Message from the Pastor's Desk

I wanted to give a little update about my studies here in Washington, D.C., as well as some more personal thoughts and experiences down here. We have four classes during the summer; in June, we had two about general norms of the Code of Canon Law, and another about diocesan and pastoral structures. I wanted to let you know of a particularly important Canon that we discussed – number 534 §1: "After a pastor has taken possession of his parish, he is obliged to apply a Mass for the people entrusted to him on each Sunday and holy day of obligation in his diocese." This is what is known as the "pro populo" Mass, or Mass for the people. A pastor is allowed to delegate this to another priest on Sunday, or may say it himself a different day of the week. Even though I can delegate it in this way, and in fact, we have had Masses for the people in the parish even in my absence, I have been saying Mass for all of you every week, and you remain in my prayers! I am so grateful for the prayers and support of everyone "back home" as well!

I have managed, amid my various obligations, to make a bit of a pilgrimage to a cemetery and old church about twenty miles west of Catholic University. Old Saint Mary of Sorrows Church in Fairfax Station, Virginia was the parish of my mother's family when they first moved to Virginia, and her parents are now buried there. The last time I had visited there was the day of my grandmother's funeral two years ago, and I wanted to return to pray at their grave. I was not aware, though, of the historical significance of the church.

Old Saint Mary's was built between 1858 and 1860 on land donated by two local families. During the Civil War, it became the center of several skirmishes, as it was along the rail line heading west from Washington. The Confederates at the beginning of the war controlled the land to the west toward the important junction town of Manassas, and the Union held the line to the east toward DC. President Lincoln had established an army there under General Pope, who went to confront the Confederates under General Lee at Manassas (marching along the Bull Run, which becomes the Occoquan River and is a tributary of the Potomac). There, he suffered major losses, and ended up getting pushed back toward the north and east. The field hospital for the Union troops ended up being established at Saint Mary's, and many of the pews were taken out and used as beds and stretchers for the wounded as they waited for resupply from the railroad.

On one of these trains coming to resupply was a woman by the name of Clara Barton, who was a clerk at the Patent Office and had organized a group of volunteers to tend to the wounded and dying. Despite rumors that the Confederates were marching toward them, she remained for three days until the last of the wounded soldiers were evacuated. Because of her experiences there on the hill of Old Saint Mary's, she founded the society which became the American Red Cross. Many of the troops who died were buried in the cemetery where my grandparents also lie, and Union General Philip Kearny, who was a commander at the Second Battle of Bull Run and then died at the Battle of Chantilly a few days later as they were retreating, had his funeral there, though his remains were later reinterred at Arlington National Cemetery.

I was fascinated to learn of the history of that cemetery, and reflecting on all that had taken place there turned my thoughts to what it is that we are celebrating this weekend – the 250th anniversary of our nation's Declaration of Independence. It is interesting to consider that this is the date that we celebrate – not the day that we won the war, or the day that we ratified the Constitution, but the day that we signed a document expressing what we considered to be our God-given rights – the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The government does not grant those rights, but rather is to be established to defend and safeguard them. While we know that the framers were not Catholics, as faithful Catholics ourselves, we should understand what those things truly mean as we practice the virtue of piety – to honor our country, and to be grateful for the benefits which we have received from it.

Life is the foundation of all other rights – it is a gift from God, beginning at the moment of conception, and to be protected until natural death. Without the right to life, we are not able to put into practice all the other rights that we have as human beings, made in the image and likeness of the living God himself. Life must be the foundation of all the other considerations that we have about the dignity of human beings, and we must fight to ensure that it is protected in the laws of our nation and the hearts of our countrymen, especially on behalf of the most vulnerable – the unborn, the poor, the elderly, the disabled – all those whom very often society holds to be useless or obstacles.

Liberty must be understood in the context of human dignity, then – that we have free-will because of our immortal souls created by God to know what is good, true, and beautiful, and to desire those things for others and for ourselves – put briefly, to know and to love. Freedom, liberty, is not truly exercised until it reaches those things – those things that are truly good, ultimately, God himself, and recognizing his image in others. We are not free to be "libertine," that is, trying to satisfy our basest desires for pleasures, possessions, and honors, but to be free from attachments to those things so that we can pursue excellence – virtue – to live prudently, courageously, temperately, and justly; and, elevated by God's grace, to practice faith, hope, and charity.

Society may tell us that we become happy by pursuing those base things, but we know that human beings flourish when we pursue excellence. The former does not free us, but rather enslaves us to our passions. We were made for glory with God, and it is Jesus Christ who saves us, and frees us from our sin. He tells us the happiness we should pursue: what we call the Beatitudes, his instructions from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:1-12. As faithful Catholics who also should love our country and desire to see it flourish through our participation in the political system, the truth that Christ himself has revealed to us and handed on through his Church should be our firm guide, and we can allow the Beatitudes to be our personal declaration of independence – independence from our base passions, from slavery to sin, from a society that has gone astray in so many ways, from selfishness and vanity, to the "liberty of the glory of the children of God" (Romans 8:21).

(See: https://stmaryofsorrows.org/?page_id=1346)