcome and ensure that everyone might have a seat and a parking space. And over the years we have perfected the art of liturgy for 3,500 faithful with the proper solemnity and reverence, joy and exultation that is proper for Easter Sunday, and still not let it last longer than a typical Mass in church. In the beginning there were many who felt that such a thing could not be held in a place such as the Expo Center: all these years now we have repeatedly heard from people who have newly discovered the experience of thanking and praising God in the joyful context of so broad an assembly celebrating the new life of Jesus’ resurrection. You can’t imagine the impact of it unless you are there. Is this us? We are a community that is so large and alive.

Don’t tell anybody, but the Expo Center is now holy ground – we have blessed it by the sacred rites of Mass and sprinkled generously the assembly (and the building) with the holy water of baptism!

I wanted to pass on a little advice on this weekend before we begin the solemn observances of Holy Week. Come to Expo early, just as the previous Mass is ending. The 8am Mass is usually 3/4 full, maybe a little more. That means that there are about 900 seats waiting for you. The 10:15 is basically full, although there are always some seats to be found on the far end of the room from the entrances. The 12:30 Mass, which is a fascinating and even more joyful Mass combining the cultures of North, Central and South America, has the most seats available and you are always welcome.

The Easter Vigil Mass in the church will begin at 8:30 and last until about 11:30. See the bulletin board in the vestibule of the church to learn about all the people who will be joining our church this year. Please keep all of them in your prayers during the coming week, a most important week in their lives.

This year we have bought gifts for everyone who comes to Easter Sunday Masses. You may have heard about the pastoral letter of Bishop Loverde, “Go Forth with Hearts on Fire,” a wonderful piece on the new evangelization and how you can become involved personally in the work of the Gospel. We have bought 7,000 copies to distribute this Easter, as well as holy cards commemorating the soon-to-be saints John XXIII and John Paul II. These are our gifts to you for this season of joy.

Of course, we will be looking for an army of volunteers to help at all the Masses to distribute these as people leave—if you are interested, please call the office. It will take only a little time, and as we finish you will find that traffic has quieted down outside.

Well, I don’t intend to get ahead of myself. We still have before us the most intense and reflective time of all the year. We hope to enter into the very suffering and death—and resurrection of Jesus as members of his Body, the Church. It is my prayer that we can find it in our hearts to make this Sacred Triduum, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday a time of deep prayer and sacrifice. It is in the unfolding of Christ’s mysteries that we discover the reality of ourselves and the meaning of our lives. It is the selfless offering of Jesus that has saved us, and it is the selfless offering of ourselves as we recall his saving love that will continue to advance this salvation for all the world.

Don’t forget – Jesus came, he died and he rose from the dead that ALL might be saved. So don’t just share the secret with those who are friends—change the world.

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

It’s Tuesday night, we’re finishing up Confirmation rehearsal for this weekend, as well as two periods of Religious Education Confessions tonight. Today we ordered the flowers for Easter Masses and did some final planning for Easter Sunday. And it’s snowing outside on the Solemnity of the Annunciation! Enough, right? March 25th last year was already Monday of Holy Week!

God is full of surprises. Take the observance we have, for example, of the Annunciation of Mary. It is the feastday of the Incarnation of Jesus. In fact, I wonder why they don’t call it that? It is clearly the Mystery that everyone is thinking of at Christmas, the Solemnity of the Nativity of our Lord, or Birth, but the actual event happens in silence, nobody realizes it. The Son of God actually became Man at the moment of his conception by the Holy Spirit in Mary. It should be proclaimed from the rooftops: the feast day that is ultimately Pro-Life. And yet, it was a secret at least to Mary and Joseph, the shepherds at the birth, finally all of us at the Epiphany. And it goes by unnoticed by most people every year, exactly nine months before the birth of Jesus.

I’m guessing that Mary shared the story among the Apostles and her friends and it became part of the Tradition of the Church’s deposit of faith somewhere between the writing of the Gospel of Mark and the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. It is an intimate moment that can only be described by the one who received the Word of God.

