​May Crowning?
#12thandMass
May 10, 2022


This past Sunday, we had our “May Crowning.”  What is this tradition, you may ask?  If you were raised in a different part of the Christian Church, a different “denomination”, or are simply new to Church, this may be rather foreign to you.  Placing a garland of flowers on a statue of Mary?  Really?  “Quaint”, but…?  Border-line idolatry?  It all depends on whom you believe Jesus wants Mary to be for you.
 
Mary is Jesus’ mother.  The Council of Ephesus, in 431, a mere 50 years after the the early Church discerned which books would comprise the Bible as we know and read it today (the Council of Rome, 382), prayerfully deliberated about Mary.  Jesus’ mother but, given the oneness of Jesus’ person, Mary was declared not simply Christotokos, "Christ-bearer" but Theotokos, "God-bearer": “Mother of God.” 
 
Now, at the Cross, Jesus gives Mary to John, “Behold your mother.” (John 19:27).  This extends to us.  Mary, “Mother of God”, is also our spiritual mother.  She is given care of our souls, of our faith journey.  And interestingly, Jesus speaks in terms of a command, not an a la carte option.  “Take her.” 
 
Over the centuries, as the relationship of Christians with Mary has deepened, the Church has better understood her and her role in our lives.  One of her titles is “queen”, used in the Roman Catholic and Easter Orthodox Churches, and some Episcopal and Lutheran congregations.  We find this title in the writings of early third and fourth century Church Fathers (Origen, Jerome, Peter Chrysologus...).  The title stayed.  At ASA, we sing the “Salve Regina” at the end of Compline, a hymn composed in the eleventh century.  You will also notice a large sign in our Lady Chapel, high above its altar, “Regina Caeli”, Queen of Heaven.
 
The month of May is the traditional time for the simple ritual of crowning, to express honor and gratitude, an opportunity, for each of us, to welcome anew our spiritual mother and queen. 
 
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me.
 
Yours in Jesus and Mary,
 
Dominique

The Holy “Three Days”
#12thandMass
April 12, 2022
 
The Paschal Triduum, the holy “Three Days”, is nearly upon us, the unique journey of the entire Church in which we, as friends and disciples of Christ, seek to participate in the mysteries of His passion, death and resurrection. As we journey, we will read and re-read the scriptural accounts which are not only momentous, but also deeply relevant for they reveal how we are loved, how Jesus is King and Messiah. We will, by our prayerful liturgical gestures, draw close to Him who “gives His life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). 
 
In a sense one celebration with different parts, we go from Maundy Thursday, when Jesus bestows the gift of Himself in the Eucharist and shows us how love translates into service of one another, to Good Friday, when Jesus effectively gives Himself completely, unto Easter, whereby that same love raises His body from the grave, and Life is definitively victorious over death. 
 
To know that this week is holy because one of overflowing love, we, of course, need faith.  It is not immediately obvious!  It is not obvious because the events that we celebrate, from the outside, do not always seem terribly loving.  I wish you an increase of faith and I invite you to participate as much as possible, to set aside time for our Lord, to be together in His love.
 
Yours in Him,
 
 
Dominique+
Rector
 
 
 

The Most Overwhelming Work of God’s Love
Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday 2020 

The Palm Sunday celebration always begins
by recalling the “triumphal” entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, 
cloaks and palm branches covering His pathway...
Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!
Jesus’ arrival fulfills a prophecy from the prophet Zechariah (9:9):
Look, your king is coming to you,
humble, and mounted on a donkey.
Some triumph! 
I can’t help but think of buck-tooth Donkey from Shrek.
Why not a little more Marvel super-hero,
with Jesus seated upon a noble and strong white horse,
like that magnificently referenced twice in the Book of Revelation?
In chapter 6 (verse 2):
… a white horse! Its rider had a bow; a crown was given to him,
and he came out conquering and to conquer.
In chapter 19 (verse 11):
… a white horse! Its rider is called Faithful and True,
and in righteousness he judges and makes war.
Now we’re talking triumphal.  But a donkey?  Really?  Why?
Perhaps, because the King of Peace, not a super-hero, not here to make war,
as we understand and tragically experience it.
The apparent lack of triumph may perhaps be disappointing for some of us.
 
