Portrait of a Parish - draft

 

Portrait of a Parish

St. Paul – Damascus

Portrait of a Parish

St. Paul – Damascus

 

Compiled by John Cavanaugh-O’Keefe

Stories and Vignettes from Our Parish Times

 

Portrait of a Parish is a collection of articles written between 2020 and 2025 about St. Paul Catholic Church in Damascus, Maryland. Taken together, the stories and vignettes give a clear picture of the community.

The articles were published in Our Parish Times (OPT), an inter-parish newspaper published six times each school year. OPT was founded in 1991 by Paul Zurkowski; today, the publishers are Kathleen and Lawrence Hamm. It is written by and for and about parishes and schools in one county (Montgomery County), which is the northwest section of the Archdiocese of Washington. OPT’s mission is:

·         to strengthen the local church by witnessing to readers that they are an integral part of a faith community that is dynamic and diverse yet cohesive and strongly rooted, and

·         to recognize the clergy, lay leaders, faculty, and staff who make our parishes and schools work.

The unsigned articles generally were written by the St. Paul parish editor, John Cavanaugh-O’Keefe.

 

 

 

ISBN: 9798283397955

Copyright? The book is in the public domain. If you wish to use articles and give credit, refer to Our Parish Times, Bethesda, Maryland.

 

 

 

Contents

 

2020: Starting Out with Our Parish Times. 7

2021: The Covid Year. 17

2022: The Year with Msgr. Filardi 57

2023: Long Year without a Resident Pastor. 95

2024: Year One with Fr. Cusick. 129

2025: Jubilee Year. 171

 

 

 

 

2020: Starting Out with Our Parish Times

 

When Our Parish Times began in 1991, laity in most of the schools and parishes of Montgomery County joined the effort. St. Paul Catholic Church in Damascus signed up in 2020.

 

 

October/December 2020

 

 

Archbishop Gregory’s Only 2020 Confirmation 

 

“You will never be able to realize all of your promise unless you are filled with the Spirit of Hope and Potential. You need the power of God’s own Spirit to help you to become the people you are destined to become. Confirmation is the Sacrament of Possibility, of Potential, of Promise.” – from Archbishop Wilton Gregory’s homily at St. Paul 

 

The pandemic interfered with confirmation schedules around Pentecost, so the 51 confirmations at St. Paul in September were only ones that Archbishop Wilton Gregory administered this year, and his first in the Archdiocese. However, he assured everyone, he had done this 140,000 times before 2020, and he knew what he was doing.

 

The requirements of social distancing during the Covid-19 crisis made it impossible to pack inside everyone who wanted to be there. Families waited outside in the parking lot while candidates and their sponsors only were inside. With only three people in each pew – built for nine – and every other pew left empty, the church looked rather empty even when it was filled to legal capacity. But the spirit of the event was still vibrant: the young candidates looked and sounded alert and prepared.

The patron saints chosen by the confirmed seemed to reflect an awareness of the pandemic. Seven young men chose St. Sebastian as their patron saint; he was a third century martyr, and a patron saint of people suffering through a plague. (Megan McQuin, who helped the students prepare for confirmation, adds wryly that St. Sebastian is also the patron saint of athletes, and Damascus takes sports seriously.) Five young women chose St. Elizabeth of Hungary; she was a 13^th century countess, daughter of the king of Hungary, who poured out her wealth serving the poor, and is a patron saint of hospitals and of Catholic Charities.

The archbishop’s respect and affection for the young in the church was clear: “In spite of the noise, confusion, and unpredictable moments you introduce into our lives, you remind us that God’s Spirit is to be found in such energy and promise.”

 

 

Archbishop Gregory confirms Caroline Botti. Her brother James is her sponsor. Caroline chose St. Elizabeth of Hungary because she built a hospital to care for the poor and sick. Photo by Doug Johncox

 

 

Thanks, Fr. Pierce! 

 

Fr. Joseph Pierce, a scholarly pastor who led the congregation in praying the psalms every day before Mass, left St. Paul’s after 12 years of service. He was transferred to southern Maryland, to St. John Vianney in Prince Frederick, Maryland.  

Fr. Pierce oversaw the construction and opening of a new parish center, for large parish events and for religious instruction. Like the church, the parish center has large windows overlooking Maryland’s rolling hills.

Ginny Clifford, a long-time parish stalwart, praised Fr. Pierce’s care for the parish during the Covid crisis. “He was careful to make the sacraments available to everyone as well as possible. He was very aggressive about protecting people with social distancing and masks, but also protecting people’s spiritual lives – keeping people in touch with the sacraments, with Mass on TV, Mass with safe distancing when possible, confessions. He built a team of parishioners to stay in touch with anyone who might be in trouble because they were isolated. He cared about us.”

Ann Barbagallo adds that when Fr. Pierce preached, he shared his own experiences that made it easier to understand the words of Jesus. And he had a gift for dealing with people in crisis, especially death. He helped individuals and their families, with tenderness.

He accepted the challenge of continuing to support the medical clinic in El Rosario, Honduras, built by parishioners inspired by Joanny Figueroa, who lived in Maryland for some years, and provided nursing care to several aging parishioners. When Joanny returned to her home in Honduras, she kept contact with friends at St. Paul; and over the years, she enlisted and coordinated steadily growing teams of medical professional and other volunteers trekked south to offer social services, especially a medical clinic that served tens of thousands of poor Hondurans. Year after year, in the spring, Fr. Pierce prepared for the mission trip, worrying – and then returned jubilant.

 

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Fr. Pierce, jubilant in green, is shown with a team at St. Paul’s Clinic in Honduras, including Sherrie Wade, Maureen Appleby, Charles Appleby, Melanie Raum, Madeline Feltus, and others.

 

 

 

 

Welcome, Msgr. Filardi! 

 

In June 2020, Archbishop Gregory assigned Msgr. Edward Filardi as the new pastor of St. Paul. He came here from Our Lady of Lourdes parish in Bethesda.

There had been rumors for years that he wanted to come to Damascus. And he says that several months before the transfer, former pastor Fr. Peter Sweeney told him that in his opinion, Fr. Filardi would be a good fit for the parish, and urged him to talk to the person in charge of placing pastors. Fr. Filardi asked Fr. Sweeney if he would talk to the archdiocese officials about it. But neither of them acted on it; archdiocesan officials came to the same conclusion – this is a good fit – without the helpful advice of either priest.

Msgr. Filardi says he was attracted by the beauty of the church and its surroundings, but more by the people he knew here. 

Did the place match his hopes? After some months on the job, he is still surprised and delighted by the beauty of the area – the open land, the hills and trees, the gentle morning fog. There’s a lot of work to do, but in some ways it’s like being on a retreat, in a tranquil place that inspires prayer.

Did anything here startle him? He says that he was surprised that the church is locked all day, except during Mass and other services. He doesn’t want to make changes too fast; he intends to listen and learn for months more. But he’s got his eyes on those locks.

Does he have plans? He intends to serve the people here, and that begins with getting to know us. He didn’t arrive with any great scheme that he is planning to impose. For now, he’s trying to find the best way to re-open as much as possible as we learn our way through the pandemic. He’s focused on how we bring people back together.

 

 

Fr. Filardi has many old friends in St. Paul Church. In 2000, Cathy Roth collected 13 young people to go to World Youth Day, with Fr. Filardi as chaplain. The pilgrims brought a “firstday card” for the Holy Father. Pictured with Fr. Filardi are five Cavanaugh-O’Keefes, Jimmy Creegan, Katie Graham, and Tom Johncox, all from St. Paul – plus Paul and Rebecca Mullan, Caitlin Lipovski, and others. Photo by Alexander Vernon

 

 

 

September 17, 2020, Damascus MD.  Msgr. Filardi blesses Victory Haven, with 72 units of low-cost housing for seniors in Damascus, offered by Victory Housing and the archdiocese. The four-story apartment building is near St. Paul Catholic Church, and near the town library and senior center. Kelly Gardiner (in background of photo), resident manager, is proud of the residence. “It’s beautiful, of course, but it’s the people who make who make it. We have wonderful residents, who look out for each other and support each other.” Photo by Graham Pearson

 

 

 

Betty Serritella celebrates in the Caribbean with her husband Jim, after a long and successful fight with cancer. After her chemotherapy and radiology and surgery, when she emerged alive, they decamped to St Lucia. They have shared their struggles and insights in an account that Jim wrote, The Journey through Cancer, available at Amazon.

 

 

 

 

2021: The Covid Year

 

January 2021

Parish Celebrates a Founder’s Century of Service 

Virginia Rhodes, a founding member of the parish, is approaching the age of 100. She is still active in the work of the church, sharing the life of the Gospel.

Virginia grew up in the farmland west of Damascus. Her mother died when she was 12 and her brother was seven; she remembers that everyone fussed over the little boy – “he was spoiled!” – but everyone expected her to take care of herself, independent and helpful; so that’s what she did for the next nine decades.

She attended a one-room schoolhouse on Kings Valley Road, which has since disappeared into the woods. Then she attended Damascus High School.

She married a Catholic, Edmond Rhodes, who had three children. He never pushed her to join his church; but when they had a son, she decided herself to become Catholic and raise all four kids together in the Church. She went to see Fr. Meyer at St. Martin’s in Gaithersburg for instruction, three times a week, with her husband; and they plowed through the Baltimore Catechism. “It was all so different I didn’t think I’d ever understand it,” she says. “But Fr. Meyer was wonderful.”

She was a fan of Vatican II. She never knew any Latin, and Edmond didn’t know any either; it was a struggle to understand what was going on at Mass. “It was great when that all changed!”

When the new parish started, Edmond and Virginia helped to find the land and fund the building. The first Mass at St. Paul was Christmas 1960. On Christmas Eve, she and her son John and two others spent the whole day cleaning up grime from construction. Then she kept cleaning and decorating that church for almost six decades. 

They had mishaps. “My friend was so hurry-scurry. One day, she cleaned the tabernacle, and cleaned the gilt right off the front. It looked terrible.”

Three of her children drifted away from the church over the years, and that bothered her. But during the pandemic this year, one grandson – Brian Rhodes, a professional firefighter – declared that he was “tired of not having the faith.” He went through the RCIA program with Msgr. Filardi’s help, and was received into the Church on Saturday, November 21.

Virginia, who will celebrate her 100th birthday on July 17, declares herself very happy.

 

Virginia Rhodes stands proudly in her front yard with her son Michael and Msgr. Filardi. The original church (1960) is visible behind Michael, and the new church (2002) is behind Mrs. Rhodes.

 

 

 

 

 

Prayer Shawls: A Rich and Simple Ministry

Among the simplest and most attractive services of St. Paul Catholic Church is the prayer shawl ministry. It includes community, service, prayer, and beauty, all in one smiling package.

For over years, a group of women from the parish have met once a week to crochet or knit together. It’s usually seven or eight people, sometimes as many as 15. Before the pandemic interfered, they met downstairs in the rectory. Now, to maintain safe social distancing, they use a larger space in the basement of the Parish Center.

So what do they do? They sit and knit and chat a bit. Some crochet, and pray, a bit. And in their gentle chat, they knit the parish together, a bit.

They make prayer shawls for the sick and the bereaved. It’s a simple gift, like flowers, but it lasts longer. When you wrap up in one of these shawls, it’s a soft and warm reminder that the people of the parish are thinking of you and praying for you.

When the shawls or robes are finished, the makers pray over them, asking the Lord to bless the recipients. Then the pastor or other parish ministers deliver them. The shawls aren’t the focus of a visit; they are a little gift to leave behind after a visit – a tangible and useful and attractive reminder of grace.

The women make lap robes for people living in nursing homes including Pleasant View in Mt. Airy. This is where the pandemic exploded onto the scene in Maryland – which can catch and hold your attention, but need not. The home does in fact have a pleasant view, rolling hills, sunlight – and lap robes, quiet little gifts with a gentle human touch.

The women also make stump covers, for people who lost a leg and need something like a warm sock but bigger. These covers are also good for people with broken legs in a cast, who need something for stray chilly toes. And they make baby hats for newborns at Holy Cross Hospital in Germantown. They used to make hats for babies at Medstar in Olney (formerly Montgomery General Hospital), but there’s another group there now. And they also make some baby layettes for the National Christ Child Society. 

Koinonia, diakonia, kerygma, knitted together with beauty and a smile. That’s hard to beat!

 

Doris Doonan and Sherrie Wade (socially distanced) working and praying for the sick and elderly of the parish.

 

 

20 + C + M + B + 21. Say what? 

To celebrate Epiphany, many Catholics commit themselves each year to welcome strangers like the three wise men. So during the week of Epiphany, Msgr. Edward Filardi visited and blessed homes around the parish, and encouraged people to write the promise over their doors: In 2021, we will welcome Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar.

After the blessing, per custom, the family wrote 20 + C + M + B + 21 over the door: they will welcome strangers.

The custom is a little odd. The three wise men visited the Lord: are we supposed to imitate the wise men, or the Lord? Who is visitor, and who is guest, and which one are we? It may seem odd, but actually, hosts and guests swap roles frequently, throughout Scripture. 

The archetype of hospitality is Abraham welcoming three celestial visitors at Mamre. Abraham starts out as the host: he invites his celestial guests into the shade beneath his trees and showers food on them. But within a few hours, the roles are reversed: God welcomes Abraham beneath the stars of his sky and showers gifts on him. 

We recall this role reversal at the Eucharist. The priest holds up the host and says that the guests at this feast should be happy. Jesus is host; we are invited guests. Our response is, we are not ready to be hosts for such a guest. Wait a moment: which is which?

The host/guest relationship – at Mamre, at Mass, and at Epiphany – is not confused; it’s an invitation to unity. Like marriage, it’s an image of the Trinity.

Allyssa received her own dose of grace for holding the holy water as the pastor blessed the Bourdeaux home. Then John wrote the formulaic message over the door, a promise of welcome that he and his wife Ann and their four children made together.

 

 

2021 March

 

Celebrating the Sacraments of Mercy and Love

by Barbara Zellers

 

On February 13-14, four children enrolled in the Montessori-based Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program at St Paul parish celebrated, for the first time, the great Sacraments of Mercy and Love. Madeline Giorgis, Zane Lugo, Dahlia Nightingale Nino, and Annabel Shelhorse each responded to the voice of the Shepherd calling them to His table.

Over the past three years, the children have learned about Jesus the Good Shepherd – how, when, and why he laid down his life for us, how he prepared his flock for a time when he could not be with us in a way that we could see and touch him, but would still be present to us in the Eucharist.

They meditated on the teachings of Jesus related to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. They began with the True Vine, to recognize the importance of remaining in him, and the fruits that arise when we remain. They considered those things that separate us from God and one another, and the effort it takes to remain. They studied the parables of mercy in Luke, (the Found Sheep, the Found Coin, and the Found Son). Each one is about a loving search for the lost, with great rejoicing when the lost have been found, reconciled. Always a feast! Finally, the children learned of the faith of the Centurion, who believed Jesus did not have to be physically present to perform miracles. They came to know that Jesus heals our souls just as he healed the Centurion’s servant.

Before receiving the Sacraments, the children experienced a two-day retreat, exploring the Mass and the Word, using age-appropriate materials to deepen their understanding. Using the Maxims, they each performed an examination of conscience and prepared to renew their Baptismal vows. Each family sewed a white robe — a reminder of our Baptismal garment and of the clean robe the father offered the found son — and the children embroidered them with a red cross and other symbols important to them.

The children made their First Reconciliation on Saturday, donning their white robes and renewing their Baptismal vows — all followed by the greatest feast, First Holy Communion, on Sunday.

The snow this year was a special gift as they hiked and sledded down the hill behind the church, experiencing the wonder and awe of all God’s creation throughout their preparation.

 

Dahlia is meditating on the parable of the Good Shepherd. Behind her (left), Madeline is working on a map of the land of Israel. And Annabel’s work (right) is a meditation on the Eucharistic Presence. (Photo: Kimberly Morrison)

Zane is working with a 3-D map of the city of Jerusalem. (Photo by Kimberly Morrison)

 

Joseph’s Music Surrounds Our Widows

by Anonymous

What can you tell me about being a widow in this parish? That clumsy question elicited an indirect but moving response, the story of our piano.

In 1955, Joseph entered the Steinway Showroom in New York City to fulfill a childhood dream. He was an accomplished pianist, although not classically trained. He had learned to play as a child, and this talent had helped him pay his way through university. He had enjoyed every minute at the keyboard, and then got paid! Now, happily married and with a growing family, he had landed a coveted promotion – and the time was right to own the Cadillac of pianos.

