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.