Jesus’ arrival also fulfils the first part of the same prophecy from Zechariah:
“Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion.”
We need not be afraid.
God always keeps His promises!
Our King is coming and coming humbly.
The humble arrival means that Jesus enters
every frightening situation that may be ours,
When it comes to God, to Jesus, “triumphal” refers to love not power.
True love can reach that which we deem unreachable. That is triumph.
Jesus is definitely powerful, all-powerful,
but His power is always at the service of His love.
He has no ego issues, no need to manifest prowess.
 
As suggested, we are not simply remembering a past event.
We continue to celebrate, to experience triumphal entry
each time the Lord comes.
We do so in a special way when we gather around this altar.
Indeed, as we move to the altar in our celebration, we proclaim
Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.
Vaguely familiar?
The Eucharist, Communion is a “triumphal” entry.
The Eucharist is our King coming, humbly, in the silence of divine love. 
“Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion.”
 
Today’s celebration opens this Holy Week.
Love is what makes this week holy.
I know that I’ve referred to this definition many times…
I will continue to do so until it makes its way onto your fridge
or into your diary or even somewhere in your phone:
          “Holiness is the purity of divine love” (St. Thomas Aquinas, +1274), 
And, as St. Paul says in I Corinthians 13: “Love never fails”.
And, as St. Paul of the Cross, 17th-century Italian monk and mystic, says,
The Passion of Christ
is the greatest and most overwhelming work of God’s love.
 
Jesus is King in laying down His life for us.
This is what love does—and love must do.
Our King of Peace, comes to reign in mercy, not by “lording it over us.”
He comes to reign from within, in our hearts.
Not always easy to believe or grasp, for triumphant kings normally do not die.
Our King suffers and dies--in order fully to reign as king.
 
And, along the journey to His death, Jesus willingly suffers
everything that normally “kills” the human heart:

• betrayal and abandonment 
• slander and mockery 
• denial and rejection

Jesus loves victoriously through it all; a King triumphant is He.            
 
If you think that there are deal-breakers in your life: this isn’t really for you,
this much love is impossible, think twice.
The Christ Who is coming to us loves even the betrayer,
and He suffers our insults with love’s ultimate expression, forgiveness.
We worship a Savior who “did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited”, but humbled and emptied himself
“to the point of death, even death on a cross”,
a Savior Who thus can save us from death and its cause, sin,
Who can save us, when needed, from our selves.
We worship a God who pursues us with relentless, daunting love
and Who ultimately will enter the darkness and dankness of the grave
to say even here, here I will not be without you.
Although the suffering in our lives and world may incline you to think
that God stands an observer at a distance, on safe sidelines, think twice.
His abundant grace is hiding in, with, and under all the brokenness.
 
Let us lay our hearts on the path for Christ, and be in awe of
and surrender to the One Who “cometh in the name of the Lord.”
Amen.

The Heavenly Call, The Eternal Embrace
#12thandMass
March 29, 2022
 
This coming Sunday’s second reading, Philippians 3:4-14, is a powerful one.  
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
 
Allow me to try to summarize some of what Saint Paul may be telling us.  Jesus is God incarnate, come to us.  In this divine encounter, Jesus awakens in us a desire to know Him (not simply about Him) and to belong to Him.  He pours forth His love, divine love—even in our suffering.  If Christ is risen, then He suffers no more.  “The sharing of his sufferings” of which Saint Paul speaks, must then be the sufferings of the members of His Body, the Church, our own suffering, which, if a special place to receive God’s love, can be a pathway to heaven. 
We all carry burdens and scars.  But looking back too much serves little purpose.  Indeed, our encounter with Christ, always in the present, ought keep us from dwelling on the past.  We are to “strain forward to what lies ahead, the prize of the heavenly call”, which is the fullness of divine love in God’s eternal embrace.  We already experience this love in the depths of our hearts, even in our suffering.  One day, the love will definitively triumph.
 