Joseph played every piano in the showroom, and settled on the instrument with the truest tone, a baby grand. The Steinway traveled with the family, moving west across the country. When Joseph died, he bequeathed the piano to his son and namesake: Joseph Jr.

The Steinway was part of Joseph Jr.’s home as his children grew up, and accompanied them to Damascus. From the first time he met Fr. Peter Sweeney, and affable Irishman in his simple rural church, Joseph Jr. felt he had found home.

When Fr. Sweeney built the new church, he couldn’t afford an organ. So in the months before his own death, Joseph Jr. invited Fr. Sweeney – and the church organist Mary Beth Talamo, and Liturgical Director Maria Stanton – to visit his home and examine the piano. Would a Steinway suffice?

The men traded Irish banter, and then crawled under the piano to inspect it structurally. The women stayed up top checking strings and keyboard, and Mary Beth played. And so it became the main liturgical instrument in the new church until a new organ would come.

Joseph Jr. did not live to hear the Steinway played at the dedication of the new church. But a few months later, his family gathered there for a wedding, preceded by sacred music played by Mel Ayala, dedicated to the memory of the two Josephs.

The Steinway still performs, lifting up parishioners – during the pandemic, weddings, funerals, baptisms, confirmations, holy days. Purchased by Joseph, and bequeathed by Joseph Jr., now in this Year of St. Joseph, it continues to resound with joy.

The Steinway was donated anonymously, and so it remains. But each note is gift, with love.

 

 

New Volunteer Coordinator May Get a Hold of You

St. Paul has a new Volunteer Ministry Coordinator, Kimberly Morrison. This used to be called the social concerns ministry – many simple human services plus advocacy for social justice. She sees her work as making it easier for people to serve in practical ways.

Her first project was an outreach to women in the county’s shelter for battered women. She lined up people from the community to collect a variety of simple gifts to deliver on Valentine’s Day – candy, flowers, basic toiletries, nail polish, toys for the kids, hand-written cards. The people involved included parishioners, and girls from an American Heritage troop. The shelter is hidden, for protection, so the gifts were delivered by police officers – another plus, since it strengthens that relationship. Many women there had seen cops show up for something awful, like taking kids away for safety reasons; seeing the police in a happy role is good for everyone. Kimberly’s outreach helped battered women – and cops. She helps people to serve.

Going forward, Kimberly plans to review the activities that her predecessors, Sherrie Wade and Margie Apgar, used to lead – then strengthen, revise, or rebuild them. Parishioners offer a rich list of services, but what more can we do to to carry out works of mercy?

St. Paul Church implements most of the corporal works of mercy, but not all: we’re not much involved with the archdiocesan prison ministry. Maybe it’s time.

Kimberly has been in the parish for 16 years, and has been active in youth ministry, hospitality, JustFaith, the Atrium program, and other services. Shortly after she and her husband joined, she was in a “Why Catholic” discussion group, and one evening she spoke about a homily about the cross. Generally, when people talk about the crosses we bear, they are annoyed and grumbling: this situation or that person is “such a cross”! But that’s not the Lord’s way; he embraced his cross. We should adjust. Barbara Zellers was impressed, and warned Kimberly, “Don’t let Sherrie get a hold of you!” But the very next day, Sherrie called her up. Barbara had turned her in! And Sherrie was ready to pass out some crosses.

Now Kimberly’s coordinating volunteers, which may mean you. What’s your choice: grumble or embrace?

 

May 2021

 

Religious Education in the Pandemic Year: “That’s Who We Are”

The pandemic interrupted educational programs around the world, including religious education at St. Paul. But Lisa Nueslein, the parish Director of Religious Education, the pandemic year was also a time of inspiration and success, because so many primary educators – that is, parents – stepped forward to meet the new challenges.

Lisa embraces wholeheartedly the words of St. John Paul II. Writing about catechesis in our time, he said that “we have but one teacher, Jesus Christ,” and that “the definitive aim of catechesis is to put people not only in touch but in communion, in intimacy, with Jesus Christ: only He can lead us to the love of the Father in the Spirit and make us share in the life of the Holy Trinity.”

Throughout her time working at St. Paul, Lisa has run a program with flexibility. We have had standard familiar classroom education for all grades, but there have also been other options. The parish supports the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, the “Atrium,” a Montessori approach developed by Sofia Cavaletti that focuses on a child’s relationship with the Good Shepherd; we have a team of trained catechists for it, and a collection of material. The parish is proud of the outreach to children with disabilities, at each grade level and in sacramental preparation. And the parish supports a home-school approach, offering lesson plans and material for parents who choose that approach. Lisa’s focus has always been on meeting the needs of individuals and families, not running a cookie-cutter.

The pandemic shut down the classrooms, which had been, by far, the largest part of the whole parish effort. But the shutdown did not kill the whole program; it required a shift. It was a change, not an end. Lisa provided material for parents, and parents stepped up to the task. To be sure, some parents simply could not juggle their schedules to accommodate the new demands. For example, some had full-time work, with two or three or four jobs, plus a new load of regular schoolwork to oversee, and they couldn’t take on another large and complex task. That’s completely understandable: judge not that you be not judged. But many parents were able to take it on, joyfully. One father spoke for many when he said that of course he would accept the responsibility, because “that’s who we are.”

 

 

Proud Diversity: A Word from Our Police

St. Paul has a lot of cops. That’s because the county encourages its police to reside within the county, and offers serious incentives, but it’s still expensive to live here, except maybe inDamascus where the price of housing a little lower than downcounty. So during National Police Week, May 9-16, we do want to say thanks to our neighbors – the police in our midst – for their service and professionalism.

Parish Times invited Phil Raum, who was a lieutenant in the county police department before he retired, to share a reflection. He commented on diversity in a faith community.

We are all familiar with Gospel account of the last judgment in which Jesus says that whatever we do to the least of our brethren, that we do unto Him (Mt 25). Mankind has demonstrated throughout history a propensity to denigrate groups of people for a wide range of reasons – the list is practically endless. It seems like the only things that change are the geography, date, and whose ox is goring or being gored. This should come as no surprise to us. It’s part of human nature, without God – and that’s the bad news.

The Catholic Church has a global footprint whose members hail from all countries and all walks of life. At any Sunday Mass, we encounter parishioners whose family origins derive from Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, and the Pacific Islands. Our parish proudly reflects the diversity of the universal Church. A Catholic culture should create an environment in which it is easier for people to be good – and our unity amidst diversity is one dimension of that.

One example: a longtime leaders at St. Paul is Sherrie Wade, a descendent of free blacks from Dickerson. For 30+ years, she has piloted projects that serve the marginalized, organizing health fairs and blood drives and dozens of other services. She coordinates the support for the St. Paul Clinic in Honduras, which provides medical service for the poor who otherwise would never receive medical care. Dozens of parishioners (and others) have made the biannual service treks to Honduras with her, and many more have contributed financially.

St. Paul has created a Catholic culture which helps us to prepare to stand before Christ and hear those words, “Enter into My Kingdom … because what you did for the least of my brethren, you did for Me.” And that’s the good news.

 

Three parishioners who offer an astounding array of services: Phil Raum, Melanie Raum, and Sherrie Wade.

 

Catholic Daughters Support Small Business Overseas

 

The life of an American shoe is often short and smelly, starting with carbon emissions and ending in a landfill. In between, you wear them a hundred times. But you can extend their lives, cut the waste, help the poor, and support small business – by cleaning and donating them. Catholic Daughters (CDA) Court St Paul collected and prepared about 6,000 shoes – 127 bags each containing 25 pairs of gently used or new shoes – to be sent to people in developing countries for use by micro-entrepreneurs to support their families and neighbors. JoAnn Zucofski organized the collection, supported by her family, friends, neighbors, other CDA groups and an American Heritage Troop in the area. CDA members (above) Barbara Zellers, Joann Zucofski, Kathy Grapski, and Patricia Stack loaded up the bags for shipment.

 

 

30 young people received First Communion this spring. It’s a day of great blessings for the children and their families – and for the parish. On May Day, after Mass, some children took time to recall that Mary, the mother of Jesus, helps us to grow in faith, and Sophie Klimek put a crown on the statue of Mary in the narthex. (photo: JCOK)

August 2021

 

Covid Shifts Honduras Benefit Event from Gala to Golf

For 21 years, St. Paul Catholic Church has supported a medical clinic and other social services in El Rosario, near Tegucigalpa, in Honduras. A large portion of the funding has come from an annual Gala – with food, prizes, auction, speechifying, awards and other hoopla. Laughter shakes the moolah loose. But the pandemic made large indoor events risky, and this year, we’ve been driven outside – to play golf.

There will be a Honduras benefit golf tournament on September 13, 9 am to 5 pm, at Bretton Woods Golf Course in Germantown. It’s $150 for one golfer plus breakfast and lunch and the awards reception.

Sponsorships available for modest megabucks (up to $5,000 for a title sponsorship), including that you can sponsor a hole for $125. (But hurry! Sponsorships are getting snatched up fast!) More info is available on the stpauldamascus.org website.

 

The St. Paul Clinic in Honduras

In 1998, Hurricane Mitch destroyed the only public hospital in the community of El Rosario, Honduras. Joanny Medrano, who grew up in Honduras, was living in Damascus at that time; and she asked for help from her Church family. Beginning then and continuing for over two decades, St. Paul Catholic Church has operated year-round, offering medical care for thousands of families in and around eight impoverished communities.

Initially, St. Paul parishioners were its sole source of financial support; now, four other parishes are co-sponsors, including St. Peter of Olney, Maryland; St. Pius X of Bowie, Maryland; Church of the Annunciation of Washington, DC; and Our Lady of Grace of Silver Spring, Maryland.

All proceeds of the charity golf benefit will support the St. Paul Clinic in Honduras. This includes operating expenses, medicines, and salaries. The clinic staff includes one full time doctor, two part time doctors, one dentist, one administrator, one nurse, one security/handy man, and one housekeeper.

Pre-pandemic, the parish organized two mission trips annually, bringing trained medical staff and tons of supplies to the region. During the pandemic, there were no mission trips; but the parish continued to send supplies and medicines to keep the clinic open, plus personal protective equipment (PPE).

 

Bretton Woods Pride

The Bretton Woods Golf Course has a proud history. Economic troubles after World War I led to World War II, so before the end of World War II, the Allies met to build a new unified post-war economic system – a system that included the World Bank. This global planning meeting was held at Bretton Woods near Mount Washington in New Hampshire. The World Bank had an immense impact internationally, but also had an impact locally; its staff and employees came to Washington from all over the world, not just from Europe. And some of these men and women who had devoted their lives to the economic health of the world were not welcome at local clubs. In 1968, the new golf course in Germantown was opened, named for the global system, and open to the people who made it work – including people of color.

 

Peculiar but Wonderful Game

Golf is a strange game, rather Quaker. Pentecostals and baseball fans: when the Spirit moves you, Lord, you got to move, which means singing and clapping and dancing. But Quakers and golfers: when the Spirit moves you, Lord, you got to be silent. Listen to a sweet little swish-tok. At a baseball game, you can see swallows swoop by, but no one pays attention. Golfers: they get giggly about “birdies.” Honest, “birdies.” And there’s no failure. Swing and miss: strike one. (No, stroke one. Strike, stroke, stricken.)

Swing and miss again a couple times more, wiff, wiff: stee-rike three, but you’re not out. Just keep right at it: strike four, five, six. Then you swing and hit the little bugger, and they just keep right on counting: you’ve stricken seven. And then the competition is half-hidden. What’s the score? 82. 82 to what? And then there’s this thing about making failures feel good. How’d you do? 68. For most red-blooded Americans, 68 is a D+, but with golfers everyone applauds (quietly). But if your score is 140, which sure looks like A++ with some serious extra credit, you don’t pound your chest and holler. No way: you lay low or make modest jokes about it.

Anyway, we’re going to play. Come on out!

 

Ambassador Luis Fernando Suazo Will Attend Charity Golf Benefit

The St. Paul Medical Clinic was opened in 2000 to serve those in need. Since then, it has attracted the attention of men and women of good will who also care about the people of Honduras, including church leaders and government officials. The parish is pleased to announce that the Ambassador of Honduras, Luis Fernando Suazo, will join us for the golf tournament. He has served as ambassador since September 2020. He is married and is the proud father of two children.

 

August 2021

Parish Celebrates Fr. Sweeney’s 60th Anniversary

Fr. Sweeney hit his 60th anniversary of ordination this year, having served a quarter of that time in Damascus. In May, the Jubilarians of the archdiocese met at St. Mary’s Church in Landover Hills for a joint celebration, and the four priests who served as pastor at St. Paul got together. The smiling Irishman and his successors include:

• Fr. Peter Sweeney, 60 years a priest, pastor at St. Paul 1990-2004
• Fr. Kevin Kennedy, 25 years a priest, pastor 2004-2008
• Fr. Joseph Pierce, 29 years a priest, pastor 2008-2020
• Msgr. Edward O’Filardi, 27 years a priest, pastor 2020-present

After he left St. Paul, Fr. Sweeney served at Our Lady of Grace Parish in Leisure World, the retirement community in Silver Spring, from 2004 to 2012. Then he retired, and moved to St. John Neumann parish, where he still serves.

Fr. Kennedy went from St. Paul to St. Ambrose Church in Cheverly, from 2008 to 2016. In 2016, he moved to St. Gabriel Parish in DC, where he served until July 7 this year, when he was assigned to the Leadership Roundtable, developing church management tools.

Fr. Pierce moved last year to St. John Vianney parish in Prince Frederick, in southern Maryland.

Msgr. Filardi has known Fr. Sweeney for decades and says that he was “always a joyful presence.” He recalls proudly that Fr. Sweeney urged him to ask to be assigned to St. Paul, because it would be a good fit. He didn’t ask, but was pleased when it came about anyway. He grins, and says, “I’d like to invite him back to St. Paul. But if I start tugging, there will be open warfare with St. John Neumann. They love him down there.”

 

Fr. Peter Sweeney, Fr. Kevin Kennedy, Fr. Joseph Pierce, and Msgr. Edward Filardi

 

 

October 2021

 

St. Paul Welcomes Growing Number of Indian Families

When St. Paul started in 1960, it was 100% white. There were black Catholics to the west around Poolesville and Barnestown, and to the south in Olney, but none within the parish. Now we have a number of black families, and Latinos, and Filipinos. More recently, we have added Africans (not descended from American slaves), and Asians other than Filipinos – including more and more Indian families. This reflects the changes in the county, and throughout the country.

 

Greet two neighbors!

Mary Selvadoss grew up in Kanniyakumari, the southernmost tip of India. Next stop south: Antarctica. Ocean waves lapped up to the front steps of her family home. Much of southwest India is Catholic, with roots going back to St. Thomas and more recently (1545) to St. Francis Xavier. But there was a third missionary effort there, less well known mission: Mary’s ancestors were brought to Catholicism by Vasco da Gama (1498).

Mary remarks that many Americans think of India as rural and poor, but she grew up in a comfortable middle class family – educated in Catholic schools, speaking some Tamil but more English. Her father was a banker who spent years in the Middle East. She was married in 1991 in India, then moved to Kuwait. Ten years later, she and her family moved to the United States, to Gaithersburg and then Damascus, where she raised their two sons.

 Her connection to St. Paul is primarily about spiritual life, but there are concrete ties. One example: Patty Wood and then Megan McFarland helped her get a driver’s license – not a necessity in India or Kuwait, but indispensable for a soccer mom in suburban Maryland.

Meet George.

George Augustine’s busy schedule puts him at St. Ignatius on Sunday, but at St. Paul for daily Mass. He grew up in India, spent 15 years in Kuwait, then immigrated to the US in 2013. He works in international trade, shipping construction material. His family roots are in Kerala, in southwest India; he thinks that his ancestors were probably converted to Christianity by St. Thomas the Apostle. He said most of his Christian friends from India have built their own small communities, but he and his family chose to join a multi-cultural church.

Was immigration the right decision? Emphatically yes: the US is still a land of opportunity and freedom. And his thoughts about the Church? He doesn’t see very many young people.

 

Home Schoolers Begin Year with Mass

At the beginning of the school year, on September 6, home schoolers from St. Paul met at the church to start the new school year with Mass. Msgr. Filardi met with them and offered his support. Damascus is proud of its elementary and middle and high schools, and St. Paul is well represented at all the Catholic schools within reasonable or even somewhat stretched driving distance. But the parish also has a strong contingent of homeschoolers. Different families opt to use a variety of different home school programs, but they have a loose and informal network, supporting each other.

