Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church - Arlington, VA
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  • Circulos Familiares y Fundamentos 2022-2023

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 


January 30, 2022

1/28/2022

 
In this Sunday’s gospel we find Jesus returning home to Nazareth just as word about him has begun to spread throughout the region. The Gospel says He was filled with the power of the Holy Spirit and people all throughout the region were talking about him.

He comes to his hometown synagogue and from the scroll handed to him he proclaims the Word of God from the prophet Isaiah; “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Imagine for a moment what must have been going through the minds of his neighbors and childhood friends. This was Mary and Joseph’s son...how can he claim to be “the anointed one” of God?

They must have wondered “who does he think he is?” Jesus proclaims that he is filled with the Holy Spirit and has come to do the work of God.

And as members of the Body of Christ we too are filled with the Holy Spirit and are called to do the very things that Jesus proclaimed he was sent to do!

We are called to “be” good news for the poor and help those held captive by war, poverty, racism -- to proclaim the Good News to all those held captive by anything that diminishes them or holds them back from being who God has made them to be.

We are called to bring recovery of sight to all those who are blinded by anger or hatred, by loving them and walking with them in the midst of their darkness.

We are called to proclaim that the mercy and grace of God lavishly pours down upon all women and men! To proclaim they are not left abandoned in the midst of their suffering and loneliness, no they are “the beloved” and God is with them!
And so we ask ourselves, how have I felt the Spirit of God wash over me?

In the midst of all the world’s woes, in the midst of this horrible pandemic, what is the Spirit calling me to in my life at this time?

And how and to whom am I being called to proclaim the Good News? And, we can indeed do this for surely the Spirit of the Lord is upon us!
​

Blessings,
Fr. Tim 


January 23, 2022

1/21/2022

 
Our liturgical year runs on a 3 year cycle -- years A, B and C. We began year C with the first Sunday of Advent which opens each new liturgical year. And year C uses the Gospel of Luke. This Sunday begins with the opening of Luke’s Gospel acknowledging that many others have undertaken recording the events of Jesus’ life by those who witnessed the events firsthand. Luke desired to do the same so that Theophilus would come to know the truth, mainly, that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, the Son of God, who had come into the world as its Savior, manifested by his life, death and resurrection.

Both the Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles were written for this same Theophilus, all so that he might come to believe in Jesus the Christ. It has been pointed out over the years by many scholars that some of the more well-known Gospel stories are only found in Luke. Two of the most famous I would venture to say would be the annunciation by the angel Gabriel to Mary and her subsequent visit to her cousin Elizabeth from which we receive the words of the amazing Magnificat! But not to forget other stories unique to Luke such as: the good Samaritan and the Lavish Father (the Prodigal Son).

Last week in John’s Gospel we had Jesus beginning his public ministry at the wedding feast at Cana and the miracle of the turning of the water into wine. Luke similarly places the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in the region of Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit, where he traveled about the area preaching in their synagogues and everyone praised him.

And then he heads to his hometown of Nazareth and Luke recounts this wonderful scene of Jesus going to his home synagogue and proclaiming the words of the prophet Isaiah.

Jesus proclaims these famous words of, arguably, one of the most important of the ancient prophets. That opening line; “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me”... is a proclamation of Jesus’ true identity, just as at the wedding at Cana, by his miracle he revealed his true identity.

In this case it is Jesus’ words when he sits down; “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” This is the moment when Jesus tells all of his boyhood friends and neighbors that he is not who they think he is! No he is MUCH MORE. He is the ONE upon whom rests “The Spirit of the Lord”! Now that is an amazing proclamation! And it had to have been shocking and somewhat unbelievable to his kin and to those who had known him all his life. But we will hear more about that next week.

What is the Spirit of the Lord moving me to do with my life? To whom is the Spirit calling me to reach out to?
​

Blessings,
Fr. Tim 


January 16, 2022

1/14/2022

 
As the scene of the Wedding Feast at Cana unfolds, Mary seemingly “pushes” Jesus out into his public ministry, ignoring his reticence to perform a miracle in the midst of the crowd of guests gathered for the wedding feast.

