Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church - Arlington, VA
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February 27, 2022

2/25/2022

 
In today’s Gospel Jesus seems to be questioning or challenging his disciples to be more aware of their own behavior before they go about judging the behavior of others. The image of having a log in one’s eye and attempting to remove a splinter from the eye of another person is quite ridiculous but clearly makes Jesus’ case to his followers.

It appears that Jesus is condemning his disciples of being too quick to judge others while remaining blind to their own shortcomings and missteps. They have missed Jesus’ example of being quick to forgive rather than quick to judge.

Even though they have been the recipients of the lavishness of Jesus’ mercy, they themselves evidently have failed to, in turn, act as Jesus has acted. In this they have failed as students -- for the teacher has taught the lesson but they have missed the meaning.

Jesus instructs them that what is inside will be manifested on the outside... “a good person out of the store of goodness in their heart produces good...just as a rotten tree produces rotten fruit and a good tree produces good fruit”.

Jesus instructs them that the goodness or the rot of the heart will show forth in a person’s speech. It seems that in our age we do not value truth in speech. We find it hard to always trust the words of political leaders, religious leaders, our newscasters or our neighbors. Many of these people often say one thing but do another. Is this not what we just saw in the lead up to the invasion of Ukraine?

Most of the time we are able to spot dishonesty and the lack of integrity in someone’s words and none of us likes to be deceived. Just as Jesus called his disciples to reflect on how quick they are to judge others, so we too have the opportunity to remove the log from our own eye in order that we might be able to remove the splinter from our neighbor’s eye.

And as we prepare for the season of Lent, we can begin to reflect on what is the fruit that our lives bear? How quick am I to show mercy and forgiveness to those who have wronged me or hurt me? And let us all keep the people of Ukraine in our prayers and pray for a peaceful end to the invasion.
​

Blessings,
Fr. Tim 
​


February 20, 2022

2/18/2022

 
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who mistreat you.” Jesus is not calling the disciples to become “door mats” but rather, he is attempting to make a key paradigm shift from violence to nonviolence. He is challenging his followers to be willing to go beyond what the law allowed, “an eye for and eye”, and embrace something much more difficult, to embrace “the other”! To embrace the one who is not on your side, the one who actively hates you and injures you.

This is paradigm shift that would turn their world upside down and inside out! Love your enemies? Imagine being hearers of that for the very first time...it must have sounded like Jesus had “lost it”. How could he expect that his disciples would love their enemies and pray for those who mistreated them? And yet this is what he was asking of them...and of us! Jesus knows that love has the power to change an individual, that love is transformative. Jesus knew that in loving our enemies we would be transformed and being loved holds the power to transform as well.

And it seems to just keep getting tougher...Jesus calls us to be merciful as God is merciful! Now he wants his disciples “to be like God”! How are we supposed to be able to live up to that challenge? It can overwhelm us and lead us to feel rather defeated.

How is all of this humanly possible! It seems too much! God’s goodness and mercy is so great, how can any human act be as good and merciful as an act of God? Some theologians say that God’s goodness and mercy comes down to “generosity” -- a generosity so grand that it created all known reality. Our theology sees the incarnation as a self-giving act of God, to and for the sake of the world. And Jesus’ death as his resurrection are both acts of “Divine generosity”, as is our salvation.

So then this “generosity”, this “out pouring” of God’s self into the world empowers us, fills us, emboldens us and ultimately changes us to become more generous, less violent, less bent on getting more and more for ourselves, into being kind and loving to “the other”. So we work for racial justice and for ways in which our society makes room for the marginalized and for the immigrant and the refugee, rather than looking for ways to keep them out.

This spirit of generosity calls us to let go of racist, misogynist, and other bigoted attitudes towards others and to work for true justice and peace in our homes, our communities, our nation and in our world. Perhaps this generosity of spirit grows from first finding our own gratitude for being loved so deeply and passionately by God, just as we are. And from that gratitude then grows our ability to be generous and merciful towards “the other”, who in truth, is my sister, my brother.