The network doesn’t have an elected leader, but Melissa DiMarzio is a knowledgeable and experienced contact, and she’s a consultant for a nationally recognized home school program. She explains that they don’t see themselves as tussling with the prevailing culture carving out a new society or anything like. They were, perhaps, a little counter-cultural before the Covid-19 pandemic; but now, many people are looking for safe options, and home schooling works for some. It can be isolating, and it’s good to have a place to gather – like the parish center. They share information and resources, and they share their walk.

They meet all the county requirements, without undue friction. They get some support from Mother of God School, including physical education. In elementary and middle school, they can join teams and play sports at the public schools; in high school, they can’t join school teams can join local teams. They participate in schools’ musical programs, such as piano lessons and choir.

“It’s all about raising kids in the Kingdom of God,” says Melissa DiMarzio.

 

Libby O’Neill and one table-ful of the home school kids starting the year with prayer, sunshine, and apples. (Photo: Greg Flynn)

 

 

 

Bishop Campbell Explores Patron Saints

When Bishop Roy Campbell confirmed 44 young men and women including eight adults at St. Paul on September 11, 2021, the event was a stunningly rich and complex exploration of the breadth of the Catholic Church. There were scores of wonderful stories just barely visible during Mass and Confirmation, from around the globe and reaching back for centuries.

Bishop Campbell himself is a small and unassuming man with an incredible story. Here’s sketch where we need a book. After 33 years in banking, including some years as vice president of Bank of America, he “retired” – then got moving. He entered a seminary for late vocations, and was ordained a priest at age 59, then consecrated a bishop at age 69. Now he’s pastor of St. Joseph in Largo – a full-time job, even with amazing support. And he’s an auxiliary bishop in a tough archdiocese – another huge job. And he’s the president of the National Black Catholic Congress, another complex task. Some retirement.

Speaking to the young men and women who were about to be confirmed, he focused on the patron saints they chose, picking five at random and then expounding a bit on the patron, challenging everyone to think about their own patron saints. One chose Elizabeth Ann Seton, who put wealth behind and built a community to catechize. One of the eight adult converts, Michael Jordan, with crutches and a radiant smile, had chosen Raphael, an angel of hospitality.

 

December 2021

Public Square Rosary at St. Paul

by Bob Stack

On October 16 a Public Square Rosary was held at St. Paul’s. The event was in coordination with about 20,000 public rosaries sponsored by America Needs Fatima across the United States. On a day with bad weather in the forecast, about 40 people participated.  John Clifford led musical accompaniment, and several participants led individual decades of the Joyful Mysteries.

Patricia Stack (fourth from right), who organized the hour of prayer, explained: “This year marks the 104th anniversary of the Blessed Mother’s appearance to three peasant children in Fatima, Portugal.  As Mary requested in Fatima, St. Paul participants prayed along with others across the country for the conversion of America.  We prayed to honor our Blessed Mother and to hasten the triumph of her Immaculate Heart.”

 

40 Parishioners gathered on the steps of the Norris Chapel, joining with Catholics across the nation praying on the anniversary of the miracle of the sun at Fatima.

Catholic Daughters Encourage The Radiance of Christ

In the 21st year of the third millennium Anno Domini, the Catholic Daughters are still helping the parish to shape Advent with food and crafts – cakes, pies, assorted un-named pastries, scarves, tree decorations including sturdy little three-ship sets that just sailed in from China. This year, they graciously added parish authors to their sales, including Margaret Ann Fiore’s book The Radiance of Christ, a biography of a shaping figure in the history of the Church in Maryland, Msgr. Kenneth W. Roeltgen.

 

Msgr. Roeltgen served as assistant pastor at Little Flower Church, and later as pastor at St. Stephen Martyr Church, and as vocation director of the archdiocese. But he is best known for his decade as rector at Mount St. Mary’s seminary, where he provided inspiration and formation to a long list of the priests and bishops serving the archdiocese today.

Msgr. Roeltgen was an inspiration to other pastors, but also to Margaret Ann Fiore, a nurse practitioner, president of the American Association of Neuroscience Nurses, and founder of a support group for patients with brain tumors. She faced intense suffering for 40 years, and was grateful to Msgr. Roeltgen for his insights into her work with its intense challenges. She radiates calm and joy, and asserts that she learned from him about the radiance of Christ.

The Catholic Daughters’ sales are fun. They fill the parish center with good smells; they laugh a lot; their items are often delightfully quirky, like Joan Donovan’s warm and colorful double helix scarves. But this year, with Margaret Fiore’s book, they added a new dimension. Our thanks!

 

 

 

 

Lavish Photos Offer Experience of Catholicity

The books available at the Catholic Daughters event included nine stories about very young Catholics around the world. This is a series created by Emily Koczela, the sister of a parishioner, who set out to show the delightful unity of the Catholic Church by telling the stories of children, one per time zone around the world. Nine of 24 are completed – with charming vignettes and photos of family life in Catholic households in the United States, Togo, Austria, Taiwan, Fiji, Ireland, Kenya, Galapagos Islands, and Canada. Each book shows local scenes of home life and customs – including the experience of Mass that is familiar anywhere.

The photos are professional, which means that the children are enchanting, especially the ones from – well, from everywhere. There are kids and tortoises in Galapagos, kids and horses in Ireland, kids and Christmas in Austria, kids and cautious skepticism in Taiwan, kids and snow in the Yukon, kids with round cheeks at Mass ev-e-ry-where. The stories are written about children around age five, to be read to children age 2 to 102. The first one you read is rather pretty and entertaining. But then after the third or so, you realize that very young Catholics can (and should) experience the unity of the Church around the world. That’s a lot more than just a pretty face.

 

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The Austrian book in the series is about a child’s experience at Christmas. For more, see www.veryyoungcatholic.com.

 

 

2022: The Year with Msgr. Filardi

 

January 2022

 

Knights Maintain the Gospel of Life Garden

 

Each year on the anniversary of the two abortion decisions in 1973, the Knights of Columbus organize a parish presence at the March for Life in Washington. But this is just one pro-life activity in a list. They also organize prayer outside the Bethesda abortion clinic, Rosary after Mass, support for a pregnancy center, talks, etc. Among their projects is caring for the Gospel of Life Garden on the left of the church door, an eruption of gratuitous beauty.

When the garden was planted, it was (partly) a response to the Oaks Landfill in Laytonsville, which takes trash reduced to ash, but is also (quietly) one of the largest cemeteries in Maryland. No one knows how many bodies of unborn children are buried there; but according to six people who took bodies out of dumpsters in 1986-87, there were at least two abortion clinics that for years put all their corpses into the county waste stream, which ends at the Oaks.

When pro-lifers, including Harry Hand and Cathy Roth and assorted Junghanses, approached Fr. Kennedy about a memorial for the unborn, he was clear and firm: no dead bodies, no bloody photos, no horror show. A memorial was appropriate, but it had to be upbeat and tasteful. And so it is. The memorial is a cool spot in the heat of the summer, a calm place nearly all the time, and a joyful circle when kids cut loose there whirling round and round like a double helix.

The gardener who leads this Knights project – trimming, weeding, mulching, watering – is Chris Kane. He’s got bright shining eyes like a mischievous kid with a dead mouse or a teenager in love – or like a perpetually curious scientist, which he is. Planting the annual flowers and mulching everything is simple joy each spring. Repairing the sprinklers after wear and tear (or vandalism) requires vigilance. Keeping a brick walk level near a shade tree is a recurrent challenge.

The garden has two gorgeous kousa dogwoods. Its flower has four petals, so each spring the trees are covered with small crosses. They have a knobby red fruit in the fall, which is attractive except when they get smeared on the walk. (Please brush them aside when Chris isn’t there.) But also, they’re edible; wash and eat a few.

Have a seat! Then, maybe, say a prayer for the unknown unwanted un-named unburied unborn, and their families.

 

 

 

The focal point of the Gospel of Life Garden is a statue of the Holy Family.

 

 

Long-time Parish Servant Moves Away

 

The parish suffered a blow in December when Ann Barbagallo left us. She didn’t depart for heaven (yet) – just Gettysburg, where she will care for her mother.

Ann was a lector with a gentle voice, whose reading was crystal clear and engaging. She was calm and competent and beautiful, a joy to hear.

Ann was our sacristan. Do you remember how often the lectionary wasn’t there, or the altar wasn’t ready, or the water and wine weren’t in place, or some important detail was overlooked? Yeah, we remember: just about never. She cleaned the tiles and washed the altar linens. During Covid times, after Mass, someone sterilized all the pews. That was Ann’s work. Sometimes it was a small crew; sometimes it was just Ann.

Ann moved to the parish from Florida in 1986, with her husband and her husband Richard and her son Dominic. In the 36 years since then, she worked at about 350 pancake breakfasts (our monthly Cholesterol Sundays), dishing out food and smiling like Mrs. Santa Claus.

She was active in local social services. She helped run the St. Vincent de Paul Society, meeting basic needs one-on-one for people in and around Damascus.

She was active in county social service and also social justice programs. She testified numerous times before the Montgomery County Council on behalf of the Archdiocese of Washington and other community groups to advocate for the needs of children and families, pressing to provide low-income housing, and to obtain adequate food for families.

She sold items for the overseas FairTrade program, defending workers.

When Ann lived in Florida, she was a social worker, specializing in child abuse and child neglect cases. Then she moved to the Social Security Administration, and then moved to the Washington area to work at Health and Human Services, where she was a Senior Policy Advisor for many years. Under the Obama administration, she served as Acting Director of the Office of Family Assistance within the Administration for Children and Families.

The parish had a farewell party for her, and Msgr. Filardi presented to her various letters and commendations. There was one from the County Executive, Marc Elrich. And there was one from U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, whose signature was legible from the back of the room. And there was one from our archbishop, Wilton Cardinal Gregory. And then there was a blessing from some Latino guy, Pope Francis.

We’ll miss our modest and faithful and smiling lector and waitress and advisor and leader and advocate and sacristan.

 

Ann Barbagallo (in white) is shown with her sisters Kay Boughan and Joan Kosack, plus Gary Boughan and Msgr. Filardi, at her farewell party January 8, 2022. (Photo: JCOK)

 

Msgr. Filardi Celebrates “Teaching Mass”

 

At the beginning of Advent, Msgr. Filardi offered a “teaching Mass.” He celebrated Mass, but incorporated teaching about details; Kimberly Morrison stood at the side offering explanations of gestures and responses. “Everything about Mass has meaning,” she explained. “often supported by more than 2,000 years of teaching and tradition. When we can identify beauty and meaning in the symbolic gestures and the rites of the Mass it helps us find comfort and peace in the Liturgy, and deepens our understanding of the Mass, thereby deepening our participation in the Liturgy and, ultimately, our relationship with God.”

The teaching Mass was a success, and another was scheduled for January 25, focusing on the “articles” of the Mass, the things that the priest uses – the chalice, the paten, the cloths, and such.

One inspiration for the teaching Mass was Fr. Mike Schmitz, who has cooperated with Jeff Cavins developing popular teaching programs. Fr. Schmitz is chaplain for the Newman Catholic Campus Ministry at the University of Minnesota – Duluth.

Another source of material and insight was the material used in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, a Montessori-based hands-on approach to prayer and religious education.

One of the most painful aspects of Catholic parish life today, all across the country, is that intelligent young people often feel unplugged at Mass. Many devout Catholics experienced vibrant liturgies when they were in college, among people of the same age, with chaplains who were free from a long list of parish responsibilities so that they could focus on reaching young adults. After that, well …

Participation, even reciting responses and especially singing can be a challenge. The person who sings prays twice, said St. Augustine. Yeah, maybe, say some; but my voice is pretty bad and praying once is good enough. Keep at it! Reciting the same prayers that our brothers and sisters around the globe and back through two or three thousand years of history can be thrilling. You can hear but also feel the rise and fall of the hum among people who have prayed these words together for years, patiently and persistently adjusting their tone and tempo to match their neighbors. But often, this sense of unanimity – one heart – begins with an experience of praying in unison – one voice.

 

 

March 2022

 

One Family’s Experience of the Eucharist

 

On February 26-27, 2022, eight students in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program at St. Paul celebrated the sacraments of Reconciliation and First Communion. Rebekah McQuin was among them, and she offered an insight into the meaning of family life as she approached the sacrament.

Her parents have been local heroes for decades. Bobby McQuin, Rebekah’s father, has fought brain cancer and complications for about 36 years, since he was eight. He endured chemotherapy, radiation, and bone marrow transplant; he lived for years in the shadow of death. When the final treatment was successful, he and his mother built a campaign to help other kids and families facing cancer. Supported by his family, Bobbie made two cross-country bike trips, in 1999 and 2001, cycling across prairies and deserts and mountains to raise money for pediatric cancer patients, including at St. Jude’s Hospital.

Megan Moss McQuin is the Youth Minister for the parish now. She has been a part of the religious education program for years, working with parish teen programs – on staff when the parish had funds, as a volunteer when the parish could not pay. Over the years, she has touched the lives of hundreds of young (and older) parishioners.

But for sure, their greatest achievement to date has been raising Rebekah.

The day before she received her First Communion, Rebekah said to Lisa Nueslein, “Ms Lisa, you don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to receive Jesus!”

Lisa responded, “I bet tonight you’ll have trouble sleeping, like Christmas Eve.”

“Even better than Christmas Eve!”

She started asking to receive Communion a year ago, at least 15% of her life ago.

 

 

Proud parents grin behind their daughter Rebekah McQuin (February 27, 2022).

“I Thought I Was Her Prayer Partner”

 

During the funeral Mass for Ginny Clifford, Msgr. Edward Filardi listened to another priest who said that he and Ginny had been prayer partners, and joked about it. He didn’t want to seem jealous, he indicated; but after all, “I thought I was her prayer partner.”

Why were people cracking jokes about this serious loss? It wasn’t just the pastor; everyone was pretty upbeat. Ginny wasn’t dead and gone; she was just dead – and not even that, exactly. It’s standard at funerals to dodge unpleasant realities with pious words: the deceased has gone to a better place in the sky. But with Ginny, people were comfortable with reality, not dodging anything: she went home, and it’s all good.

One parishioner (who chooses to remain anonymous) related his experience with her. He wasn’t a stranger to her, but neither was he a close friend; they knew each other from a distance. But when he ran into devastating family troubles – a long list of agonies, culminating in a granddaughter suffering and near death – he called Ginny. She had a reputation as a person who prayed, who knew God. The list of crushing troubles that she faced herself was extensive; when she talked about hope amidst suffering, she knew what she was talking about. So he called, and she dropped everything to talk to him and pray with him – for three hours. You’ve done all you can do, she said, and it’s not enough. Ask Jesus to make up the difference between what’s needed and what you can do. “She’s probably as close to a saint as most of us are likely to meet,” he remarked.

Mary Virginia Aldrich Clifford was born January 11, 1937, in Atchison, KS. She married Jack Clifford on February 1, 1958. They had six children and ten grandchildren. She was an active member of St. Paul, serving in a list of ways both formal and informal. She was involved the educational programs of the parish, and was a Eucharistic minister; she was active in the parish council, Catholic Daughters, healing ministry, various charismatic groups, and social concerns. She died peacefully on January 29, 2022, in Germantown, MD.

She won’t be “missed,” exactly. The parish still expects her to serve faithfully.

 

African Catholics Bring Vibrant Hope

 

St. Catholic Church – the community – looks more and more like the universal church, and it’s a source of great pride. In the 1960s, just a few years ago, we were all Caucasian; but now we are Latin and Asian and African as well. The number of parishioners who are immigrants from Africa is growing steadily, and – to take an example – we have a new lector from Cameroon, Long Christ Tatchum Nenchie.

Long Christ’s name is taken from Psalm 84: “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord!” (ESV) His family, going back four generations, has longed for Christ.

German missionaries brought Catholicism to Cameroon in the 19th century. Long Christ’s great-grandfather was raised in a Catholic compound that was probably run by the Pallottine Fathers, and he was committed to Catholicism. But Long Christ says it was his maternal grandmother’s strong faith that shaped the family. She was a convert, with the zeal of a convert.

German and then French missionaries were active in Cameroon, but Long Christ was educated in English – from primary school through university. He attended the University of Buea, an English-language institution in predominantly French-speaking central Africa, where he studied education and biology. He was active in the church in Cameroon: he was an altar server, and lector, and a coordinator and training master working with the parish liturgical committee.