Yours on this Lenten journey,
 
Dominique+
Brother-in-Christ
​

​Home Sweet Home
#12thandMass
March 22, 2021
 
This coming Fourth Sunday of Lent, we are blessed with the parable of the Prodigal Son, a familiar story of being lost and being found, a revelation that we all need.  We need it because we struggle to believe that God’s love is truly unconditional.  We struggle to believe that God’s love is truly unconditional because we have no other experience of a relationship of purely unconditional love.  Even in the best of relationships, there are strings attached.  And, in the best of relationships, we, of course, cannot expect to be celebrated when we have gone astray.
 
But St. Paul tells us in Romans, chapter 8, verse 39, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus”.  “Nothing” means no that there are no conditions, and that, thankfully, God’s heart is beyond breaking. 
 
To acknowledge oneself as prodigal (from the Latin prodigere, “to squander”) is to acknowledge oneself a sinner.  Doing so can be uncomfortable, yet doing so is liberating.  I know that I am a sinner, that is, I know that I do not always love.  I also know, in faith, that God is in loving pursuit of me when I break my own heart because I choose not to love. 
 
We are children of God who dare to believe that, when we squander and go astray then return home, although unworthy, we will be received, embraced, and celebrated unconditionally.  Every time we receive the Eucharist, we have this type of experience.  The Eucharist is our “welcome home”.
 
Henri Nouwen, Dutch priest (+1996), in his book “The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming” speaks eloquently of being found and being welcomed home:
 
I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by him?” The question is not “How am I to know God?” but “How am I to let myself be known by God?” And, finally, the question is not “How am I to love God?” but “How am I to let myself be loved by God?” God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home.”
 
Lent is homecoming…
 
Gratefully yours in Christ,
 
Dominique+
 

​Lent: Deep in the Heart
#12thandMass
March 15, 2022
 
Ekaterina Fyodorovna Kolyschkine de Hueck Doherty, a Russian-Canadian Catholic Christian woman of deep prayer, in 1932, gave up all her possessions to live among the poor in Toronto.  In 1947, she moved to rural Canada, where she founded Madonna House, a celibate community of men and women, who seek to serve Christ in one another and the poor. Their daily life is simple: morning prayer, a day of work, Mass and dinner. Work at the main house generally consists of maintenance of the community, care of a farm, and the sorting and distribution of donations to the poor.  Ekaterina, or Catherine, died in 1985.  She says,
 
Lent is a time of going very deeply into ourselves… What is it that stands between us and God? Between us and our brothers and sisters? Between us and life, the life of the spirit? Whatever it is, let us relentlessly tear it out, without a moment’s hesitation.
 
What do we need the Lord to remove from our hearts, that stands in the way of surrender in love, that stands between?  Ask the Holy Spirit to show you, and then to remove it.  Bear in mind, however, that you need to do this more than once, day after day. The purification of our hearts will not be fully achieved until we are definitively in the Lord’s embrace, i.e., Heaven!
 
 
Fr. Dominique
Lenten co-sojourner
 
 

#12thandMass
What are you Seeking? (John 1:38)
Lent 2022
 
Lent: an intimately personal yet wonderfully communal journey, a sacred journey “by Him and with Him and in Him” (Eucharistic Prayer A) and to Him. It is a time during which we can be confident that, although mysteriously and undeservedly, we can find the Lord and be found by the Lord, in different ways.
During Lent, we do hear talk of discipline and penitence.  These are important, but they are for the sake of love, to express love, and, even more, so to be encountered and loved.  Discipline and penitence are about opening wide the door of our hearts to our Lord, who always takes the initiative in love.  “We love because he first loved us”. (I John 4:19)
We have a Lenten calendar of rich offerings of prayer, fellowship, theology, and service.  The Lord awaits us.  Adoration of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament takes place every Wednesday.  We will twice have “Compline and Candles”, as well as a Morning Retreat, “Remembering our Baptism”, offered by our two seminarians, MJ and Brandon, at the Stuart Center, near Catholic University.  On the First Sunday in Lent, Father James Farwell, from Virginia Theological Seminary, will launch us theologically: “Repentance, Ashes and Forgiveness”.  There are always opportunities to serve in love.  You are invited to consider helping “Sandwiches in the City”.  And there is always the Sacrament of Reconciliation, a special, grace-filled encounter.
Lent: an intimately personal yet wonderfully communal journey.  Each of our journeys is unique and yet shared.  Let us truly be in communion of prayer while we are on this journey, lifting one another up to the One who come to us out of pure love.
 
