Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church - Arlington, VA
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    • Just a Thought...or two...
    • Learning Alley
    • Contact Us
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    • Our History
    • Gallery
  • Worship
    • Mass Times and Schedule
    • Live-stream Schedule & Special Mass Programs
    • Liturgical Ministries
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May 28, 2021

5/28/2021

 
This weekend we celebrate the Feast of the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity...when we talk about the concept of the Holy Trinity many eyes glaze over and some of us experience something akin to “brain fog”. Most of us learned about the Trinity as children, and it was all quite confusing at the time. Well, all these years later it can still be quite confusing. However, if we move towards understanding the Trinity as “relationship”....Jesus said “the father and I are one”... “I am in Him and He is in me”, then perhaps we may become ever slightly more comfortable.

Jesus presents it as a relationship, a “Divine indwelling”. It is a relationship of intimacy, not just doctrine. So if we focus more on the Trinity as relationship perhaps then we can better open up our hearts to an intimate relationship with the Trinity.

It is far more important to have a relationship with God rather than try to explain God. Many a theologian has spent their life trying to explain the Holy Trinity. Thomas Aquinas wrote most eloquently about the Trinity but some claim that after having a mystical experience declared that all he had written was as of straw compared to the beatific vision he had been given.

What is clear is that the Word made flesh, the Spirit of God that swept over waters and the Creator who spoke the universe into being were and are a vital unified Divine presence in which “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

The great American theologian, Catherine Mowry Lacuna wrote: “Living a Trinitarian faith means living God’s life: living from and for God, from and for others.” She goes on to say it is about “living as Christ lived, preaching the gospel, relying totally on God; offering healing and reconciliation...living together in harmony and communion with every other creature in the common household of God, doing all things to the praise and glory of God.”

And so I ask myself how might I better live in harmony and communion with all of creation? What might “living from and for God, from and for others” look like in my life?
​

Blessings,
Fr. Tim 


May 23, 2021

5/21/2021

 
Happy birthday to the Church, to this parish community of Our Lady Queen of Peace and to the Spiritan Community. We are thankful for the Holy Spirit’s coming upon Mary and the other disciples on that amazing and shocking Pentecost so many centuries ago. An event that unleashed a religious revolution that has, down through the centuries, in one way or another impacted the whole world.

We are thankful for our courageous Black Catholic sisters and brothers who, filled with the Holy Spirit, went to Richmond to meet with the bishop and ask for a parish of their own where they could worship in dignity and be treated with love and respect. And we are thankful for the Spiritan Congregation who responded to the call from the Bishop of Richmond to come to Arlington and work with the first fourteen Black Catholic Families to start a new Black Catholic Church community. We are thankful to all my brother Spiritans who have shepherded this parish community for 76 years. We offer a prayer of gratitude for all the parishioners and clergy who have gone before us, filled with the Holy Spirit and labored to create this wonderful parish community. Happy 76th anniversary Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish Community!

St. Augustine said that the Spirit blows where the Spirit wills...not exactly comforting if you are someone who likes things neat and orderly or if you prefer to have life all figured out and neatly packaged. Most of us would prefer to see life’s decisions as right or wrong, good or bad...as if everything in life were black and white. The problem with life is that most of the time we are living in the grey, everything is not black and white! This is where the Holy Spirit offers counsel, the challenge is to be open to the Spirit’s counsel! The Holy Spirit blows where it wills and inspires and guides whomever it chooses, whenever and wherever it chooses.

Most of us get use to a particular routine and we find comfort in doing things in a particular way and we find discomfort when our routine gets changed by outside influences or when we are forced to do things in a different or new way. It is no different in the church, we all get comfortable in the way we worship, in the way we pray, in the way we sing, in what we sing, and then when change comes we suddenly are set off center and we feel “off balance” at the change or new ways.

This reality has probably never been clearer or truer than during this pandemic. First closing all masses to the public and then reopening but with restrictions on how many could come back and how we would reassemble! All this without any certainty on when we will be able to return to something that looks like it used to look and feel. But what we do know is we will all return, when it is safe for everyone, and we can once more raise our voices in full song without masks and we can once again greet our sisters and brothers with a sign of the peace of Christ! And we can all come forward to the Table of the Lord!

It has been said that, there is one constant in life and that is change. We recognize how difficult all the changes, due to COVID-19, have been for all us, from the youngest to the oldest of not just our parish community but for people around the entire world.

I am sure that many in the church today see the Pope’s challenge to live a radically gospel centered life as a change from what they were used to, a change in what they thought it meant to be a Catholic. In answering the Gospel’s call, Pope Francis has called us out of the church building and into the streets to be a “field hospital” where binding up the wounds of the poor and brokenhearted is a priority.