So, let us ask ourselves: for what am I grateful for in my life? To whom will I be generous and merciful towards this week?
​

Blessings,
Fr. Tim 


February 13, 2022

2/11/2022

 
This weekend’s Gospel presents to us Luke’s presentation of the beatitudes. In Luke, the sermon takes place not on a mountain side as in Matthew’s Gospel, but rather on level ground. So we have the Sermon on the Plain instead of the Sermon on the Mount. But the differences go far deeper than simply the place in which Jesus gives his sermon on the beatitudes. In Luke, besides the blessings, there are “the woes to you who...” are rich, are full, laugh, whom all speak well of, “for their ancestors treated the false prophets this way.” It is a warning that good things are not coming their way even though things are going well for them right now.

So in Luke’s Gospel Jesus names those who are blessed and those whom woe will come upon if they don’t change their lives. We normally focus on the blessings and not on the woes but the “woes” are there for a reason -- to warn us! To get us to reflect on our lives and how we are living with the poor and the hungry, how we are comforting the weeping and how we treat those hated on account of Jesus.

In Matthew’s account of the sermon of the beatitudes he says “blessed are the poor in sprit” while Luke writes of Jesus’ sermon as, “blessed are the poor”, a very different message I would say. In Jesus’ socioreligious reality his contemporaries believed the poor were poor because they had done something that angered God. And that the wealthy were rich because they had gained the favor of God and were blessed by God. Jesus is preaching the exact opposite of this understanding of how God relates to human beings. Luke’s Gospel is often referred to as the Gospel of the poor, or the Gospel of women, or the Gospel of the marginalized. It is so referred to because these are the categories of persons who are raised up in Luke’s Gospel, to a greater extent than in the other two synoptic gospels.

In both Matthew and in Luke, Jesus calls blessed all those who are hated, excluded, insulted or denounced on account of him. It is an important proclamation that Jesus utters as in fact many of his disciples and the apostles will eventually be denounced, some imprisoned and others even martyred for their faith in Jesus. He promises them that in spite of what they suffer on account of their allegiance to him, they will not be abandoned by Jesus and that they are
“the blessed ones”.

I think ultimately that the beatitudes and the woes we encounter in Luke
’s Gospel challenge us and call us to holiness through reaching out to the poor and to all who are excluded and marginalized, to all who suffer in this world. And we are promised that to the extent that we reach out to the suffering, to the extent that we “do justice,” we will become more fully “the blessed of God” and find fulfillment and happiness in our lives through helping to build up the Reign of God!

As we take time this week to reflect on this Gospel let us focus on one of the beatitudes and ask ourselves; in what concrete ways might I live this out today? Who is grieving that I might comfort, hungry that I might feed, poor that I might reach out to and offer a hand?


​Blessings,
Fr. Tim 

February 6, 2022

2/4/2022

 
Each time we celebrate Eucharist I ask us to recall the many ways that God tries to speak to us through the people, places and events of our lives that we experience. But so often we miss God’s presence and the words that God speaks to us because of the business of our lives; because of our rush and hurry. The readings this weekend are all about God speaking to us, about God reaching out to us... calling to us!

But calling us to what? How do we hear? How do we know what God is saying to us? What is “the Word” being spoken to us?

Isaiah, Paul and Peter all felt unworthy -- too sinful to receive “the Word of God”. But, just the same, it was to them that the Word came! God does not rely on our worthiness to speak to us. God speaks to us because God chooses to! God chooses to speak to us because we are “the beloved” of God!

I want to take this weekend once again to encourage our OLQP family to “seize” 15 to 20 minutes each day for prayer and reflection on our lives. I do this because I truly believe, that through this time we set aside, we can hear God’s Word spoken to us -- if we set the time aside to listen.

Setting aside the time to listen: believing that God seeks us...that God desires us...that God surrounds us and fills us... that God desires that we come to know Her/Him more deeply. That is the truth of the Incarnation -- the becoming flesh of our God, in Jesus Christ!
​

How much time do I spend actively engaging with God each day? Could I spend more time to listen? How might I do that?
​

Blessings,
Fr. Tim 


    Author

    Fr. Tim Hickey, C.S.Sp.

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Our Lady Queen of Peace
2700 South 19th Street
Arlington, Virginia, 22204, USA
703-979-5580 Office
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Office hours: Mon-Fri, 8:30 am - 4:30 pm (closed on federal holidays)
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Saturday: Vigil Mass at 5:30 pm
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