Yours in Christ,
 
Fr. Dominique
fellow-sojourner
​

#12thandMass
The Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in The Temple
February 1, 2022
 
This Wednesday, February 2, is the feast of The Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in The Temple (we will be transferring its celebration to this Sunday, February 6). This is an important feast in many parts of the Church (considered one of the Twelve Great Feasts in the Easter Orthodox Church), and a most ancient celebration, dating to, at least, the early 400s. It is another epiphany in this Epiphany season. An epiphany is a manifestation, a striking appearance. When it comes to God, however, the manifestations are more than striking appearance. The manifestations are experiences of sharing.  In other words, when God manifests Himself, God shares Himself.
 
Forty days after Jesus’ birth, we have a sharing in the Temple. When the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, the parents of Jesus brought him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. This was prescribed in the law, as recorded in the Book of Leviticus, chapter 12. More deeply than mere observance of tradition, however, Mary and Joseph are coming to the Temple to thank God for the gift of Jesus and to share the gift with the world.  And, waiting in line to receive the gift are the mysterious figures Simeon and “Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher”. 
 
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153) preached on this feast:
 
Offer your Son, holy Virgin,
and present to the Lord the blessed fruit of your womb.
Offer for the reconciliation of us all
the holy Victim which is pleasing to God.
 
After this public sharing, Joseph, Mary and Jesus “returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.” Normalcy resumes, or so it seems. Divine light, hidden in the everyday, is our new normal. Discover it. Discover the Lord present to you, loving you unconditionally.  How blessed we are.
 
Yours in Christ,
 
Dominique
fellow-seeker-who-has-been-found
​

#12thandMass
FEAST OF SAINT AGNES
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
​
This Sunday we celebrate, in a special way, Saint Agnes (of Rome), our patroness and
intercessor, co-sojourner, sister and divine friend. The early Church assigned her feast
to 21 January (we are moving it to our Sunday celebration for communal purposes; she
doesn’t mind!).

Agnes was born in Rome and raised in a Christian family. She died a virgin-martyr at
the age of 12 (or 13) on 21 January 304. She was buried in a Roman catacomb, over
which, during the reign of Constantine (306-337), a basilica, Sant'Angese fuori le mura,
was erected. The basilica was later remodeled by Pope Honorius (+638) and has since
remained unaltered. In the apse is a mosaic showing Agnes amid flames, with a sword
at her feet. It is my dream to have a parish pilgrimage to this site.

Many have sung her praises and extolled her virginity and heroism under torture. The
three oldest written testimonies to her martyrdom are those of Saint Ambrose (d. 397),
Bishop of Milan, Pope Damasus (d. 384), and Aurelius Prudentius (d. 413), Roman
Christian poet. Prudentius adheres to Saint Ambrose’ account of death by the sword but
expands the story: the judge threatened to give over her virginity to a house of
prostitution for refusing a fixed marriage. For her refusal of such aggression to her
innocence, she was killed. In the end, she remained a virgin and obtained the crown of
martyrdom. How the gift of faith can make us strong and faith-full and victorious. Indeed,
by it, one can move mountains…

Saint Agnes, patron saint of rape survivors, can teach us about the sacredness of the
human body and about being single-hearted for the Lord. She is depicted in the mural
above our main altar. She is the second figure from the left, and below her are symbolic
representations of her innocence and martyrdom: a lamb (agnus in Latin) and a palm
branch.

Saint Agnes, pray for us.

Yours on the faith journey with her,
Dominique+
Rector