* All are invited to attend our annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity prayer service with Bishop Loverde at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Arlington, Tuesday, January 19 at 7pm. Please join us!
*March For Life: This year’s March will be held on Friday, January 22, to commemorate the 43rd Anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Please see page 13 for transportation details. Please plan to join your parish family in this peaceful protest against abortion.
* It’s time for each and every registered family to consider how they plan to support the work of the Catholic Church in the annual Bishop’s Lenten Appeal: If we reflect on the mission that Jesus has given us, and the words of Pope Francis, the Church is uniquely placed y God to be his agent of mercy and change, to heal our world. Prayerfully think of how you will respond to this call. Commitment Sunday will be February 6-7 at all Masses. Your generosity is what makes our Church’s response possible. “Go forth as heralds of God’s mercy!”
Coming Soon:
* Mark your calendars for February 17 and join Saint Mary if you can in Richmond for Catholics in the Capitol as we meet with our legislators and attend the Bishops’ Vespers service at Sacred Heart Cathedral (see p. 9). We need to know if you plan to come by January 25. Thanks.
* We’re doing something special for the Year of Mercy: Parish Mercy Penance Service, Wednesday, February 24. Please plan to come, details to follow soon.
This bulletin is packed with information this week, I hope you have a chance to take it all in. So many great things are coming up soon: please consider joining Saint Mary as we go to Richmond to speak with our legislators on February 17 as well as reserving your chairs right now at the Parish Night Out dinner and orchestra April 29. Last year tickets sold out, it is one of the best nights of the year.
Mostly what I would like to share with you is the results of our annual Family Week in Religious Education. For the past four years we have had special classes/activities the first week back from Christmas vacation, inviting parents to come and participate and focus on a particular theme. Our parish theme this year, “People of Thankfulness, SowingSeeds of Mercy,” helped us spend the week reflecting on what we are thankful for. Students gathered with parents and talked about what is really important, what we are most thankful for in our life. More on page 5.
But what we celebrate this week and in this short season of Ordinary Time before Lent begins is the results of those classes. We took the totals of the children’s answers and arranged them on banners on either side of the sanctuary in church. The answers which had the highest totals are represented in large type, the smaller totals, smaller type.
They are going to serve as a reminder why we come to church. Sometimes, maybe, people think they come to church because they have to, or because they will get some special feeling or strength for the coming week. Of course, these things are true, but not the primary reason. We gather because God has given us all these things that now appear before us as we celebrate Mass together. God has given us so much that we can’t not celebrate the liturgy of thanksgiving, the Eucharist. Sometimes we can start thinking of too many other things on our minds. These banners will help us focus, I believe.
The old idea that the priest did everything was an error that grew over the years and Vatican II reminded us that all of us have equally important roles in the Mass. It isn’t just the priest who does all the work. You gather, pray, sing, remember the promise of God and his saving action in Jesus whose prayer we pray, that is, the Mass. And you bring all of your gifts and yourself to offer all of it to God with bread and wine so that he can consecrate the bread, the wine, all of you, all of the world through you. The Mass is yours! And how glad we are that we have a place in it! God doesn’t do all these things by himself! He relies on you to be present to him, just as you believe he is present to you. Let us spend the year celebrating the mercy of God, and our thankfulness.
Comfort, give comfort to my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her
that her service is at an end,
her guilt is expiated;
indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORD
double for all her sins.
A voice cries out:
In the desert prepare the way of the LORD!
Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill shall be made low;
the rugged land shall be made a plain,
the rough country, a broad valley.
Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together;
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
Go up on to a high mountain,
Zion, herald of glad tidings;
cry out at the top of your voice,
Jerusalem, herald of good news!
Fear not to cry out
and say to the cities of Judah:
Here is your God!
Here comes with power
the Lord GOD,
who rules by a strong arm;
here is his reward with him,
his recompense before him.
Like a shepherd he feeds his flock;
in his arms he gathers the lambs,
carrying them in his bosom,
and leading the ewes with care.
R. (1) O bless the Lord, my soul.
O LORD, my God, you are great indeed!
you are clothed with majesty and glory,
robed in light as with a cloak.
You have spread out the heavens like a tent-cloth;
R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
You have constructed your palace upon the waters.
You make the clouds your chariot;
you travel on the wings of the wind.
You make the winds your messengers,
and flaming fire your ministers.
R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
How manifold are your works, O LORD!
In wisdom you have wrought them all—
the earth is full of your creatures;
the sea also, great and wide,
in which are schools without number
of living things both small and great.
R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
They look to you to give them food in due time.
When you give it to them, they gather it;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
If you take away their breath, they perish and return to the dust.
