Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church - Arlington, VA
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  • Home
  • About Us
    • Our History
    • Staff >
      • Parish Administration & Communication
    • News and Bulletins
    • Just a Thought...or two...
    • Learning Alley
    • Gallery
    • Register with OLQP
    • Contact Us
  • Worship
    • Mass Times and Schedule
    • Live-stream Schedule & Special Mass Programs
    • Liturgical Ministries
    • Sacraments
    • Music Ministry
  • Our Faith
    • Faith Formation >
      • Foundations & Family Circles
      • Children's Liturgy of the Word
      • Sacraments
      • Youth & Young Adult
      • 2023-24 Registration
    • Formacion en la Fe 2023-2024 >
      • Circulos Familiares y Fundamentos 2023-2024
      • Preparacion Sacramental 2022-2023
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      • Inscripciones
    • Adult Faith Groups
    • Adult Faith Formation
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  • Get Involved
    • Matthew 25
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    • ISIDORE’S GARDEN
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      • Haiti Ministry
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    • Pastoral Care/Hospitality >
      • Stephen Ministry
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April 2, 2023

3/31/2023

 
Palm Sunday’s readings carry the sorrows and the weight of the world. The false accusations, denials, betrayals, injustice, and beatings Jesus faced are heartbreaking.

Today’s Eucharist begins with great joy with palm branches in hand, we sing victorious hymns to commemorate Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Like the crowds, we too welcome and rejoice in his reign. Similar to the disciples, we are also excited and filled with wonderous expectations.

However, when we listen to the passion of Jesus Christ, the mood of the crowds as well as that of the disciples changes swiftly. The crowds are fickle, cheering for Jesus one day and shouting “crucify him” the next day. Even many of his closest friends and followers vigorously denied their knowledge of and association with him, and in cowardly fashion abandoned him out of fear for their own safety.

Jesus, on the other hand is resolved to faithfully carry out his mission: the proclamation of the advent of the Reign of God and of God’s lavish love and forgiveness poured out for each one of us, and for the earth itself… ”for God so loved the world”. Through the suffering and death of Jesus we have been saved and forgiven, and our sins and guilt put as far from us “as the East is from the West”!

We may wonder at times if God really loves us…and just how much. Today we are reminded how much. As Christ spread his arms wide upon the cross, this is how much we are loved by God!

How do I live out my identity as the “beloved of God”? How can I share this message of God’s love and forgiveness with others?

To whom am I being called to open wide my arms to embrace them in the midst of their need? Who are being crucified today…the people of Ukraine, Ethiopia, Sudan and Afghanistan, the millions of refugees? People crucified because of the color of their skin, people crucified for their immigration status, for who they love, what language they speak, for what part of the world or country they were born in, for their age, their gender, their intellectual or physical abilities?

As I enter this Holy Week, whose burdens will I help to shoulder to the foot of cross, as I journey with Jesus this week and meditate upon the gift of love and forgiveness which he has so lavishly poured upon me, and upon all of humanity?

Holy week blessings,

Fr. Tim

March 26, 2023

3/24/2023

 
And Jesus wept...

In today’s Gospel we are given a beautiful vista into both the humanity and divinity of Jesus. Imagine Jesus weeping at the loss of his good friend...his humanness bursts forth from the pages of the Gospel as he cries out in sorrow, and tears roll down his cheeks...“God wept” for the love of Lazarus!

Even knowing that he could...and would...raise Lazarus! The emotion is raw...fully human... fully divine... at the same time. So what is the message?

The message is that none of us can escape the experiences of the loss, pain and suffering at the death of a loved one. Jesus knows how we feel. The message of today’s Gospel is that God loves us! Our God personally knows the depth of our pain, our suffering and loss, and wants us to understand that death is not the end! And that God is with us in the midst our suffering; we are not alone. Jesus stands with us in our moments of loss and suffering, as surely as he stood with Martha and Mary in their moment of pain and suffering at the death of Lazarus.

Death is a moment of transformation, a movement of our soul entering into eternal life with God, that we have been promised by Jesus Christ.