It seems to me that it was a moment when Mary called on Jesus to let his true identity shine forth for people to see! Jesus may well have felt that it was not the time, but he responds to her request, eventually. For the Gospel of John “signs” like the turning of the water into wine are very important as they point to the identity of Jesus as both human and divine.

St Paul is also interested in identity -- in our identity as members of the living Body of Christ.

Paul challenges each one of us to reflect on what is our “gift”?...what is our charism? The gifts that each person is given, is given them! Not for themselves, but for the sake of the whole -- for the Body of Christ!

On this Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, I cannot but help to think his gifts -- of charismatic leadership, bold vision, deep faith and ultimately, martyrdom...a man who shared all he had, his very life, for the sake of the very soul of a nation.

As the struggle for racial justice, equality, and recognition of the human dignity of all persons continues, we must ask ourselves what are my gifts that God has given me for the sake of this struggle?
​

God’s blessings,
Fr Tim 


January 9, 2021

1/8/2022

 
Today as we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan by John the Baptist, we call to mind the transforming power of discipleship. As we struggle to faithfully follow Jesus in our lives, our lives are transformed by the very struggle to be the presence of Christ in the world.

Think for a moment about the baptismal ritual itself; first the calling out of the name in the midst of the assembly for all to hear...the sign of the cross traced on a forehead, a profession of faith, holy water poured and the sacred words are uttered...“I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of Son and of the Holy Spirit”...then an anointing with Sacred oil...the passing of the “Light of Christ” and a white garment, symbol of a new life born of this ancient ritual.

But with this new life comes great responsibility: to live a life as a Christian, as a disciple of Jesus Christ.
It is no easy task; to be a follower of Jesus Christ and live our baptism in concrete ways in our everyday lives. Our baptism calls us to put Christ at the center of our lives and to try and be a healing presence in a wounded world by doing good works, being compassionate, and actively working for justice and peace in the world around us that is at war in so many ways.

We are called to be healers of the wounds of divisions that separate us and cause us to be blind to the fact that we are all sisters and brothers — all of us! The children of God.

And so we ask ourselves...is it outwardly evident that I am a disciple of Jesus by the way I live my life? What could I do in my life to follow Jesus even more closely than I already do, to better live my call to discipleship received in my baptism?
​

Christ’s Blessings,
Fr. Tim 

December 26, 2021

12/24/2021

 
Merry Christmas!

Certain images inspire wonder. They’re powerful beyond the simple contents of the scene.
In the nativity scene we have such an image: a serene new mother, a concerned father, and a vulnerable newborn child. Beleaguered travelers, forced to take refuge in a stable, and the child is carefully laid in a manger—a food trough.

The crude surroundings leave the new family barely protected from the elements, open to any and all who come their way. And yet it inspires wonder!

I believe that the purpose of wonder is to open our hearts. It’s to help us to see that there is more to life than we have come to expect. It tells us that coursing through human life there are elements of the divine.

The manger scene is both an invitation and a promise. The invitation is to leave our pursuit of worldly things behind and instead to enter into the Mystery. To be as vulnerable as this child and these parents. To be as open as these shepherds and as generous of heart as the three kings. To praise like the angels and pay attention like the townspeople. The resulting promise is that we will encounter God. We will discover not only that Jesus is God, but that we too share in God’s life—not only in the afterlife, but right here and right now.

AND SO, HERE’S A CHRISTMAS INVITATION, it’s an invitation in the very midst of this pandemic, in the midst of all the fear and suffering and loss, we are invited to open our hearts to the wonder of this Christmas moment.

Let us all say a prayer of gratitude for the gift of deep and passionate love that God has for each and everyone of us...just as we are! Let us not squander this moment of wonder. Let us open our hearts to the poor and the marginalized, to the voiceless and the ignored, to women who are victims of assault and harassment, to the victims of racism and bigotry and hatred, to open our hearts to the immigrants and refugees, let us reach out to the brokenhearted and lost.

Let us not forget in the rush of the gift giving that in the end this is not about gifts but it is about our God becoming flesh, becoming our salvation and the salvation of the all world! Let us allow the wonder of the Incarnation to settle into our hearts and souls and to transform us, to give us new eyes to see the world as God sees the world!