When you send forth your spirit, they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth.
R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
Reading 2 TI 2:11-14; 3:4-7
Beloved:
The grace of God has appeared, saving all
and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires
and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age,
as we await the blessed hope,
the appearance of the glory of our great God
and savior Jesus Christ,
who gave himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness
and to cleanse for himself a people as his own,
eager to do what is good.
When the kindness and generous love
of God our savior appeared,
not because of any righteous deeds we had done
but because of his mercy,
He saved us through the bath of rebirth
and renewal by the Holy Spirit,
whom he richly poured out on us
through Jesus Christ our savior,
so that we might be justified by his grace
and become heirs in hope of eternal life.
Alleluia CF. LK 3:16
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
John said: One mightier than I is coming;
he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel LK 3:15-16, 21-22
The people were filled with expectation,
and all were asking in their hearts
whether John might be the Christ.
John answered them all, saying,
“I am baptizing you with water,
but one mightier than I is coming.
I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals.
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
After all the people had been baptized
and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying,
heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him
in bodily form like a dove.
And a voice came from heaven,
“You are my beloved Son;
with you I am well pleased.”
Today we observe the end of this short Christmas season. Since next year Christmas falls on a Sunday it will be shorter yet! So much has happened this Christmas, so many beautiful, joyful gatherings and celebrations, so much goodwill and kindness. I want to offer my words of gratitude to all our ministers who, by their art or their service, have made this season so remarkable. To our decorators, our musicians, our singers and servers, our greeters and ministers of Word and Sacrament, staff and volunteers, thank you!
Baptism is the perfect culmination of all that has gone before this Christmas season—incarnation, family, announcement of God’s plan of salvation—because in Baptism we become sharers of all these Mysteries. Not just so that we can claim them, but that they can now live in us. Baptism is at once the high point of our life, the greatest gift we can receive (I sometimes tell parents of babies being baptized that it is all downhill from here…), a new identity as members of God’s family and heirs to heaven, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit—but it is also the doorway to life, full initiation in the Church, the beginning of a new reality that we are in Jesus. Life starts here, for saints.
I was surprised to hear a protestant pastor friend of mine tell me recently that he only recently realized that we Catholics would not rebaptize any of his people if they were to become Catholic. He had not been aware that our Church recognizes any Baptism as valid that uses the flowing of water, the name of the Father, Son and Spirit, and has the intention of the Church for the gift of salvation. Most Christian churches still would rebaptize Catholics if they were to go there.
It points to a fundamental misunderstanding we might have of Baptism. Baptism isn’t a function of Canon Law (although its proper administration is guaranteed by Church law requirements) or even an invention of the Church. It is an utterly free gift of God, his desire to share his life, his intervention in the time and space of creation to call us back by the sharing of his Spirit. There is no way we could limit it or control it, claim it for our own. We don’t deserve it any more than anyone else. The gift of faith is given to all who ask.
So to realize that all the Baptized are equally baptized—equally sharing in the life of God as brothers and sisters in one family, called to holiness and new life—well, it might change the way you look at other Christians who are outside the self-defined limits of churches. The unity of Baptism is the greatest and undeniable reality of who we are as one Body, even before we come to the inevitable controversies of governance, orders, Eucharist, marriage issues and the like. It is true that what unites is far greater than the things that might still divide.
I was privileged to be present a few years back as an agreement on Common Baptism was signed by the Catholic Church and the Reformed Churches (Presbyterian Church USA, Disciples of Christ, United Church of Christ, Reformed Church in America). For the first time there was a public, ratified document that said that we observed the validity of each others’ Baptism so long as the proper form was followed and the intention was there. Up until that point, we had recognized their Baptism, but they had not recognized ours.
Small accomplishments like this can help us to see that God’s hand is still active in varied ways in the lives of the Church. At every Mass, you would be surprised if you actually counted the number of times that we acknowledge the mercy of God and ask for his gift of Unity for his people. Baptism is the richest and most compelling topic of conversation that we can have with our Christian brothers and sisters in learning more about each other and finding opportunities to come together in prayer and service.
With Baptism, of course, comes the treasures of faith, hope and love that shape us according to the heart of Jesus. Without these supernatural virtues we would not understand God’s will for us—even as much as we do. To grow in our faith, to live in hope and to be guided by the love of God is something that can’t happen until we
gain a healthy and profound understanding of the power of the Baptism that we have received. The whole idea of an event of being “born again” is not familiar to us as with some other churches, because the Baptism we have already received is something we must seek to live out in every moment of life, not just once-for-all, as Sanctifying Grace continues to form us and shape us to know and love God and each other more each day.