I say God is full of surprises because this just isn’t how we would do it, is it? We would be facebooking and tweeting and texting and blogging. You know it’s true, and you know we are a little crazy. But God does all of this in silence. He has begun his work, he has a plan. The plan is unfolding already, and he begins to reveal it little by little – first to shepherds, then pagans, then everybody who listens to him and grows in faith. The faith grows because, as God is revealing his truth, there is positive proof that God is already working which allows our faith to grow on the fact that God is already present. It isn’t a life-or-death choice that confronts us. It is a Word that comes to us that is already in motion, a fruitfulness that we can already see. In the context of the past, it makes sense to our rational nature. Of course, that is no surprise: God made us with a rational nature, human reason, and then speaks to us in a way (words and deeds) that is reasonable. It is in our power to know, understand, grow in wisdom and share the truth that we have found.

It’s like this in all of life. If you find yourself confused, or not fully understanding something about God, or life, or death, or spirituality, or the gifts through which God is calling you to full life in him — well, just wait a bit for the revelation to unfold. So much of our life in God is waiting for him to reveal what we need when it is his time, and we receive it in patient trust knowing that God isn’t going to ask us to do something and then leave us alone to somehow make it happen by ourselves. We know that the plan is in place, the work is already begun, even if we don’t clearly see it right now, because that is how God is. He prepares the world for what is coming, and then helps us to grow into his call.

It is the center of Lent now. It might be the deepest moment of inquiry that you have ever known, it might be a time of doubt, even confusion. The world has done its best to overshadow the message of Jesus and we need to acknowledge that for the evil that it is. But with our confidence in God and his plan we know that all we need to be is attentive and faithful. Keep listening! Keep watching! In time we will see the depths of his love for us, the way in which he lays down his own life so that we might live, and suddenly it all makes sense.

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

Lent came later this year and still took us by surprise. But it has been an amazing season so far. I wonder what God has in store for us yet; we already have such a full and particularly special season of events this year.

And you have responded. There is nothing more satisfying in ministry than when you realize that what you are blessed to offer is truly needed and a blessing to those in your care. We have rarely seen such a response as we had this week at the Parish Mission talks of Fr. Corrado. His message was so relevant and personal to everyone because he has a particular gift of speaking the truth in a way that we can hear it, I think. I saw a lot of people surprised by what they probably already knew but just never heard it put so simply and clearly. He has given us a message that needs to be shouted from the rooftops and deeply received in our hearts. Thanks for coming.

Again, the 5-week series on Scripture and the Mass… well, I didn’t think we would probably get even a dozen to come on Sunday nights. Typical to me, I had an announcement ready to say that we didn’t have enough response to keep it on the calendar and would try to reschedule later in the spring when people might have more time to plan. Well, the available room’s capacity is 60 and the response was so great that we had to add an additional Sunday afternoon class – both classes are filled to capacity. Thanks for coming.

Adoration this week for 40 Hours – well, perhaps thanks to new technology and online sign-ups – we had all the times completely filled for adoration of Jesus in the Eucharist for the entire cycle of hours. Last year we had difficulty, asking and asking. I get the sense a shift has taken place here, people are praying more, people are more involved. The message is heard and seen in our actions. So, again, thanks for coming.

We continue now in the season of Lent with a particular focus on all those who are preparing for sacraments. You may have noticed all the little sheep on the steps of the sanctuary. Each one was placed there when our children finished their First Reconciliation last week. At each prayer service throughout the week we listened to the parable of the Good Shepherd who goes out into the valleys and thickets and looks for the lost sheep. I asked the kids before confession, “Who is the lost sheep in the story?” Every time, they replied, “We are!” Reconciliation is a powerful reality, and the lambs on the steps are a strong visual of how the gift of reconciliation is given to our community in a new way through all these children. So, remember to pray for them during this season.