God wants us to know that death is not final
...it is not our master...it is not our end. Today’s Gospel tells us, once and for all, that God is the God of life...and not even death can overpower God’s love for us! St. Paul asks, “oh death, where is your sting...now?” St. Paul can ask this, knowing the answer through his faith in Jesus Christ.

It is in and through the amazing nature of the incarnation of our God that we are saved...through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we are given eternal life.

Death has no hold over us...we are promised eternal life. Even though our bodies wear out, are invaded by disease or struck down by violence...that is not the end for us. We live on! We pass into a new life...life in the fullness of the presence of God.

We will be reunited with all of our loved ones...all of those who have gone before us!

Today’s Gospel shows us that Jesus has the power over life and death...and life wins! We win! Even when it appears to the non-believer that we have lost! Because of God’s lavish love for each one of us, we will not perish, we will live! So in the midst of Lent...as we reflect on our own dying...we are reminded that nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God.

How does knowing that I am promised eternal life with God influence my life today? Can others tell by how I live life?
​

Lenten blessings,
Fr. Tim 


March 19, 2023

3/17/2023

 
This Sunday’s Gospel tells the story of the man born blind…familiar enough to most of us. But have we heard it so often that we miss the underlying themes, the story between the lines of the text?

We could focus on the miracle of “new sight” in the physical sense but we could go deeper and explore Jesus’ insistence that sin has nothing to do with physical sickness, disability or human tragedy…and in fact, that it is in the midst of tragedy and human suffering that God is present.

Jesus’ words and actions help us to see what the blind man saw…he saw the presence of the Living God! It is easy enough to just “see” the physical blindness of the man in the Gospel and “loose sight” of the spiritual darkness of his parents who, because of fear, fail to speak the amazing truth of their son’s healing.

Fear of speaking out and failure to stand up for truth and justice makes us blind and keeps us in spiritual darkness, as individuals, as communities and as a nation.

In the midst of wars and famine and international, and national crises for refugees and immigrants, we are called to be a people who look, and see…to be a people who do not turn away from the suffering of our sisters and brothers. But rather to be a people who stand with them in the midst of their suffering and work to bring healing to them through working for true and lasting justice for them.

When I look at the world around me, at all the suffering, am I able to see God’s presence in the midst of the suffering; perhaps in the people who are speaking out, and working for the people suffering? Am I called to be there, to be used by God like the “man born blind” to show forth God’s glory in the midst of a suffering world?

When have I felt God’s presence in the midst of suffering? Do I have “blind spots” in my life where I need to ask Jesus for sight, so I may see more clearly my sisters and brothers, as God sees them?

Lenten blessings,
Fr. Tim

March 10, 2023

3/10/2023

 
Today’s Gospel tells the story of a woman who goes to a well for a jug of water and has a life altering encounter and is promised a special kind of water with properties far beyond her wildest imaginings.
In the socio-religious context of today’s Gospel story, according to the cultural morals and religious laws, this woman is perhaps the last person to whom “living water” should be given. 

At least that is what we are supposed to think. After all, she is a woman who, in a male-
preferred society, is undeserving of any special privileges.

Furthermore, she is a Samaritan, a member of the group that observant Jews considered fallen away from the true religion of Israel, and therefore apostates, and no longer people of the covenant.

On top of that, she is a woman of questionable virtue, even within her own community. Many scholars believe that is the reason she came all alone and in the heat of the day to draw water from the well, rather than in the company of the other women in the cool of the morning. Because of this, many scholars surmise that she may well have been an outsider in her own village.

In the first reading along with the Israelites we are told that God will quench our thirst. In the Gospel we discover that Jesus is the source of “living water.” Thus, we may conclude that God’s promise to quench our thirst, is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

It is interesting to note that in all of this, there is no talk of our meriting this life-giving water. The Israelites were undeserving, the Samaritan woman was undeserving, and we too, in our human sinfulness, are undeserving. This life-giving water is not deserved but freely given.

It is from God’s lavish love that this water flows and our thirst is slaked. What matters is whether or not we recognize that we are thirsty and know to seek to have our thirst quenched in Jesus Christ.