He is one of six children, all in America now. His mother also came, but his father has not (yet). Some of them drifted away from the church when they came here, secularized in their new culture. But he did not; he became a lector at St. Paul shortly after he immigrated in 2021. It’s inspiring to watch his gestures at Mass, and to hear him read, tasting each word, ensuring that every word comes through clearly.

He's pleased to serve among us, and we’re fortunate to have him.

 

 

Two lectors, Chloe Kennedy and Long Christ Tatchum Nenchie, chat briefly about plans for the Triduum celebration.

 

 

 

 

A radiant family surrounds Kayla Lewoueh Donfack after her First Communion.

 

 

 

May 2022

 

 

Entering a Community of Faith

 

The grace of Easter always abounds. But this year, St. Paul’s had a little sacramental blizzard, welcoming six young people into the Catholic Church, with three people receiving Baptism, five receiving Confirmation, and all six receiving First Communion.

 Jacob and Jonathan Bautista received Baptism, Confirmation, First Communion. Kimberley Papagjika was already baptized; she made a profession of faith and was received into the Catholic Church, then she received Confirmation and her first Holy Communion. Three teens – Olivia Biava, Carter Biava, and Samantha Homick – were baptized Catholic and had received communion; they received the sacrament of Confirmation at the Easter Vigil.

The parish RCIA program (that’s “Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults”) provided some of the preparation for the Easter celebrations. This year was especially rich, with twists and complexities. The program at St. Paul’s is run by Deacon Don Mays, but he had an injury in January, and lay people were left with the job.

“It was a wild ride this year,” remarks Matt Swaim, one of the laymen assisting. “There were a number of people in the program with unique situations. Class sessions often had more ‘completed’ Catholics than people entering. RCIA offered adult faith formation for many faithful believing Catholics. That mixture was great for people coming into the Church at Easter. There are always opportunities for growth; it doesn‘t end when you are received into the Church. Baptism and Confirmation are big steps, but they are steps along a lifelong journey. It was great for people to see that model.”

The Biava teens were confirmed, but their parents were also involved in sacramental preparation. Dad was Catholic, but Mom was not, and she was preparing to join the Church later this year. They were married previously, but it was a civil marriage, not sacramental; they were preparing for another wedding, two weeks after Easter – not with gowns and veils and all that, but with the Church’s blessing.

Samantha Homick was in RCIA to prepare for Confirmation, but her older sister and brother-in-law were also, asking questions. They were Catholics already, but they caught fire, and have been excited about life as a married couple in Church. They came to support Samantha, but they were but soaking it in too; and their excitement added to Samantha’s experience.

One participant has been in the parish for decades, and raised her children here, as active and involved Catholics. But there she was, asking good questions, deepening her faith. The RCIA process offers that opportunity, has that flexibility.

The class included a woman who spent years in New Age experiences and experiments. She had received all the sacraments, but then left the Church for decades, and now she is finding her way back. RCIA was not designed with her in mind, but it worked well, and she has been excited about uncovering or recovering the joys and mysteries of life with Christ. The RCIA program offered classic adult formation, as well as sacramental preparation.

Reception into the Church is not just about someone making an individual act of faith. Always and everywhere, it’s about joining a family. This year, some of the complexities of community life were more visible than usual.

 

 

Shirley and Jacob Bautista, with their sons Jacob and Jonny, after the Easter Vigil. “We are blessed that we get to be part of such a great community, especially having Mrs. Donoghue as our catechist, and now the Godmother of both our boys. They felt the love she has for God.

Vocations to Religious Life from St. Paul’s

 

I'm nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there's a pair of us – don't tell!

They'd banish – you know!

 

How dreary to be somebody!

How public like a frog

To tell one's name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

 

Emily Dickinson had it right: there’s a lot of beauty and inspiration all around us all the time, but not always splayed out like peacocks.

There was a flurry of questions when a visiting priest introduced himself, saying that he had roots in Damascus. A vocation from our parish? How did we overlook that? Is he from here? “Yeah, his father was a doctor in Damascus,” said one. “No, his brother was the doctor,” said another. In fact, his father and his brother were doctors. And another brother. And a third, and fourth, and a fifth. And then there was a naval officer. His parents, immigrants from Philippines in 1960, raised five doctors and a priest and a naval officer. His mom didn’t brag; she just raised a distinguished family!

Fr. Richard Gancayco grew up in Bethesda when his father had a medical practice in Damascus. His mother went to Mass here for years. He was ordained in 1992, with Fr. Pierce. He has served all over the archdiocese, at St. Mary in Landover Hills, as a military chaplain (Navy), as pastor of St. Martin’s, and elsewhere. Now he’s living a contemplative life, aiming for quiet, and helping overworked pastors.

Including Fr. Gancayco, St. Paul Church has seven men and women offering their lives to the Lord in religious life. That’s two priests, a member of Madonna House, two Dominican Sisters (still discerning), one member of a contemplative community (still discerning), and one seminarian.

The second priest is Fr. Ismael (Mel) Ayala. He was a musician at St. Paul for almost 20 years, before he was ordained in 2010. He served at St. Peter in Olney, then as pastor at St Nicholas in Laurel and St. Andrew Apostle in Silver Spring. He was Director of the Office of Worship for the Archdiocese from 2013-2017. When he was a seminarian, he was a highly visible assistant when Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass at Nationals Park in 2008. He assisted when Pope Francis celebrated the Canonization Mass of Saint Junípero Serra in 2015. Since September 2021, he’s been the Associate Rector and Director of Liturgy at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

A quick note: About one percent of Americans, and of Marylanders, are Filipino; but both of the priests associated with St. Paul are Filipino. Our world is changing, inexorably and joyfully.

Charlie Cavanaugh is a member of the Madonna House lay apostolate, offering hospitality to the poor. The community was founded by Catherine de Hueck Doherty, a Russian baroness, who helped bring the spirituality of the Orthodox world to the West, especially providing hermitages – or “poustinia” – for people seeking a quiet place to pray. Charlie is stationed in western Canada, in Regina, running a soup kitchen for the poor, including many First Nation people.

Polly Howard (Novice Frances Pauline) has received the habit of the All Saints Sisters of the Poor in Catonsville, MD. 

Two young women from the parish joined the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in Nashville – Sister Marie Trinity Dagher, OP, and Sister Laura Immaculata Clarke, OP. Both are still discerning their vocations.

There is one young man from the parish, Christopher Meyers, at the St. John Paul II Seminary in Washington. This seminary is a house of formation to prepare college age students and young adults for entry into a major seminary.

 

 

Living Stations Inspire the Parish

 

For some years, one of the most moving events in parish life has been the Living Stations – the stations of the cross presented as a series of tableaux by young people. About 50 people participate, in various roles, and their families come: that brings in a lot of people before we get to the prayerful observers.

The stations are standard, traditional; the script is not. It is a series of powerful meditations written by a great but long-suffering parishioner, Diane Kanne. She has been bed-ridden for years, which is itself a station of the cross, since she is an extraordinarily warm and out-going person, with a tender love for the crazy struggling teens.

The narrators were Janerson Apolonio and Rosie Kuszewski. They were gripping – crystal clear with flawless timing and tone.

Peggy Hall has been organizing the event for several years, recruiting and coordinating the cast, the costumes and set – all the elements of a good show. But everyone involved was intent on far more than a “show.” Each year, the stations of the cross throughout Lent – and especially the Living Stations on Good Friday – are times of prayer.

 

 

Brandon Salamanca presents a dignified Jesus, without exaggerated emotion. The centurion and soldiers are Evan McFarland, Dominic Flynn, and Ryan Di Marzio.  Photo by Colleen Rewega.

 

August 2022

 

Simplicity, Joy, and Tomatoes

 

St. Paul is in Damascus, which was a farming community just a few decades ago. The parish was founded in the sprawl of Washington, when government workers moved farther and farther outside the city – lawyers and professionals and scientists among the farmers, and Catholics among the Methodists. Today, there many parishioners who grew up on farms, but none who are still farmers.

We do still have some connections to our agricultural roots. For one, just north of town, there’s a produce stand – Watkins House Produce – at the edge of an old farm, in the building that was once the tavern on the road reaching north and west. The farm belonged to one of the oldest families on the area, the Watkins family; after several sales, most of the land became park property.

The old tavern was on its way back to the dust from which it had sprung when Brian Stone bought it. He and his family have been parishioners for decades. When he retired from the police force, he had had enough trouble and bad news; he wanted some happiness. So he wrestled a wreck back to life, and started providing good old Maryland-grown food to delighted neighbors.

He sells produce, sort of. The produce is real, but Brian’s commitment to sales is iffy. For example, he doesn’t handle credit cards. If you don’t carry cash, take what you want and pay him next time you come by. He’s been doing that since he started and hasn’t yet lost a penny that way. He shows up at weekday Mass often, with day-old produce to give away. Corn is touchy: a day makes a difference. But tomatoes and squash that were good yesterday are just fine today. So he sells, sort of. Money isn’t the heart of the matter. Sales are likely; laughter is guaranteed.

The old tavern was a watering spot along a road from Annapolis going west. Before the railroad, travelers needed to stop and care for their livestock every seven miles or so. Today, most cars go farther than that before they need to take a break, and the tavern was neglected. In fact, when Stone started work on the house, it had a hole in the floor, where some nocturnal visitor had built a fire smack-dab in the middle of the room. Fortunately, it burned through and fell into the cellar before it burned the whole house down.

Rebuild my church, the Lord said to St. Francis. Stone didn’t have any vision; he just wanted preservation not ruin, stories not oblivion, neighbors not strangers. He’s a bridge to our farming past, and an opening to a joyful future – and a proud example of our still-sorta-rural parish life.

 

 

 

Brian Stone stands next to the kissing booth, an untested fundraiser (photo: JCOK)

 

 

 

Welcoming the prophetic voices of children

 

St. Paul’s is experiencing a population explosion. We have kids all over the place, at all Masses, Sunday and daily – babies, toddlers, monkeys, pre-teens, teens – each one bringing a unique and perhaps distracting worldview, bristling and bothersome, challenging our ability to hear the Lord in a bustling world.

Charles Williams, a friend of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, wrote about noisy babies. What’s the difference between the crying of a baby and the probing of Socrates, compared to the wisdom of God? Both are pathetic little efforts to find the finger of God. If we can let the Greeks help us pray, can we let babies do the same? The church is full of stimuli – stained glass, statues, incense, music, bright vestments – all of which can distract us or help us pray, depending on how we decide to react. Can we decide the same with a baby’s cries?

Babies gurgle: who knows what they’re saying? It might as well be Latin, or a charismatic speaking in tongues. But we can hear the tone of simple joy, and let it capture us and lift us. Noisy joy? Amen!

Babies shriek: lemme go, gimme that! If they were more verbal and precise, would they be shrieking, “Lord, have mercy”? Who is ever far from that prayer? If I don’t hurt, my neighbor does, and I sure hope God cares about it. We try to focus on the reading or the homily, but memories and plans and fears and troubles intrude. Grownups learn to respond with some self-control and discipline; but inside, maybe there’s some fuss. Kyrie, eleison? Amen!

Babies sing, but not with the choir. That shouldn’t bother anyone; most of the church sings off key or out of synch. We can’t let that interrupt our tranquillity.

Babies are curious. Teach me, Lord, to approach you with awe and wonder, ever-new. Amen!

Babies have their own schedules. They want to nurse, eat, strut, or leave when they say it’s time. Adults want to follow their schedule – sing, sit, listen, stand, kneel, watch, pray, recall, reflect, meditate, contemplate, supplicate – on cue. But it never works perfectly. When adults pray the Our Father, someone is always a little ahead or a little behind or uses the wrong pronoun (thy, your). But we pray together, right? Amen!

Socrates, Gregorian chant, incense, stained glass, babies: it’s all happy hungry noise. Amen?

 

 

Greg Cummings, father of ten, strolls through the parish picnic, grinning. St. Paul – the northernmost parish in the archdiocese, situated at the highest point in the county – celebrates its 65th year. (Photo: parish archives)

 

 

Corpus Christi Procession Spring 2022

 

 

 

On the Feast of Corpus Christi, the bishops of America launched a program to strengthen devotion to the Eucharist. It’s a three-year program, designed to “rekindle in the hearts of the people a love for the Eucharist, to know the Eucharist better and to see the fruits of the Eucharist, as well, as we are sent out into mission,” says Fr. Juan Guido, a spokesman for the bishops’ initiative. St. Paul responded to the nation-wide invitation with a Corpus Christi procession – a public procession honoring the Lord present in the Eucharist.  (Photo: parish archive)

 

 

 

October 2022

 

Bishop Confirms 33 in Diverse Community

 

Bishop Mario Dorsonville visited St. Paul on September 8 to confer the sacrament of Confirmation on 33 young adults.

The young men and women who were confirmed were a happy and interesting group. And the saints they chose as patrons were thought-provoking. Four young women chose Therese – two Therese, one Maria Theresa, and one Maria Teresa. Four young men chose Sebastian. Three chose American saints – Kateri, Jean de Brebeuf, and Elizabeth Seton. Three of the 33 were the Iorio triplets, an event that the Italian poet of the Trinity, Dante Alighieri, would have applauded.

Rosie Kuszewski took St. Maximilian Kolbe as her patron. She said she was aware of him because he is a part of her Polish heritage, but the choice was far more than that. When she was reading lives of the saints, she was struck by his story – giving his life to save the life of a man with a family who depended on him. The story stuck with her, and kept coming back to mind. The man who was saved, Franciszek Gajowniczek, was present at his rescuer’s canonization. Rosie said she was particularly moved by the impact on a whole family; the man’s granddaughter was there too.

Rosie said that the bishop asked them what the faith that they professed meant to them: “What will you do?” She talked about her growth in faith, from the Atrium program on up. Her intention is to continue her growth in faith, and in knowledge of her faith. But also, she talked about evangelization; she would like to show people the Word of God. “This is how it changed me,” she says, “and it may change you.”

Michael Jordan, who was confirmed at St. Paul last year, reflected on the sacrament, and like Rosie he spoke about a steady growth. He is still learning, still struck by the Lord’s call for his followers to be in unity. His father was a Baptist minister, and Michael is not dismissive of his roots; but he thinks he is where he belongs.

Bishop Dorsonville is from Bogota, Colombia. He was ordained there and served in two parishes and as chaplain at the National University. He studied at Catholic University in Washington, and served in parishes here. He went back and forth between Colombia and Washington for a decade, then served as assistant pastor in two parishes here. He also taught business ethics, pastoral counseling, and catechesis; and he worked with Catholic Charities and the Spanish Catholic Center. He was consecrated as a bishop in 2015, and has been serving as the USCCB Chairman for the Migrant and Refugee Services Committee.

 

 

New Damascus DRE Recruited by Msgr Filardi

 

St. Paul has a new director of religious education, a prayerful guy with a deep voice and a heart for service and evangelization. Matt Curley grew up in the parish; his parents, Bob and Jeanmarie Curley, are still active here.

He’s one of four children. The others are not as committed to the Church as he is. He remarks softly and without judgment: “The world is loud, and God speaks in whispers.”

He was active in the parish Life Teen group in 2005, part of the leadership team. The parish office has a pipe running along the basement wall with multi-colored handprints – teens making their mark on the church. The first handprint is Matt’s; his mark years ago was huge, like Sasquatch or something.

He was influenced by NET, the New Evangelization Teams, and had a conversion experience on one of their retreats. In quiet prayer before confession, he met the Lord; he’s not demanding about it, but he does know who he’s talking about when people speak of Jesus. Asked about his plans, he refers unobtrusively but confidently to what’s been going on in his prayer.

When he graduated from Damascus High School in 2009, he went to the University of Maryland, where he studied medieval European history, which is as close as you can get at Maryland to studying the history of the Church, and classical languages. He got to know people at the Catholic Student Center, including friends who went into mission work with FOCUS, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students.

He taught at St. Mary’s School in Rockville for eight years before Msgr. Filardi recruited him to become DRE. At St. Mary’s, he was influenced by another teacher, Carol Bowling – a convert, now retired – who challenged her students, and Matt, to read good literature as well as history and biographies. So now he’s plowing his way through Dante.

Becoming the DRE after Lisa Nueslein is a huge challenge. She was DRE for 17 years and knew everyone. She’s coaching him along: “She’s been gracious and helpful – and especially patient.”