I pray that each and every one of you has a “wonder-filled” Christmas and pray you come to know how deeply and passionately you are loved by God...just as you are!
​

Merry Christmas
Fr. Tim 


December 19, 2021

12/17/2021

 
This is the time of year when it seems that everyone sings of peace on earth and good will toward all! Pope Paul VI proclaimed that if we want peace we need to work for justice. In this season of dreams of peace and good will...we are called to work for justice!

Advent is a strange season in some ways -- a season of hopes and dreams...a season of promises fulfilled and of promises yet to be fulfilled...a season of the Reign of God, that which is bursting forth and at the same time not yet fully here.

Advent is counter cultural on so many levels -- in a season when it seems the whole world begins to spin ever faster we are called to slow down...to spend time in prayer and reflection...to spend time thinking about the deeper realities of our lives in the midst of the pandemic.

Part of this season’s story is about a young girl living in a male dominated world where women were treated as property. But she breaks free from the bonds of obscurity and insignificance and becomes the heroine. A young girl named Mary said “yes” to an impossible proposition; “yes” to what must have seemed totally absurd. Imagine yourself in Mary’s place...a heavenly visitor telling you that God, The Creator of all things - visible and invisible - was “asking” you to be the mother of the long- awaited Messiah.

The whole idea that God would choose to become human, one like us, and enter into our world as a vulnerable and innocent child is almost too much to comprehend.

And yet she said “yes,” and her yes changed the world forever! To this very day...right now...her yes is still changing the world because the Risen Christ is in our midst! Because of her yes we can profess “we are the Body of Christ!”
What is God calling me to say yes to as a member of the Body of Christ? As I say yes to God, can I say yes to the immigrants and refugees, yes to the women and girls assaulted and abused by the misogyny that is the very fabric of almost every culture in every country?

Can I say yes to refusing to participate in racism and bigotry in my words, actions and thoughts? Can I say yes to reaching out in love to even those who have hurt me or whom I have hurt?

Am I brave enough to risk it all like that young girl, from a dusty little backwater town, some two thousand years ago and say yes to God and to what God has in mind for me? Am I willing to risk, like Mary, and say “yes” to God, in the midst of the chaos, fear and sorrow of this pandemic, not knowing where it will lead me...just trusting that God will walk with me on the journey?
​

Advent Blessings,
Fr Tim 

December 12, 2021

12/10/2021

 
Rejoice! Exult! Be Glad!...for your God rejoices over you! The prophet Zephaniah extols us to “shout for joy”, to be glad and exult with all our hearts for our God has removed all our guilt and we have nothing to fear, even in the midst of this pandemic!

The prophet boldly proclaims that our God is in our midst and that God rejoices over us and sings joyfully because of us!
This Sunday is known as “Gaudete Sunday” (Joyful Sunday) and we light the rose colored candle on the Advent wreath as a sign of our joy. And we are joyful because of the love our God has for us.

In the Gospel we hear that when the people responded to John the Baptist’s call to repent, they asked “what should we do?” John’s response was “if you have two cloaks, share with the person who has none...and whoever has food should do likewise.”

So as we rejoice, repent and prepare for the coming of our long awaited Savior we do so by turning our attention to the poor, the marginalized, the immigrant, the refugee. In the midst of all of the vitriolic, hateful and racist actions we are called to stand up and speak out and act on behalf of our sisters and brothers who are maligned and victimized...often by supposed “Christians”!

Our baptism, by water and the Holy Spirit, calls us to prioritize our lives around our discipleship of Jesus Christ. By keeping Christ at the center of our lives we find direction and are emboldened to become, more and more, manifestations of Christ’s presence in the midst of a wounded world to which we are called to reach out to, in love, to all those who are suffering and rejected or despised, whom we recognize as our sisters and brothers!

Let us rejoice, repent and prepare by living our discipleship by reaching out to “the least ones”....speaking out and acting out on their behalf....and thus we will be ready for Christ’s coming. What will I do this week to rejoice, repent and prepare? With whom will I share an extra cloak, if I have one, or share some extra food?
​

Advent Blessings,
Fr Tim 


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    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
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Saturday: Vigil Mass at 5:30 pm
Sunday: 8 am, 9:30 am, 11:15 am, 1 pm (Spanish),
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