The Pope is following the call of Christ, who calls us to be a welcoming presence to immigrants and refugees, to seek out the lost and forsaken and to “be” the word of peace in the presence of war, to “be” the word of love spoken to the lonely and marginalized of the world, to “be” the word of justice and equality spoken in the midst of racial injustice and exclusion.

As well, we are called to be care takers of creation, to take responsibility for the way we live on the planet; personally, communally, nationally and internationally. While all of this can all seem overwhelming, we need to remember that we are not called to do all this by ourselves but rather as a community filled with the Holy Spirit. It is in and through the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit within us and around us that we that we are able to do all good things! As we celebrate the great feast of Pentecost let each of us ask ourselves to where and to what is the Holy Spirit calling me in my life?

Happy 76th anniversary Our Lady Queen of Peace!
​

Amen. 

May 16, 2021

5/15/2021

 
As we celebrate “The Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord” I cannot help but reflect on the many ideas and concepts that swirl around this feast...some with unintended consequences! The word “ascension” itself congers up images of Jesus rising up into the clouds to join the Father and the Holy Spirit somewhere “up there”...far, far away. The problem with this is it can lead us to believe that heaven is “up there” and we are “down here” and that God is far off and distant from us and from our lives. This stands in stark contrast to the heart and soul of the meaning and significance of the incarnation. The truth of our God having become “incarnate” (in the flesh) in Jesus, meaning that God is with us...and not off... watching us from afar. We need to recall Jesus’ promise “I am with you until the end”! These simple words are most profound...there is no need for us to stand gawking skyward with our jaws hanging open. While the physical presence of Jesus Christ as a singular human and divine presence no long- er walks the earth...but Christ is here, as close to us as our own breath, keeping us alive to be his presence in our world.

As we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus let us celebrate the presence of the Risen One in our midst! Before his ascension Jesus gave a clear command and mission to his disciples...to us. We are charged with preaching the “Good News” of Jesus Christ and to be that healing, loving and welcoming presence in a world filled with sickness, hatred and exclusion. Filled with the “real presence we are sent forth to stand up and be the voice of the voiceless, to speak out on behalf of those who are silenced or ignored, to make sure that hatred, racism and bigotry are not left unchecked. Filled with the Spirit we speak the truth of the Gospel to power, whether convenient or inconvenient, whether garnering us friends or marginalizing us, it is our call as disciples of Jesus Christ! And we are able to do this precisely because “in God we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Filled with the very presence of Divinity itself we are empowered and emboldened to go forth and proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ even to the ends of the earth, not just with words but with action, by how we live our life.

And so I ask myself, how might I be a healing, loving and welcoming presence to those who are “other”? How can I “stand up” for the Gospel, in the public arena and in my personal life? How do I experience the real presence of God in my daily life?

Easter Blessings,
Fr. Tim
 


May 9, 2021

5/7/2021

 
On this sixth Sunday of Easter we hear one of the foundational beliefs of our Christian faith: Jesus proclaims to his disciples that just as the Father has loved him so he loves them and that there is no greater love than for someone to lay down their life for a friend…which of course is exactly what he is about to do! In the second reading St John tells us clearly that God is love itself!

And Jesus calls us to abide in this love, to dwell in it, to live from it! During this Easter season we are invited to reflect on this amazing deep and passionate love that God has for each one of us; to reflect on the reality that we are loved even in the midst of our brokenness and sinfulness.

Jesus was willing to lay down his life to show us that boundless love of which he spoke to his disciples. This deep and passionate love that God has for us is for all people and even St Peter comes to realize this -- we hear him recognize that God shows no partiality. And we are called to love one another as Christ loves us. We are empowered to do this in and through the grace of the Eucharist which not only empowers us but emboldens us to reach out to embrace “the other”, especially those most in need, those most despised and dejected, and those marginalized by ourselves and by the broader society.

Just as St Peter came to recognize that God’s love stretched beyond the people of Israel so too we are called to see God’s amazing and transformative love for all peoples and allow it to change our hearts and minds that we might draw near to all those who suffer and are in need -- those to whom racial justice is denied and to those whom others dehumanize and distance themselves from. This love holds the power to shape and impact our world view and how we see other people, other cultures and other countries. It helps us understand how we are called as disciples to interact with others, to reach out to them in love. Reaching out and embracing “the other”, the one who is different, can be difficult but it is precisely what we are called to do as Jesus’ disciples.

So this radical love shapes questions like: In the midst of this pandemic “should we” share the vaccine with other countries? It shapes it to become rather, “how can we do it,” and “how quickly can we do it”. We no longer see the residents of other countries as “others” but as sisters and brothers in need. And this radical love from God transforms us and reshapes how we live with one another and how we live in the world around us.

So the question it raises for me is: What can I do to better accept God’s love for me in my life that I might share it with others? And I ask myself, to whom is God’s love calling me to love and accept, in my family, in my school, in my community, in my country, in the world?

Easter 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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