His plans? He intends to be a servant to all who want to learn about the Catholic faith, providing “servant leadership.” He wants to be part of the new evangelization that the Church, from the Pope to DREs and parents, is engaged in. He wants to help build a Catholic culture and faith community, with people who love the Lord and his Church.

Welcome, Matt!

 

 

 

 

Just a Simple Breakfast

 

There was a pause for Covid, and then there was another pause for the annual summer break, but the Men’s Club Pancake Breakfast is back. From September to May, barring epidemics, the second Sunday of the month is Cholesterol Sunday, and there’s a good meal with family rates in the parish hall.

The Pancake Breakfast has a long history in the parish. It was once a fund-raising event, with a modest but steady income; it’s now more of a social event. Good food, good fun, surrounded by good folks with generous hearts.

Two generations ago, when the parish was new, people visited each other in their homes pretty often. (In those days, dinosaurs roamed the earth.) One generation ago, just about every healthy person in the US recognized comfort food: coffee and OJ and bacon or sausage and eggs and pancakes and hash browns or chipped beef with rolls and a weird little package of slippery blocky fruit things and yes-another-cup-please. You can aim for a Patriotic Theme: red vegetables in your “Siesta” eggs, and blueberries in your pancakes. The old pattern persists, but without the old confidence and tranquility. Questions hover in the air: can we have all that without sugar or saturated fat or any fat at all or preservatives or dairy or gluten or meat or caffeine? One clean napkin coming right up. One day, perhaps, Middle Eastern and Asian and African and Latino parishioners will transform this thing, providing a global variety of healthy food to supplement the old standard – but not just yet.

The breakfast is provided by the Men’s Club. For decades, St. Paul’s has had two nearly identical groups, the Knights of Columbus and the Men’s Club. The Knights: they’re Catholic, with some serious organization and an insurance program. But the parish founders included a list of non-Catholics with hammers and skills and open hearts. So the Men’s Club: they’re Catholic or married to a Catholic or have some kind of family link with the parish, and they have all heard of organization somewhere. Joining the Knights (until recent reforms) required an evening with some medieval pageantry, with capes and plumes and swords and stuff. Joining the Men’s Club took a minute with a beer (optional). There’s not a lot of tension between the two groups; there’s considerable membership overlap. The president of the Men’s Club is Mike Mangan (magmamike@gmail.com); he’s organized but calm – magma with a chuckle and a spatula.

Next breakfast: October 9. Rumor: Santa is coming to the December breakfast. Y’all come! Splatter your platter.

 

 

Jessica and Joseph Romanoski collect a splatter of healthy breakfast – eggs and cinnamon (!) rolls, etc – while husband Jeremy, PGK, collects healthy parish financial support at the door. (PGK: that’s “Past Grand Knight,” in the other parish group.) Servers: Meg Mello and her daughter Becca. (Photo: JCOK)

 

 

December 2022

 

 

Gabriel Project Comes to Damascus

 

St. Paul Church is the latest parish in the county to become part of the Gabriel Network, empowering women to choose life. Pregnancy centers offer counseling and advocacy and immediate practical support to women and couples facing an unplanned pregnancy; the Gabriel Network offers individual (and family) support delivered to the client’s home for as long as necessary.

Two volunteers in the parish – Angela Kiselica and Eileen Miller – are supporting clients referred to them by the network. Their husbands and the Knights of Columbus – especially Bashar Haddad – are helping to assemble cribs and move supplies. The volunteers – called “angels” in the Gabriel Project – do not speak Spanish, but Patricia Stack is their translator.

The blue signs of the Gabriel Network that dot the county in front of churches are not just political slogans; they are offers of real help. The tension from an unexpected pregnancy can quickly turn into a crisis. The network provides welcome and support without judgment. The sign for St. Paul’s is on the way!

 

 

 

 

Parish Rosary Rally Marks the Events at Fatima

 

On October 17, the 105th anniversary of Mary appearance at Fatima in Portugal, parishioners gathered to pray the Rosary. The prayer was public – not inside the church, but in front of the church, by the road.

In 1917, three children reported seeing Mary. There were six apparitions between May and October; the last included the “miracle of the sun,” witnessed to about 70,000 people: the sun appeared to dance in the sky. Mary called people to repentance and prayer, including greater attention to the life of the heart – a devotion to her heart and the heart of the Lord. The children reported that she asked especially for prayers for the conversion of Russia.

The rally included prayer for the conversion of all souls, an end to abortion, and peace in our world. The group also prayed for a renewed and deepened devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Msgr. Filardi ended the Rosary Rally by giving his blessing and distributing rosaries.

Some Catholics today struggle to understand Fatima, which is often surrounded by anti-Catholic and virulent anti-papal controversies. To some, it seems to be a pious devotion from a different culture. But the Popes who worked to make real the reforms of the Second Vatican Council – St. Paul VI, St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis – all made clear their own personal acceptance of Mary’s appearance and message at Fatima.

In our time, says St. John Paul II, the meaning of the word “love” can be lost. But, he said, “solidarity” refers accurately to love – a love that is as much as possible effective. But sometimes “as much as possible effective” seems to be zero effective, at least temporarily; and solidarity still has meaning. Mary, at the foot of the cross, loved her son, and this love – this prayer, this solidarity – remains a model today. Her undistracted compassion for her son, her solidarity with him: that’s the meaning of “immaculate heart.”

In March of this year, when Russia once again invaded a neighbor and threatened world peace, Pope Francis once again consecrated Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

 

 

Participants at the Rosary rally included members of the Catholic Daughters of America and the Knights of Columbus. Charles Appleby, from one of the founding families of in the parish, attended. There were also parishioners from Vietnam, Cameroon, and the Middle East.

 

 

 

Cardinal Joins St. Paul for Honduras Fundraiser

 

 

You shoulda been there! Cardinal Gregory showed up to play golf at the annual fundraiser for the St. Paul medical clinic in Honduras. He’s shown here surrounded by three clergy and one layman (Fr. Charles Cortinovis, Clint Lamerson, Wilton Cardinal Gregory, Msgr. Edward Filardi and Fr. Peter Sweeney), but it wasn’t like that all day. He’s a kind and accessible man, a beloved leader, ready to help.

 

 

There’s Always Room for More Angels

 

 

Christmas pageants are durable. The story line is predictable, but always and forever worth re-telling. The presenters are never perfect but always enchanting. The audience is guaranteed. Narrators ease the burden of memorizing lines. Mary and Joseph are prominent, but the central character is generally pretty quiet. There are some low-tension roles, including shepherds and assorted animals. And there’s always always always room for more angels. (Photo: JCOK)

 

 

 

2023: Long Year without a Resident Pastor

 

January 2023

 

FOCUS: Not Maintenance but Evangelization

 

The tactics of education that helped young people grown in their faith in previous generations simply do not work today, according to Curtis Martin, who founded the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), a missionary outreach to college students, in 1988. This year, one young woman from St. Paul’s is working with FOCUS.

Christine Johnson graduated from the University of Maryland in the spring of 2022 and went straight into FOCUS. She made a two-year commitment to offer support and encouragement to Catholic students. After her training, she was assigned to Ramapo College in New Jersey. It was considered a tough assignment, because the campus does not have much institutional support for religion – no chapel, no chaplain – just thoroughly secularized students. So who gets the tough assignments in missionary work?

Christine was an altar server in the parish for six years. Training altar servers today often focuses on mechanical details; we have generally forgotten that the “acolyte” was the fourth step in “minor orders,” after porter and lector and exorcist. The acolyte is supposed to be a visible invitation to prayer, a task that is shared by inanimate objects like candles or incense but also by – ahem – angels. Christine was an effective acolyte. When you looked at her, you felt the invitation to see what she saw, not to focus on her but rather to focus with her on God.

In an OPT interview, Christine said that the way the Catholic Church supported college students in their faith in previous generations does not work today. We need a whole new approach, “not maintenance but evangelization.” Students need active support on campuses, not just the address of the nearest church. So FOCUS offers real friendship, and Bible study.

She said she joined FOCUS because her time with active Catholics at the University of Maryland was so wonderful. The Bible study with members of the marching band there was formative for her, different from all her previous relationships, challenging her to grow in her faith, to look for what will “make me a saint,” which is everybody’s real goal.

There’s Mass for the students in a classroom. People are going to confession. The national FOCUS conference in St. Louis in January drew 1,700 students, including eight from Ramapo. Four are in Christine’s regular Bible study; three have said yes to active discipleship.

Pray for her work!

 

 

Christine Johnson (middle) learned about active Catholic life in a Bible study with members of the marching band at The University of Maryland. She is among the musicians and missionaries “made in Maryland.”

 

A Book that Shapes the Pastor’s Mind

 

Daily Mass at St. Paul is not rushed, but it is to the point – the readings from Scripture, the Eucharist, some quiet, some prayers for the church and the world, and a short homily. In his homilies, Msgr. Filardi explains the readings of the day, and sometimes the saint whose feast we celebrate. He uses stories about simple life experiences, and insights drawn from what he’s reading – which includes, prominently, the Catechism of the Catholic Church. He’s been plowing through it, a page or two a day. So what is this thing that shapes his thinking and his teaching so often?

Catholics often need a smidgin of history to explain ourselves.

Since Pentecost 2,000 years ago, the leaders of the Church have all gathered 21 times to pray together and make decisions together. The most recent of these world meetings was the Second Vatican Council in 1962-1965. St. John XXIII summoned the Council not to change teaching, but to update it (in Italian, “aggiornamento”). St. John Paul II devoted his life to implementing that Council.

After the breakup of the Soviet empire – a huge change in world history that started in Poland, encouraged by the Polish Pope – John Paul II met with the bishops of each continent to pray and prepare for evangelization in the third millennium, following the Council. What does Jesus ask of the Church in a changing world? In the first millennium, the work of the Church was especially vigorous in Europe; in the second half of the second millennium, America heard the Gospel. What now, in the third millennium?

In their reflections on evangelization, they decided to prepare two tools. First is a new catechism – not replacing the Bible, of course, but explaining the thought and practice of the Catholic Church in a single organized volume. The Church has done this several times – notably in the 1^st, 13^th, 17^th, and 19^th centuries – and it was time for a new version for a new age. (The  new tool is the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church.)

It’s ambitious:

·         The what: explain the teaching of Jesus and his Church

·         The where: the globe

·         The when: third millennium

The structure of the new catechism is simple, with four parts. It explains the Apostle’s Creed, the seven sacraments, the Ten Commandments, and the Our Father. The explanations start with the Bible, but include the insights of the Church through the ages – the Fathers and Doctors of the Church especially Thomas Aquinas to the Pope’s careful teaching in the encyclicals of the past century or two.

And that’s what Msgr. Filardi uses so often.

 

 

The Feast of St. Lucy

 

The Christmas season at St. Paul this year included a celebration of Saints Lucy and Nicholas, with 60 people eating and singing in the parish center. The two saints made grand entrances followed by long lines of excited and hopeful kids, then settled down to explain themselves. Here, St. Lucy, with candles in her hair, tells her story (as edited by Kimberly Morrison). The saints were presented by Dominic and Natalie Flynn, with grace and dignity and ease. (photo: JCOK)

 

 

March 2023

 

St. Paul’s Joins Pro-Life March in Annapolis

 

Despite the chilly rain, the Maryland March for Life drew over a thousand people, including 12 from St. Paul’s in Damascus, to gather at the State House in Annapolis calling for legal protection of unborn children.

Maryland legislators are considering a bill (SB798) to amend the state constitution and to establish “an individual's fundamental right to reproductive freedom, including, but not limited to the ability to make and effectuate decisions to prevent, continue, or end one's own pregnancy.” That sounds like a good idea, as long as no one gets injured or killed or tossed in the trash.

The 2022 decision of the US Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization alters the future of the pro-life movement. For the first time in half a century, states can act to prevent surgical abortion within their borders. But it’s not clear how much effective that will mean. If 35 states ban abortion and 15 don’t, abortion is less convenient but is still available to anyone anywhere in the nation. Non-surgical abortion is increasing rapidly; crossing state lines for abortion is common; traveling abroad for an abortion is far easier today than it was two generations ago; illegal abortions may become common, transforming bullies who kill helpless kids into folk heroes.

What is clear is that Maryland is a stronghold for the abortion movement. In 1991, Maryland passed a law guaranteeing a “right to abortion.” Pro-lifers put the law on the ballot in 1992, in a public referendum, and lost by a wide margin – 62% to 38%. So in the foreseeable future, when nearby states ban abortion, women and couples opting to end a pregnancy violently can and will travel to Rockville. Our abortion rate is going to climb.

The speakers in Annapolis did not offer much in the way of a strategy for Maryland that was different from the national approach in the past.

There was a small group at the edge of the march urging what they called “civil disobedience.” Pressed, they did affirm the need for a nonviolent approach, but didn’t explain (yet – stay tuned) in any detail what that meant.

One of the speakers at the rally was Pat Mahoney, who has a history of maintaining a civil dialogue with his opponents. That may be fundamental in pro-life work in Maryland. There’s a time and place for confrontation, but there’s also a chance and space for cooperation – on accurate data collection, on opposing forced abortion, on a preferential option for pregnant and nursing refugees.

 

 

In the rain and dark, the 12 pro-lifers from St Paul’s were scattered through the crowd, but this drippy clump was cheerful.

 

St. Paul’s Blesses New Organ

By Celeste Pappas, Director of Music

 

On February 5, St. Paul’s marked the installation of their new organ with a blessing at the beginning of the 11:00am Mass.  As our pastor, Monsignor Edward Filardi, wrote in the bulletin the following Sunday:

“This last weekend marked a significant moment in our parish history: we finally got an organ. I say ‘finally’ because it turns out twenty plus years ago when the new church was being planned, an organ was intended, but to defray costs it was decided to wait until after the dedication the summer of 2002. A letter I received last Saturday was an interesting revelation to me, from an anonymous donor, who wrote in part, ‘My husband donated the piano to provide joyous music until an organ could be purchased. Little did we know it would take nearly 20 years. So glad you now have both instruments to provide the parish with joyful sounds.’ In the Order for the Blessing of an Organ, which we offered at the beginning of the 11am Mass last Sunday, the introduction states, ‘in the Latin Church among the instruments the organ has always held a place of honor. Whether as an accompaniment for singing or as a solo instrument, this instrument adds splendor to sacred celebrations, offers praise to God, fosters a sense of prayer in the faithful, and raises their spirit to God.’”

Purchased from R.A. Daffer Church Organs, Inc., in Jessup, MD, the “new” St. Paul’s organ is a three-manual Rodgers Trillium 957 digital pipe organ built in 2001.   That means it has digital samples of real organ pipes.  Previously in a Baptist church in Yorktown, VA, it was purchased for less than half the cost of a new digital organ, the money for the purchase generously provided by an anonymous donor.  Not only does the organ match the church in age, but the wood finish of the console also matches the pews.  It has an excellent sound that reverberates in the very live acoustics of the new church and will hopefully be able to better support the singing of the congregation.  While a pipe organ is the preferred instrument for any organ enthusiast, many times a pipe organ is not an option either because of money or space constraints.  A digital pipe organ is the next best thing, and I look forward to many years playing this one, helping the parishioners of St. Paul’s to raise their hearts, minds, and voices to God in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

 

Lenten Soup Supper Supports Food Pantries

 

On Fridays all through Lent, the parish has soup suppers, offering a simple meal and a talk. The meals are simple, but it’s debatable whether they are penitential, because the soups are all amazing and delightful.

Traditional Lenten practices include prayer and fasting and almsgiving. To encourage almsgiving, the speakers explain a variety of services that need our support. The speakers in 2023 include:

·                     Sherrie Wade, explaining the parish support for the past 25 years for a medical clinic in Honduras

·                     Brian Mulholland explaining a food drive for the food-insecure in Washington

·                     Joseph Shuler explaining Catholic radio

·                     Barbara Zellers explaining how we can fight human trafficking

·                     A speaker from the Gabriel Project (or Network) explaining how we can give material and financial and emotional and spiritual help to young women or couples struggling with a pregnancy.

 

Brian Mulholland’s presentation on March 3 was about the John S. Mulholland Family Foundation’s work over the past ten years. JSMFF supports five outreach pantries in Catholic churches in Washington, east of the Anacostia River. They collect food from parishes outside DC, including St. Paul’s. He said that there are other organizations out there collecting food from churches, but JSMFF is the only one that runs food drives during the summer. Pastors fuss that food drives don’t work as well in the summer, because people are at the beach. But Brian notes that the hungry people aren’t at the beach, so there’s still a need.