Also, we pray for all the Elect and the Candidates (adults and young people), who are preparing in RCIA or Religious Education to receive the sacraments – Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist – at the Easter Vigil. I had hoped to place their photos in the vestibule of the church this year so you can recognize them, maybe we will get it done for the season of Easter after they have become members of the Church… but we must remember to pray for all of them now, as they are in these last weeks of preparation. At various Masses coming up (3rd, 4th and 5th Sundays of Lent) we will have what are called “Scrutinies,” opportunities for the Assembly to pray for them at Masses, to help them to be ready for the grace and joy of the sacraments. These are also great reminders for ourselves, to renew our desire for the same grace and joy.

Finally, don’t forget the Living Stones on the steps in front of the altar. As in other years, you are invited to place a stone there for anyone you have invited to come back to the Mass, family members or friends who have been away. The Stones are powerful reminders for us to pray for them, too.

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

I attended the Micah Ministries Lenten Lunch prayer service this week at the United Methodist Church and Pastor Allen Fischer from the Presybterian Church was preaching. It was a treat to get to hear someone else preach for once, I am so tired of hearing myself talking all the time! (Although next week the poor folks will have to listen to me at Fredericksburg Baptist Church anyway!)

Anyway, Allen gave a beautiful homily that got me thinking more about the central reason of why we are here. He said one of the things I’ve been saying over and over these past few weeks: that the life of faith and prayer that we live is intended to perfect us as one People of God, not a bunch of individuals constantly seeking God’s attention, almost in competition with one another, focused only on ourselves and our advancement. He said it very simply, in true Presbyterian style: piety is not privatization. We are not here to isolate.

I’ve had plenty of friends who say, “I love the Church, it’s the people I can’t stand.” I’ve heard plenty of sins confessed (and am aware of plenty of my own) about how intolerant we can be of one another when others get in the way of our plans or desires—even when we call those desires spiritual—and we lose sight of the gift in front of us, talking to us, sharing our space, for a gift which we have set our sights on. It is too easy to get so wrapped up in ourselves that we totally miss the point of the present moment and those whom God has placed here with us.

Ultimately, the message is that we just aren’t as important as we’d like to think we are. Isn’t this one of the most remarkable gifts given to human beings that set us apart from other forms of life? That we can experience humility. Whether a momentary setback has caused this, or a starck realization of truth, or the compassion which might move us to help, to reach out to another human person and for that moment allow that person to be the most important thing in your life. We can choose to go last. We can set ourselves aside and recognize the value of a truth that we allow to guide us, or a love that we allow to change us.

We look to the cross in this season of Lent to unpack this mystery. How our human form is forever changed: in our lowliness God chose to reveal our high destiny by his divine touch, first in the incarnation, finally for each of us in baptism. We can never be unchanged, or changed back. And in that high destiny now charged with the divine and holy life of God’s Spirit we can choose, like Jesus did, like Mary did, like Joseph did, to live completely for another, to accept that once-and-for-all call that defines us by the one we serve. We see it most perfectly in Jesus’ total gift of himself on the cross.

For Mary and Joseph it is obvious. They were willing to respond to the Father’s call and dedicate themselves to Jesus. But look carefully at Jesus: he was willing to lower himself, taking upon himself our nature, so that we might be the object of his dedication, and that we might be a part of his identity, his Body, as Son of God. In him we see so quickly that lowliness is not seen as contrary to high dignity: they both co-exist. It might even be said that the high dignity of our humanity lies in its very lowliness. And lowliness is the state in which we are sanctified.

It takes a great deal of humility to be a person like Jesus, particularly when we begin to speak of forgiveness. Be sure to join us this week for our Parish Mission each night as we delve into the reality of forgiveness. It will prove to be a transformative week not only due to the talks, but due also to the special opportunities we have for prayer in the Presence of God during Forty Hours. Please come and spend time with us, and with God. May we grow deeply into his life this Lent.

God bless you.