I think it is very important to note that this woman at the center of today’s Gospel encounter, could easily, particularly in a patriarchal society, be written off as a sinful person. But that would completely miss the point and trajectory of her encounter with Jesus. A hugely significant point of the story is not that she is sinful but that she is a Samaritan woman! And Jesus is a Jewish man and he should know better than to have anything to do with her! So we have a man approaching a woman in an area where they are alone and they are unrelated -- this is very problematic according to 1st Century Middle Eastern mores.

Jesus should know better, but he has a plan and his plan is to offer her salvation, regardless of her “outsider religious status”, regardless of her sin.

The trajectory of this encounter that is so important is that Jesus manifests that God’s plan of salvation is not just for the House of Israel! It is for all people. It is even open to Samaritans!

The readings over the next few Sundays offer wonderful Lenten opportunities to look deeply into our own hearts. Have they hardened like the Israelites who took God’s goodness for granted?

Do we test God even though we have seen, heard of, and experienced God’s marvelous deeds in our lives? Or, are we more like the Samaritan woman caught in the complexities of life, yet open to new insights; open to conversions of mind and heart with Jesus? What parts of my life most need conversion? Am I gaining any new insights through my Lenten practices...is my heart any softer?
​

Lenten blessings,
Fr. Tim 

March 5, 2023

3/3/2023

 
When we hear today’s Gospel we might wonder what actually happened on that mountain? The scene we are presented with is quite dramatic: Jesus is transfigured with an “other worldly” brilliance that glowed like the sun. And two prophets, long dead, appear and converse with Jesus and then suddenly there comes the voice of God…speaking the same words that were heard at Jesus’ baptism…”this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased”….but this time, God adds; “ listen to him.”

This is clearly an essential moment in the lives of the three disciples who witness this proclamation of Jesus’ true identity as the Son of God. And yet Jesus tells them to “tell no one the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

Can you imagine how they must have been just “bursting at the seams” with desire to tell the other disciples…to share this amazing experience where they had seen long dead prophets and saw Jesus transfigured before their very eyes and then on top of that…they heard the “voice of God speak, to them”?!

Remember it was not just a proclamation of Jesus’ divine identity but also instruction from God directly to them to “listen to him!”

I think that Lent can be a time of honing our listening skills, of taking time to slow down in the midst of our chaotic lives and to listen… just listen for God speaking to us.

In our busyness and preoccupation, we so often miss the word spoken “to us” and spoken “for us” by God. In today’s Gospel Jesus took the three disciples apart up a mountain…a retreat of sorts…and there apart from the others they encountered God.

Taking time apart is certainly not easy in the world in which we live, but in order to remain centered and maintain some sense of being disciples of Jesus we all need to take time apart to sit with Jesus…and listen, listen to where he is calling us in our life.

Long before science told us that almost all forms of meditation are beneficial to the whole person; body, mind and spirit, Jesus made it clear that whether retreating to a deserted place or just going into our rooms, being apart for quiet prayer is essential… even Jesus took time apart to pray. So too we are called to take time apart to meditate…not to fill the silence with words but to just sit and listen and to rest in God. And then from that place of silence we can move to a place of informed action, Gospel action!

So let us hone our listening skills this Lent and commit to take time apart to sit with God and allow God to “transfigure us”, so that we might go out and transfigure the world! To transfigure the world by standing up, with and for the poor and the marginalized, working for real and lasting change in their lives and the lives of all who are suffering…wherever we encounter them.

If I am not already meditating can I add three, five-minute periods of meditation to my day? How bad do I want to hear God...and what God might be calling me to? If I am already meditating regularly, how has it affected my awareness of to what, and or to whom God is calling me to help?

Lenten 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
703-979-5590 Fax
office@ourladyqueenofpeace.org
Office hours: Mon-Fri, 8:30 am - 4:30 pm (closed on federal holidays)
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Weekend Mass Schedule
Saturday: Vigil Mass at 5:30 pm
Sunday: 8 am, 9:30 am, 11:15 am, 1 pm (Spanish),
​6 pm (young adult)

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