John Mulholland was a longtime parishioner. Brian says that he visited his father’s grave in Arlington Cemetery recently to report on how the foundation is doing. He thought his father would approve of everything they are doing, except for the name of foundation.

 

 

May 2023

 

Parish Support for a Pastor in Pain

 

On March 19, the parish received a note from Fr. Lee Fangmeyer, the pastor of Mother Seton Parish in Germantown, that he had been appointed as Administrator of St. Paul while our pastor is on leave. He wrote, “I am joining you in praying for your pastor, Monsignor Filardi, as he takes some personal time for himself. May the Lord shower him with blessings and restore him as he needs. This decision of Msgr. Filardi’s is a sign to each of us. Recognizing the need and accepting help is commendable. May we all be so humble.”

Filling in for a pastor is daunting, but Fr. Fangmeyer and two other priests came forward promptly to help out.

Fr. Rick Gancayco generally celebrates the Mass for the parish Sunday through Wednesday. He had already been helping out for some months. He grew up in Damascus, in a large, ambitious, and disciplined Filipino family; many parishioners knew his father, a pediatrician here. Fr. Rick served as pastor of St. Martin’s in Gaithersburg, but he was also a missionary and a military chaplain for some years, and his sermons reflect those highly focused experiences. He says what he’s going to say, then says it, then says what he said – with clear titles and effective mnemonic devices – in three minutes. It is common to hear people say after Mass on Sunday or during the week that they remember everything he said, and then prove it in 30 smiling seconds. Time is a serious factor to Fr. Gancayco’s doctors keep predicting he will likely die last year. He’s living on borrowed time, but Whoever keeps loaning him time seems to be generous.

Fr. Ray Fecteau, a retired priest of the archdiocese, celebrates Mass for the parish Thursday to Saturday. He was the founding pastor of Our Lady of the Visitation in Darnestown, and he helped to establish Mary of Nazareth School there. He was chaplain for the law enforcement officers of the county, so he was already acquainted with a large portion of the parishioners at St. Paul. He lights up when he says he knew Fr. Walter Norris, the wry dry iconoclastic pastor then pastor-emeritus at St. Paul for 30 years.

The parish staff, including Meghan Mc Farland, Cindy Mengle, and Matt Curley, serve quietly, keeping parish life in order.

So we wait patiently for Msgr. Filardi’s return, praying with Fr. Fangmeyer: “The Lord wants nothing but the best for Monsignor. May he experience it in abundance.”

 

 

Two Bible Study Programs: Get a Grip

 

The most powerful piece of literature in the history of the world, the book that lays out the mysteries of Christianity, is the Bible. So you should read it, right? Good luck.

When people plunge in on their own, planning to read right through, they generally do pretty well in Genesis and Exodus, then get lost and discouraged in the desert sands of Leviticus. Jeff Cavins, a nationally renowned scholar and speaker, offers a way through. He power-walks through a coherent chronology using just 14 books (the Bible is a collection of 73 different short “books” of various kinds), presenting a rich overview, an outline that the rest of books can fit into. He sketches the history of the world (!) in eight half-hour talks, from creation to salvation. This program is entitled “The Great Adventure.”

Phil Raum has been running the program for the parish (with thanks to Cindy Mengle and Matt Curley). It’s flexible; Cavins’s approach will orient beginners, but it can also enrich anyone’s understanding.

During Lent, Matt Curley launched another discussion. He kick-started discussions of an on-going television series, The Chosen, which is an ambitious presentation of the Gospel. It’s not complete; the plan is for seven seasons, eight episodes each; three seasons are done and available, and the fourth is in production now. It’s a national phenomenon, claiming 108 million viewers and counting.

The show is historical fiction, with no pretense of scholarly accuracy; it is entrancing and inspiring. It’s a rich narrative about the men and women who were chosen to follow Jesus in his ministry, with complex characters based on the bare bones of the Gospels. Judas, for example, is a wide-eyed salesman, skilled and successful and ambitious, who finds the Lord’s casual approach to financial planning and security a little unnerving; Judas knows he needs training in the ministry, but he thinks he can offer some really good ideas about money. Mary and Mary Magdalen are extraordinarily attractive characters, modest and quiet but deeply wise: that’s nice, but can they seize an audience? Actually, yes, emphatically yes – but see for yourself.

The parish discussion in Lent was about season one; more are coming later this year, says Matt Curley. The parish is using the Catholic commentary on The Chosen found on the “Formed” website (formed.org – sign up for free through the parish; see the bulletin for more details).

 

 

 

A Tribute to Three Volunteers

 

St. Paul community is full of people who love the Lord, and who act on their own initiative to strengthen the Church. Perhaps every person in the parish has a collection of stories to tell, but here are three glimpses of the volunteers who make the land and building attractive.

The flowers in the church on Christmas and Easter, and around the statue of Mary, are a simple joy. For eight years now, this beauty in our church has been due to one quiet woman. She shares her gift and sits in the back, smiling. She has some help the day before the two major holidays: thanks to them too! But mostly, this is her work. She would prefer to be un-named, to create and maintain beauty without any fuss. But since we can all learn from her gentle ways, perhaps we should know where to look. The church is attractive day in and day out because of Fran Hunt. Thanks, Fran!

The Norris Chapel needs maintenance. For several years, the doors have looked like the entrance to a haunted house, black and ragged. This spring, a quiet and skilled volunteer stripped them, sanded them to the underlying wood, applied several coats of polyurethane, and returned them to their original golden glow. The chapel is the closer to the road than the new church; it’s what people see first when they find St. Paul’s. So it’s good to lose the appearance of neglect, and to glow again. The individual who saw the need and fixed the door clings to his or her anonymity. But thanks!

Dale Miller took an amazing photo of the back of the church at sunset. It shows a pleasant sky behind the church, but a glorious sky reflected in the window. What you see when you look in at the church is good; but what you see when you look out from the church, captured in a reflection outside, is glorious. It’s like the sunset of life: a corpse may look somber to us, but what the departed see may be eternally radiant. So the photo of the church offers a glimpse of the real work of the Church. Thanks, Dale! (See back cover).

 

 

August 2023

 

Golf Is Good for You – and Others

 

About the tragedy of civil wars in Central America, and the challenge of surging racism in America, and the persistent poverty in native American communities, and a broken immigration policy in a divided nation, and vast disparities in income distribution and health care: LET’S PLAY GOLF!

What?

No, I mean it. Light a candle. Take a step. Do a small thing well, with love. Golf.

I am not the savior of the world, and neither are you. But we know who is, and we work for him – in simplicity and joy. And right now, we just want to raise a few dollars for the medical clinic in Honduras that the parish has been supporting since Bernie Hughes laughed and launched charitable works.

Bernie who?

Hughes. He was a wealthy parishioner who laughed and made money and laughed some more and gave it away and kept laughing. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between holiness and mischief: he sparkled his eyes with holy mischief right through the cancer that tortured and killed him. One of the projects that his foundation funded was in Honduras, Tegucigalpa. That happened because a determined young woman from El Rosario, Joanie Figueroa, worked in Damascus for some years, doing home health care for some of our parishioners – hard and humble work, often left to immigrants. She persuaded parish leaders, including our own not-yet-canonized Sherrie Wade, to help out in her hometown. Joanie returned to Honduras and became a physician years ago, but the bond she begged to build between Damascus and El Rosario is still strong. Every year, teams of medical professionals from St. Paul – now joined by several other parishes – visit and help. And every Sunday, the parish offertory collects money for (1) regular ongoing expenses, and (2) building projects – AND (3) the medical clinic in Honduras.

So now, every year, St. Paul has some kind of smiling fundraiser to collect a pile of cash for the clinic. It used to be a gala, with gowns and auctions. But Covid drove everyone outside, so for three years now, it’s been a golf tournament.

Come on out!

September 18, you are invited to a golf tournament at the gorgeous – and prestigious and proud and historic – Bretton Woods golf course. The first year, we had an ambassador there; last year, we had the Cardinal. This year, who knows? Come see!

 

 

The Priests Who Helped, Part 2

 

Making its way into August, St. Paul Church still finds itself without a resident pastor. Msgr. Filardi’s parking spot to the right of the shed by the rectory is still empty. But when Cardinal Gregory made his annual assignments, parishioners were relieved that there was no change for us: St Paul didn’t get a new pastor because we don’t need one. One wonderful pastor is enough. He is coming back, not in a Biblical sense with one day being about the same as a thousand years, but more like Gandalf time: expect him when he arrives.

During the interlude, the parish has experienced the unity of the archdiocese; priests from all over showed up to help. The first group included Fr. Lee Fangmeyer, Fr. Ricky Gancayco, and Fr. Ray Fecteau; the second crop has included one familiar Irishman, one familiar Irish-American, one brand new priest, and one Canadian.

Fr. Peter Sweeney (pastor, 1989-2004) still attracts kids like the pied piper. Each year when he was pastor, several priests would come to help when girls and boys finished sacramental preparation and made their first confession; each year, the little rascals would look around at the options and then get in one long line to see the big rascal. His prayers and petitions and sermons and chats are always joyful.

Fr. Kevin Kennedy (pastor 2004-2008) left St. Paul for Catholic University, where he taught management; now he teaches management to pastors throughout the archdiocese. He returned – still erudite but relaxed, observant but entertaining. He looked over his old parishioners, and blurted out what struck him: everyone he knew before has gotten so much older. He probably meant “more mature.”

Fr. Martin Begley was ordained about 1464 hours ago (June 17). He grew up in St Peter’s parish in Olney, and is now assigned to St. John Neumann parish in Montgomery Village. But he has spent about one percent of his priesthood (a day) serving at St. Paul.

Fr. Y. David Brault retired for eleven wonderful days, and then – boom! – he was recalled to serve. He moved into the rectory (top floor, no elevator) cheerfully, and is back in the business of dispensing wisdom and grace. He grew up on the Canadian side of the St Lawrence River, and remembers when the river became a “seaway,” so ocean-going vessels could sail from Minnesota past his home to Europe. But the commerce along that seaway (five percent of the world’s cargo) is not as important nor as permanent as Fr. Dave’s priesthood.

It's not possible to say thanks properly to these four servants of God.

 

 

 

 

The “Burn the Mortgage” Picnic

 

The St. Paul picnic is an annual celebration of the patron saint’s feastday on June 29, but the picnic this year (June 4, 2023!) will be remembered as the one when the parish burned the mortgage. It’s paid; it’s history; it’s gone. Burn it!

 

 

 

There was a competition here, but the clear winner is: the spectators!

 

 

 

 

Fr. Sweeney and Jim Gorman (building committee) prepare to incinerate The Mortgage paperwork. The thing didn’t burn right; it smoldered in a grumpy and ironic way, and refused to burst into satisfying flames even when it was lit at both ends. It was still fun. The mortgage was too big at the beginning (aren’t they all?), and too long in the middle, and just a painful chore at the end; but now it’s gone. The parish didn’t just turn the page; they burned the page. (photo: Megan McFarland)

 

 

At the picnic, Deacon Dave Terrar presented Fr. Sweeney with a portrait he had painted based on photos. Perhaps the presentation could have been semi-solemn, but several children found the combination of a camera and their best buddy to be irresistible, and they photo-bombed the moment, expecting a suitable moment to shriek. (Photo: Megan McFarland)

 

Corpus Christi Procession: Tradition Renewed

 

 

 

In 2022, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) launched a three-year Eucharistic revival, to foster a deeper love for the Eucharist among the faithful. So last year, Msgr. Filardi led a Corpus Christi procession at the church. This year, on Corpus Christi Sunday – June 11 – Fr. Gancayco and a large crowd of parishioners processed over the hill between the old and the new churches. (photo: Megan McFarland)

 

 

October 2023

 

The Third Tranche of Priests for St. Paul’s

 

Going into October, St. Paul parish is still exploring the beauty and strength of our archdiocese. Msgr. Filardi is on leave, and the parish looks forward to his return. But in the meantime, the parish gotten some of the best preaching available anywhere. We are now up to ten amazing servants coming to help out. The three new ones include Fr. Jim Oberle, Msgr. Charles Mangan, and Fr. John Trigilio.

Fr. Oberle is from the Washington area. His community, the Sulpicians, sent him to Atlanta, where he served for decades. He led pilgrimages to shrines in Europe, and was on the faculty of the University of Dallas for some years. He retired in 2019 and returned to his roots in Washington.

Msgr. Mangan is from South Dakota but has old connections in Maryland; he was trained at Mt. St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg. He was ordained in 1989. He studied Canon Law and Mariology in Rome and worked in the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. He went back to the Midwest for three decades, to serve in Sioux Falls. Two years ago, he joined the faculty in Emmitsburg, to shape the next generation of priests. Since then, he has written for the Baltimore Catholic Review and the Arlington Catholic Herald. Next great challenge: St. Paul’s.

Fr. Trigilio is another faculty member at Mt. St. Mary’s Seminary. When he said Mass in Damascus, he finished Mass and then introduced himself – which was not his plan, but it did show his priorities.

The first hint that he’s a character is his name: he’s got some alphabet soup attached – two doctorates and a puzzler. That’s Rev. John Trigilio, Jr., PhD, ThD, KGCO. Junior and a PhD are clear enough. ThD is another doctorate, this one in theology. But KGCO? That might refer to his status as a Knight of Grace of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George, which you don’t see every day. This Constantinian Order “undertakes spiritual, humanitarian, hospitaller and charitable projects and initiatives” in England and Ireland and elsewhere.

He is also co-author of books including Catholic Mass For Dummies, John Paul II For Dummies, Women in the Bible For Dummies, Saints For Dummies, and Catholicism For Dummies. And he’s co-producer of “Web of Faith 2.0,” which is a weekly show on EWTN, for … somebody.

He’s going to fit right in.

 

The parish is grateful for help from ten generous priests, but we look forward to the return – safe and sound – of our own great pastor, Msgr. Filardi.

 

 

 

Invitation to Pray with Prisoners

 

The parish stalwarts who have been praying after Mass for the people of Ukraine and others in need have now begun praying for eight pro-lifers who were recently convicted of two crimes – blocking access to an abortion clinic, and conspiring to do so. This is not just trespassing; prosecutors opted to make a Federal case of it; the eight convicts will be sentenced in October, and the maximum sentence is 11 years. One man in the original group plea-bargained and got a reduced sentence – ten months.

The pro-lifers in prison do not fit into any neat category. The leadership of this “conspiracy” is the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, feminists including atheists who support the right to life and other civil rights; they “stood in solidarity” with the unborn. Other rescuers were traditional Catholics who were praying quietly, activists who were blocking, and Evangelicals who were witnessing. What united this unconventional group was opposition to an evil – specifically, late term abortions at the Washington Surgi-Clinic in October 2020. The practitioner there is Cesare Santangelo. Lauren Handy, who led the rescue, is identified by the Washington Post as the “anti-abortion activist who kept fetuses,” a reference to the bodies of children killed in the second or third trimester of pregnancy which she had obtained from a truck driver who was removing them Santangelo’s place. When Handy called the police to examine the large bodies which sure looked like evidence of a crime to her, they arrested her for possessing them.

In some ways, it can feel backwards to pray for prisoners of conscience. They are praying for us – the Catholic ones are anyway – and God listens to them. And perhaps God eavesdrops on the atheist’s gentle thoughts too.

The works of mercy that the Lord listed in his sermon about the last judgment (as described in Matthew’s Gospel) include visiting those in prison. The Greek verb for this visiting is episkeptomai, which may refer to a literal visit, or more generally to standing in solidarity with prisoners. So praying for people whom we love who are in prison is not just a second best effort to fulfill the Lord’s command; it’s exactly the right thing to do.

After weekday Masses, stay to pray with other parishioners! Pray for Ukraine, to be sure, but also pray with the prisoners of conscience who pray for the unborn, their parents, their enemies, all victims of violence, and a complacent nation.

 

 

 

Bishop Roy Campbell conferred the Sacrament of Confirmation on 23 young men and women from St. Paul Church. At the joyful event, three chose St. Cecilia as their patron saint, and three chose St. Sebastian. Photo credit: Tara Katherine Photography by Tara K, LLC

 

 

December 2023

 

Christmas Pageant Draws Angels, Boys Included

 

“We have, for the first time ever, a boy angel!” announced Peggy Hall, who has run the annual Christmas pageant since Jesus was born again in Damascus.

If you can get one boy to be an angel, you might get more. And in fact, before the day was over, Mrs. Hall had indeed located another. Last year, he was a donkey, but he’s coming up fast. This young man may be on the St. Joseph track!

Being an angel is not automatic; it takes some training. For one thing, angels don’t flap their wings up and down, they go side to side, forward and back, in a graceful motion. Boys too. After all, football players practice moving gracefully, although they might keep it a secret. “Well,” queried the new recruit, “how do you know then?” Pressed, Mrs. Hall identified her confidential source: “My son told me. He plays football.”

The pageant faces recruiting challenges. There’s often a need for more kings and inn keepers and other participants who have lines, who need to recall someone else’s words under pressure, and pronounce them clearly – and audibly, even in the back of a large church. Joseph has to shout to be heard, but still be gentle to comfort Mary, who has to sound tired, but with enough energy that she sounds tired 100 feet away.

Peggy Hall has been recruiting, training, and orchestrating the pageant for years. The script was written by a great parish hero, Diane Kanne, now frail and homebound but still radiating crinkly-eyed good humor. The underlying text, of course, was written by St. Luke, with some assistance from St. Matthew. In the spring, Mrs. Hall runs the Living Stations. If you haven’t been to either of these parish prays, you are missing a treasure.

It’s hard to do a Christmas pageant without having serious truth sneak in at the edges. Where two or more are gathered in my name, said, Jesus, there I am in their midst. And then, if Jesus comes in quietly, angels and saints will come quietly too, and fill the church joyfully. So even if you can’t see everything crisply or hear everything perfectly, it’s a show not to be missed.

The herald angels are coming, and there will be singing. So sit up and hark!

 

 

 

 

Peggy Hall teaches angels how to praise God, when they need a little coaching.

 

For Christmas, One New Pastor?

 

At the beginning of Lent, Msgr. Edward Filardi took a leave of absence to deal with personal issues. There was no scandal, just a prudent decision to get some help. May all in need imitate his courage! But now, he has resigned and will be assigned elsewhere. So who’s the pastor?

First, Jesus said that if his sheep were abandoned by the hired shepherd, he himself would step in: we’re covered for everything that really matters. The Catholic Church in Japan was persecuted and apparently destroyed in 1620; but it survived underground – without clergy or even contact with other Catholics – for 245 years, until 1865.

Second, we have a wonderful archbishop, Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who has said Mass here and played golf with us to raise money for the clinic in Honduras. When Msgr. Filardi came here, the Cardinal introduced him, saying he was sending us the best. (We agree.) The Cardinal will not overlook us.

Third, indeed the Cardinal has not overlooked us. He sent ten exemplary priests out here, on a temporary basis. Ten! And they were inspiring – all of them, 10 for 10.

Fourth, the administration of the parish has been in the capable hands of Fr. Lee Fangmeyer, pastor of Mother Seton parish next door. He radiates competence and preaches with clarity and charity.

Fifth, many daily decisions of the parish were in the hands of the parish secretary, Meghan McFarland, who was shoved into a leadership role – which she handled with grace and efficiency. She is quick to point out that the whole staff in the rectory is generous, knowledgeable, and committed to the parish.

Sixth, the parish is knit together by a long history of a long list of lay initiatives. The driving force when the parish was founded was the laity here – about 60 families. Some of those families are still here, including our much beloved Virginia Rhodes (age 102) and her son Michael. There are several prayer groups and Bible studies, a complex religious education program with hundreds of participants, a score of service groups, plus innumerable durable friendships.

Seventh, Fr. James Oberle is committed to staying here until we get a new pastor. He is adamant that he will return to retirement and teaching. But if we don’t get a pastor for a few years, and he’s stuck with us, that would be brilliant! Maybe we should visit the archdiocesan offices and gum up the works.

We’re okay. In fact, we’re blessed, extravagantly.

Still, we mutter a bit: who’s the pastor? We’ll take good care of him, honest.

 

 

Serving the Parish, Serving the Poor

 

On October 14, recalling the feast of the Our Lady of Fatima, Catholics at 2,000 locations across the country took time to gather and pray the Rosary. At St. Paul’s, the Rosary rally was organized by Pat Stack, a long-time parishioner. She flees the limelight; but knowing a little about her means understanding a little more about the parish.

Pat is pro-life. She has helped for years to distribute literature about corporations that support Planned Parenthood, with information about how to contact them to urge that they take a pro-life stance, or at least a neutral stance. She coordinates the parish participation in the Gabriel Project, collecting various needed items, plus cash – bottles-ful of cash, still being collected (ahem). This fall, the parish collected Christmas stockings – that’s big stockings, not tiny baby socks – full of baby items, placed in the Gabriel Crib in the narthex. The Gabriel Project supports women who are pregnant or postpartum up to three months after birth, along with their other children, who need help to stay clear of the lethal quick fix of abortion.

Pat and her husband Bob help out twice a week at the Lord’s Table Hot Meal Program, a soup kitchen at Epworth Methodist Church in Gaithersburg. Many local churches help out, and St. Paul has a team that prepares and serves meals regularly; Carol Dutil leads this service from the parish. But Gaithersburg has changed over the years. It was a sleepy cow-town a few years ago; “diversity” in Gaithersburg used to mean that there were Angus cattle there, not just Hereford and Holstein. But now it’s among the most ethnically diverse cities in the nation – number one most diverse as some reckon it – meaning there are more Koreans and Latinos and Indians and others living among the Caucasian Methodists than in the past. So the soup kitchen often needs a translator. Enter Pat, Tuesdays and Fridays, kind and practical and fluent in Spanish.

Prayerful, pro-life, serving the poor including immigrants: that’s a glimpse of Pat. And the balance in her life – pray and then act, to help the most vulnerable including babies and the homeless and immigrants – matches the balance in the parish. So look quick, before she hides.

 

 

2024: Year One with Fr. Cusick

 

January 2024

 

Norris Chapel Repairs Completed

 

When St. Paul Catholic Church was founded, the community built a simple wooden barn-like structure, seating 200 people comfortably. When that was replaced by the towering edifice on top of the hill, seating 600, the old church stayed in use – the Norris Chapel and Norris Hall. But the chapel deteriorated slowly, until the Catholic Daughters intervened, pressing for renovation. Repairs were, of course, much more complicated than they looked at the beginning, but at long last they are complete.*

The floor was the major issue, but there were several smaller repairs first. The Catholic Daughters replaced the padding on the kneelers, removing the raggedy stringy old covers. Megan McFarland got the walls painted. And a determinedly anonymous worker cleaned up the front doors, which had gotten black and cracked and spooky.

The decision to undertake the floor repairs was made by Msgr. Filardi, orally, just before he took a leave of absence: “Just go ahead and do it.” Fr. Fangmeyer, interim pastoral administrator, agreed to continue the work when teachers showed him nails sticking up where kids in the Atrium program often get down on the floor to do their work. Nails, kids: easy decision.

The floor project was overseen by Catholic Daughters Regent, Kathy Grapski, together with competent and omnipresent Barbara Zellers. Who’s responsible? Each points to the other respectfully.

The Catholic Daughters paid for the flooring. CDA treasurer, Terrie Butler, knows building material, and she got the flooring. Lindsay Lugo (choir, soprano) and her husband own a building company (concrete), and they provided the labor at no cost to the church.

Montgomery County inspectors required some costly changes to the project, including asbestos remediation. This was a delay and also a huge new unforeseen expense. And before the remediation experts in their moon suits could get to work, all the pews had to be removed – not shoved from one side to another and then back, but taken out and hauled away and stored somewhere else for some months, then replaced – yet another expensive step. Carol Lombardo organized that.

Parish operating funds covered the asbestos remediation. Other new expenses were covered by new volunteers responding to announcements in the bulletin; it turns out that people do read it.

Most of the floor was flat, and strong enough to stay put. But there was some structural damage underneath, that required “sistering” several long beams, and then raising some floor slightly, to prevent a dramatic collapse.

A startlingly complicated detail was replacing the thresholds for four doors. The concrete foundation walls are pretty level, but when the new floor reached the edges – at the doors – the slight imperfections became obvious. “Pretty level” isn’t really level, and really isn’t pretty. You don’t notice the threshold unless it’s off by half an inch and people start sprawling there on a regular basis, busting their noses and caterwauling at the beginning of Mass. That didn’t happen, and won’t happen, because Dan Thorpe (PGK, Knights of Columbus) took on the task of preventing accidents, engineering a humble and unobtrusive threshold over a slightly irregular wavy-top concrete wall. After a rough way is made straight, no one ever notices again; but it was an important service.

So the Norris Chapel is back – attractive and warm and safe, thanks to the Catholic Daughters.

 

*  “Complete except the trim in the …” Oh, please be quiet! It’s complete!

 

Hope for Kids and Catechists and the Church

 

At St. Paul’s, the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (CGS) program is now preparing children for First Communion for the 34^th year. But it remains a startling revolution.

The Baltimore Catechism used by previous generations was clear about sacraments: a sacrament is a sign instituted by Christ to give grace. That’s true and clear and good – but perhaps inaccessible. The CGS approach: The Good Shepherd calls each of us by name, and feeds us.

How does he feed us? Does he give us grass? “No!” responds a child. “Macaroni and cheese!” Okay, we have some work to do, but it starts with what is accessible, experiencing details of God’s love.

A century ago, St. Pius X initiated a huge change in the way Catholics approached the Eucharist. He invited children age seven to receive, insisting that “a full and perfect knowledge of Christian doctrine is not necessary either for First Confession or for First Communion.” His decision was announced in the decree “Quam Singulari,” which means “How Special!” How special, he wrote, is the love for children that the Lord showed when he was on earth! It was his delight to be in their midst!

According to Luann Flynn, who has been coordinating the parish program for eight years as the liaison with the religious education office, the Lord’s delight with kids is shared by the catechists, who find that they are fed by the kids. It’s good being with God and His munchkins. It’s a constant joy watching the “ah-ha moments” and the growing faith.

The parish has seven classes meeting now – three ages 3-6, two ages 6-9, and two ages 9-12. There are a dozen trained catechists now, with two more in training, and some aides.

Some parishes have switched the whole catechetical program to CGS, but that’s a hard decision. The obstacle to expanding the program is the time it takes to train catechists. Training takes nine months for level one (ages 3-6) and another nine months for levels two and three (ages 6-9 and 9-12). The parish generally picks up the cost, $700 to $900 each year, depending on where you go.

According to Kim Morrison, a catechist, the time and labor are more than rewarded. “It feeds the soul. The kids are ripe to hear. They are born in a relationship with God, but we don’t usually focus on that. But during those two hours a week, that’s the focus: strengthening that relationship. And you get to see it happen.”

 

 

New Pastor Announced

 

During the year waiting for the return of our pastor, parishioners met to pray, asking for God’s guidance and support. When the announcement was finally made that we would have a new pastor in January – Fr. Mark Cusick, who is moving from the southern tip of the archdiocese to the northernmost parish – parishioners gathered again, to give thanks. Fr. Larry Swink, the eleventh priest who came to help out, led the prayer with benediction.

 

Fr. Swink, the last priest to help before the new pastor was announced.

 

March 2024

 

An Hour in the Culture of Life

 

When Fr. Cusick invited the parish to an evening of reflection with Mark Forrest, he held up the flyer and urged people to come to – then he paused and looked at the handsome colored paper – “… come to this … this … I don’t know what to call it.” It was an hour, at church. It included music; Forrest is an Irish tenor. It included lights; Forrest studied theater at Catholic University. It included

Benediction. It included meditation in silence. It included a presentation about joy and suffering; Forrest’s biography and mission are amazing. I was there, and I don’t know what to call it.

What Mark Forrest said was, “The Lord has something to say to you. He has carved out an hour to be with you.”

St. Paul’s has a beautiful church, so take a look at it. Forrest lit the place up, with ten candles on the altar and purple lights on the tabernacle and the crucifix – purple because it’s Lent. Sit down and look!

The Catholic Church has treasured music refined by monks over centuries, chants that set a better if you slow tempo focusing on each word of a psalm or prayer. It’s better if you understand each word that the music offers you; but the habit of focusing works without understanding Latin. So the evening included some of that.

Christians have been working for a couple of centuries to write and collect excellent music in English; we had some of that. St. Paul’s has lost the habit of singing, so Forrest sang and anyone who wanted to join him could do so, but there was no pressure; it was worship, with beauty.

The Forrest family includes eight kids. Four are healthy, but one died of a heart disease at age three days, and three were born with a rare disease that rendered them blind, deaf, and in a wheelchair. Globally, about 400 people have this rare disease; three of the 400 are the Forrest kids. That family knows suffering. So you sit up and pay attention when this man wants to sing and pray, and when he says we are not defined by wealth or education, nor by suffering, but rather by what we do with the cross that the Lord gives us. He knows that he’s talking about when he says that we should carry the cross with a sense of joy. He helps prepare people to compete with the Paralympics, an international multi-sport event for people with a range of disabilities. We all play a part in the culture of life.

The evening included Benediction, but with renewed or heightened devotion. Fr. Cusick carried the Lord, come among us a the bread of life, up and down the aisles of the church, slowly, pausing every few pews to offer a blessing.

So what was this evening? Forrest says, “My job is to create an atmosphere for you to open up and let Christ in.”

 

 

The new pastor, Fr. Mark Cusick, stands with Mark Forrest at the evening of prayer and reflection, with Lenten light on the crucifix in the background. (Photo by Meghan McFarland)

 

 

 

 

 

25 Years of Service in Honduras

 

At the parish Lenten soup supper, Sherrie Wade offered an inspiring overview of the work St. Paul’s has done in El Rosario, Honduras, an initiative that is now 25 years old.

In 1999, Joanie Medrano Figueroa, who had worked as a home health aide for several elderly members of the parish in their declining years, dragged the community into a relationship with her home town thousands of miles south, offering some medical support. It started with a collection of bandaids and samples from doctors’ offices and CVS. Pretty much anything was better than pretty much nothing.

The parish funded the construction and operation of a community center including a medical clinic. The grand plan shrank a bit, but the medical part – the heart of the enterprise – grew steadily. In time, the other parishes joined in the work: St. Pius X in Bowie, St. Peter in Olney, and Annunciation in Washington. Fundraising events drew support from archbishops and ambassadors.

The medical services expanded beyond the clinic, and came to include “brigades,” or teams of professionals together with hard-working unskilled volunteers who started in Rosario but went out to other communities each day for a week. You pack up everything from a doctor’s office and transport the whole shebang to another site. The teams offered medical care, dental care, vision care, child care ,and prayer. Sherrie is unpredictable: she wants national leaders, but also wants toothbrushes and used glasses. It’s not common to see folks get excited about a toothbrush, but Sherrie wants you to understand that the people we serve generally have one or none – for the family. Getting one toothbrush per person is right up there with a steak-and-shrimp dinner. And glasses? When she asks the parish to collect used glasses, she can just about guarantee a happy placement.

When the brigades started, they were annual events; now, there are two brigades each year. The February 2024 brigade included a celebration in Rosario, with a parade and games and food and a moon bounce and dancing past midnight. The archbishop of Tegucigalpa came, and the Vice President of Honduras. The work included visiting five sites, serving over 4,000 patients. The teams are usually a dozen people; this time, 28 people traveled south.

Pat Stack has been a participant since the first trip. She put together a vacation Bible school, and she was ready for 150 kids. She got 500, and had to improvise fast. 500 kids! You can lose your voice coordinating that! (She got her voice back, so you can ask her about it.)

The clinic and the brigades are supported by St. Paul, but not a penny comes from the parish budget. All the funding is from a separate collection, and from two fundraising events each year – a gala in the spring and the golf tournament in the fall. This year, the “Spring Fling” will be a casino night (with Monopoly money; don’t call the cops) on April 20, and the tournament at Bretton Woods on September 19.

 

 

St. Paul Has a New Pastor

 

Fr. Mark Cusick has been bouncing a bit from one parish, and it’s time for him to stay somewhere awhile. St. Paul has met eleven great priests in the past year, since Msgr. Filardi left; it’s time for us to have a pastor stay awhile. Perhaps we have a match made by some authority higher than the chancery.

Fr. Cusick was 29 when he was ordained in 2013. He’s from central Florida, and has two brothers who show up in his homilies. He studied psychology at the University of Miami, where he started considering the priesthood seriously. He worked at NIH in Bethesda, and was involved in parish life at St. Mary’s in Rockville, where a priest encouraged him further. So he entered the seminary, at Mt. St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg.

He was ordained by Cardinal Wuerl, who urged the new priests that year to engage in the “new evangelization.” His first assignments were at St. Jane Frances de Chantal in Bethesda and at St. John the Evangelist in Silver Spring, as a parochial vicar.

In 2018, he was assigned to St. Francis Xavier in Washington, initially as administrator but then made pastor in 2019. In 2021, he was moved to southern Maryland, as pastor of St. Michael Parish, in Baden near Brandywine; he was also responsible for the Mission of St. Dominic in Aquasco. There, he began a series of teachings about religion and spirituality, more or less biweekly, available as Apple podcasts, “Baden Bulletins.”

He sings!

 

May 2024

 

Ancient and Exuberant Celebration of Mary

 

On the first Sunday in May, the parish recalled the role of Mary in the history of salvation, and crowned the statue of Mary in the narthex of the church. The original plan was for a procession to the statue outside the Norris Chapel, but the rain shifted plans to a modest indoor celebration. At the end of the 8:30 Mass, the congregation stayed for 10-15 minutes, singing. Children who had recently received their first communion participated in their unstained first communion outfits. They each got a miniature May pole, a ribbon wand, that they waved – some bobbing tentatively but others dancing enthusiastically like sports fans. The May Queen, who placed a crown on the statue with calm dignity, was Victoria Monroy.

At a Mass before the celebration, Fr. Cusick talked about the history of putting crowns on statues. The tradition is ancient, going back to the early Middle Ages, when theologians were pondering Mary’s identity and position in civilization. The Hail Mary was evolving – two verses from Scripture addressed to Mary, and then adding the name of Jesus, then adding a request for her intercession. Cities emerging from the rubble of the Roman empire built incredible cathedrals – stones piled into the sky, with glorious glass windows that broke up the light of day into unrestrained rays of joy, lifting minds and hearts soaring up towards heaven. All over Europe, colossal dancing stone structures were named for Mary. A totally inexplicable collection of social behaviors was evolving, persuading muscle-bound type-A males on horses that being a real man required habits of “chivalry” – respect for women beginning with the Mother of God. And in the middle of all that exuberant uproar, people started crowning statues.

The practice got a boost in the 1600s, from Jesuit missionaries. They wore black, but encouraged culture with color.

In the 20th century, the events in Fatima unleashed a new burst of energetic and joyful celebration recalling Mary. The message of Fatima is somber, a call to repentance. But the point of repentance is to prepare for good news, and the miracle of Fatima was a wild dance in the sky. So the May celebrations all over the country included nuns throughout America preparing kids to hold processions in the streets, blocking traffic for a short time, wending their way through cities and then returning to their churches and crowning a statue.

The celebrations and crownings declined a little in the late 20th century, perhaps because they looked like something ethnic from a previous age, or perhaps because there were fewer nuns directing the world’s traffic. But the events are back at St. Paul, exuberant, full of flowers and laughter and life.

 

A calm and self-possessed May Queen stands next to a pleased pastor during a Marian celebration.

OCIA: A Grace-filled Program

 

In the spring, the joy of a growing church is sometimes a little overwhelming. The parish has a program for converts and “reverts,” people coming into the church or coming back to the church, which focuses on preparation for the sacraments of Baptism, Reconciliation, Confirmation, and the Eucharist. But sometimes there’s some spillover into more sacramental life. This year, when people showed up a little early for the Easter liturgy, they had to wait outside for a few minutes, because Ryan and Stephanie Afifi were celebrating a Catholic wedding before Ryan’s confirmation. An inspirational array of sacramental life!

Preparation for entering the church is a program that stretches out for some months of prayer and study. It used to be called the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, or RCIA; now it’s the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults, or OCIA. In 2001, St. John Paul II began a systematic review and renewal of liturgy throughout the Church, and in 2021 that process, moving at Vatican speed, reached Baptism for adults, and made a list of alterations including a name change.

Deacon Don Mays is responsible for the program, but Matt Swaim has been leading the weekly classes (after the 8:30 Mass – join us if you’re interested!) since 2019.

Matt has a remarkable background. He was a Kentucky Protestant – proud, independent, solidly not-Catholic, serious about Scripture. But his studies in Scripture led him into Catholicism, and he became a trail-blazer like Daniel Boone. He’s been working with two former Protestant pastors to provide support for Protestants considering converting. Their ministry is “sharing the truth and beauty of the Catholic Church and helping you make the journey home.” The Coming Home Network (www.chnetwork.org), with a staff of 13, has been instrumental in over a thousand conversions, and is currently working with about a hundred more pastors. A Protestant pastor considering Catholicism has a list of challenges to face that aren’t obvious to a bystander. Who can you talk to, without giving scandal and losing your job? Parking at a Catholic rectory or going into a Catholic bookstore can be a risky business!

Matt is a nationally recognized leader, with a deep love of the Church. His service to the parish is expert and professional. But above all, it is faithful to the teaching of the Church: the class works its way through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, not through the opinions and fads that look good to the teachers this month.

 

 

 

A Parish Shaped by Federal Employees

 

The decisions made at the White House three generations ago about how to ensure that the Federal government could not be destroyed by a single hydrogen bomb are still visible in St. Paul parish.

The town of Damascus, a solidly Methodist community for over a century, was transformed by President Eisenhower’s decision to decentralize government offices. He sent the Atomic Energy Commission way out into the wilds of Germantown to ensure that something would survive if the Russians destroyed Washington. That Federal installation, and the interstate highway going out to it, brought all kinds of people out to rural Maryland – including Catholics, who built this parish. And we still have those amazing folks.

There’s a quiet and unassuming lady who comes to Mass wearing a veil, who often plays a flute at Mass. That’s Madeline Feltus, a renowned nuclear engineer. She’s a Columbia graduate, with a couple of Master’s degrees and a PhD. She taught at Penn State for 14 years, but is more an engineer than teacher. For some years, she was an advisor or the lead for all the research at the Energy Department’s Office of Nuclear Energy. And for the last 19 years, she’s been the Technical Manager for TRISO Fuel Research.

You have probably not ever tried some nuclear fuel in your kitchen. This TRISO isn’t Triscuits either. This is the fuel for a nuclear reactor. You might recall reading about an incident at Three Mile Island about a hundred miles north in 1979, or the meltdown at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986. When you abuse the fuel in a nuclear reactor, you get a taste of hell. So how do we get safe fuel? We can’t just back up a century and ignore nuclear energy. But in the real world, in this century, we can be safe if we follow the lead of Dr. Feltus. TRISO fuel is the safe alternative.

A TRISO particle is uranium packed inside three ceramic layers. It doesn’t corrode, doesn’t rust, and doesn’t melt. A nuclear power disaster is a “meltdown,” with temperatures over 2,000 degrees (Fahrenheit). TRISO particles can withstand temperatures over 3,000 degrees.

The key to the safe particles is the “cladding,” padding each little smidge of uranium inside three ceramic layers. But you know what? You don’t need to know how to do that. What you do need is Madeline overseeing the research, with a budget of $100 million to play with. That matters.

She plays the cello, piano, and organ, as well as the flute. She makes her own veils, cheap. She’s got a sweet smile. Oh! Americans will spend about two trillion dollars on nuclear energy this year, and it’s pretty safe, because of that little lady.

 

 

 

August 2024

 

 

The Catholic Daughters of America support the clergy – here with Fr. Cusick and Deacon “Rugby” McHale and Deacon Maury Huguely.

 

 

 

At the parish picnic, the Men’s Club presented their scholarship to a young Mr. Flynn.

 

 

Matt Curley (Director of Religious Education) and Deacon Louis McHale led the St. Paul contingent at the Damascus parade, joined by the Catholic Daughters and the Knights of Columbus plus other parishioners. Fr. Cusick drove the Pope Car Fiat with our 103-year-old Virginia Rhodes. (photo: Megan McFarland)

 

 

 

 

 

August 2024

 

Generations of Faith Shine Through

 

St. Paul is a parish full of converts and reverts and friends, but there is also strength in the families that have lived the faith for generations. Tony and Kathy Wolf are quiet, sitting in the back of the church; but over time you can’t help but notice that their eyes are bright and joyful, individually but also – and far more – as a couple. At daily Mass, Tony is a regular lector while Kathy serves as sacristan. So who are they?

Tony is the eldest of seven; Kathy is the second of seven. When Kathy’s father worked with the AFL-CIO, he brought his large family from out west to Maryland. There in Rockville, she saw a boy from five houses down the block riding by on his Schwinn, and paid attention; in time, they became high school sweethearts and married. Tony worked at Northrop Grumman in Gaithersburg; Kathy was a nurse for some years, then – with three kids – went back to school, pursuing an M.D. at Georgetown, then set up an obstetrics practice in Arlington.

Kathy prayed with her patients, which was not standard. She got a reputation for refusing to abort kids, and often moms who had been advised to abort a child with disabilities turned to her. Many of these kids were born just fine; but when there were problems, she helped parents to learn and grow with a child with challenges. One example: a patient gave birth to a child without a brain who died within hours. That’s heartbreaking, but the mom said that she learned during that experience that she could do anything. So in subsequent years, when she faced immense difficulties, she persevered and triumphed because, she said, she knew from that birth that she could do anything.

The couple are retired now, sort of. That is, they aren’t paid cash for regularly scheduled work. But their three kids brought them ten grandchildren, which means a lot of work, scheduled irregularly, with immense non-cash remuneration. The walls in their large and open and airy house are covered with photos of the ten; the pool and playground in back of the house are there for the kids.

The Wolfs were active for decades with Engaged Encounter, which helps couples prepare for a sacramental marriage.

Their holiday celebrations include almsgiving. For Thanksgiving, the family – including their children and grandchildren – prepare piles of food for men and women in a homeless shelter; for Christmas, they purchase and wrap presents – usually clothing, once a guitar – for the residents in a program which supports men and women who are not quite independent.

The Wolfs travel in Europe and America, especially to Medjugorje, a pilgrim site where it is believed that Mary appeared, which they have visited 15 times. The whole family – three generations – went to Rome together during the Holy Year in 2016.

Their ten grandchildren are all baptized, and all attend Mass. Those old enough have been confirmed. The greatest blessing in their lives, Tony states and Kathy echoes, is their children’s faith.

 

 

Tony Wolf reads at Mass in the Norris Chapel; his wife Kathy sits in the background, ready to serve.

 

Deacon Rugby’s Energetic Preaching

 

Each summer, young men in the last year at the seminary are sent out to parishes throughout the archdiocese to get some on-the-job training. It’s good for them, and also wonderful for the parishes they serve. We get to see something about the future of the Church. And this summer, we got a glimpse of a bright and energetic future in the service of Deacon Louis McHale.

His background includes years being home-schooled in Olney, then some formative years at the Opus Dei-run Heights high school, then Catholic University, then on to the seminary in Emmitsburg. Along the way, he had a rugby coach who pounded a key lesson into this brash and loud youngster; he taught Louis the importance of falling right. In American football, when the player with the ball falls to the ground, play stops, and everyone regroups for the next episode of mayhem. In rugby, people fall and growl and build pyramids of grit and keep struggling. Often, we feel that to fall is to fail – but not in rugby, and not in life according to McHale.

Lesson for the Church of the mid-21st century: fight forward even as you fall.

His insight looking forward is affirmed by a look back. One of the most interesting churches in Rome is San Clemente, an impressive basilica built layer on layer, with the art of the Middle Ages sitting atop a church from the 4th century which sits atop the ruins of a pagan temple. The temple was dedicated to Mithras, a military cult. A scrap of their worship is still heard in the canon of our Mass today. The warriors who worshipped Mithras – including Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, and Cicero – were committed to a proposition: it is always and everywhere right and just to give thanks to the gods. In their view, the failure to give thanks to the gods was among the worst evils imaginable. We still pronounce their words, but perhaps we don’t hear them right unless we also hear echoes of some of the world’s greatest warriors pounding their spears on the ground as they cried out, “Dignum [boom!] et justum [boom!] est, semper et ubique [boom boom!], gratias agere Domino Deo nostro [boom boom boom!]”

Always and everywhere, rising or falling, we press forward, determined and joyful and grateful to God.

Thanks, Deacon Louis McHale.

 

 

Sign Up! Play Golf with the Cardinal!

 

The St. Paul clinic in Honduras is still a thriving concern: the July trip served hundreds, and the fall golf tournament to raise funds has the premier draw of the archdiocese. You can learn more about Honduras, help more in Honduras, and play more with the Church! Just sign up!

Since the clinic was opened in Honduras a generation ago – 25 years ago – the parish with several other parishes joining over time have served the poor in Tegucigalpa. The clinic is open year round, with a professional staff; but twice a year teams of medical professionals and volunteers from Maryland visit to work for a week. The trip on July 1-7 was a small group, just five people, but the team served 926 patients. This included a new outreach, care for adults with autism. In Honduras, autistic children receive some care through schools, but they are generally overlooked or forgotten after they finish their education; their care then depends on their immediate family. But now, there will be services provided to them regularly, through the clinic.

It is hard and perhaps impossible to measure some impacts, but it is likely that services provided by visitors will inspire local initiatives over time. The outreach to autistic adults in Tegucigalpa will not magically transform the nation, but it can provide a model that others can see and imitate elsewhere.

To support the St. Paul Clinic, there will be a charity golf tournament on Monday, September 16, at the beautiful and historic (and exclusive – seize your chance!) Bretton Woods Golf Course. Cardinal Wilton Gregory will be there; join the Cardinal on the green! Have a good time with good folks for a good cause!

 

 

 

October 2024

 

Sometimes Generosity Is Just Plain Fun

 

How do you measure success at the annual Honduras clinic fundraiser? There were carts full of golfers offering buckets of money to help smiling people. They played on a gorgeous day at a historic golf course. The weather on September 16, the day of the tournament, was perfect – no rain, no blistering heat, no blustering wind, some cloud cover, and mild temperatures. Bretton Woods drips history: it was founded to serve World Bank representatives and staff from around the world, before other clubs were desegregated. Some special guests were there: Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the Ambassador of Honduras, and Fr. Peter Sweeney! What a great time!

There were 89 golfers including six priests and one cardinal, heading out to play in a parade of golf carts. For undisclosed reasons, Cardinal Wilton Gregory’s foursome was made up of priests from a foreign land – St. John Neumann parish. They aren’t poachers or rustlers, exactly, but anonymous parishioners took note that one beloved deacon (Deacon Ed Close) and one admirable priest (Fr. Peter Sweeney) and now the inspiring Cardinal all responded to the siren call of that parish to the south. We have to love our neighbors without boundaries, including people from Honduras and even Gaithersburg. We are united in Christ! True, true – but golf is healthy competition.

Ambassador of Honduras, Rafael Fernando Sierra, joined golfers at the tournament raising funds for St. Paul’s clinic in his country. The current president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro Sarmiento, was born in Tegucigalpa, where St. Paul opened the clinic over 25 years ago. She has made health care a top priority, and has announced plans for eight new hospitals, a building spree beyond anything seen in the past 40 years. She understands what we are doing, and she’s grateful!

At the tournament, the ambassador didn’t golf; he ate and chatted. Food, he said, is an international language of diplomacy and respect and community. It offers a calm and happy way to share life between cultures and across language barriers. He promised that anyone visiting the clinic will get excellent and memorable food. The food at the tournament was that same noble all-American meal that President Roosevelt (FDR) provided for King George VI and his daughter Elizabeth when they visited Hyde Park in 1939: hot dogs.

Organizers – and the Ambassador – express their thanks to all the people of the parishes that support the clinic – thanks for your generosity, and thanks for the mutual respect you foster. A special thanks to those who supported the golf tournament – by donating the signs at each hole, or signing up as sponsors of the event, by bringing creative items for the silent auction, by working in the background through the whole day.

 

Ambassador Javier Efraín Bú Soto and Fr. Cusick meet at Bretton Woods during the fundraising tournament. The pastor had encouraged parishioners to join in a novena for success in achieving a lifelong goal, winning this tournament. Keep praying! Maybe next year! Several greater miracles have happened in history!

 

Cardinal Gregory and Sherrie Wade cooperate to contain the unquenchable Irishman Fr. Peter Sweeney.

Christmas Prep Before Advent?

 

Proper preparation for a Catholic feast includes prayer and fasting and almsgiving. About that almsgiving bit: can we encourage kids to get involved now in supporting the St. Paul clinic in Honduras? Sure! The next fundraiser – supported by the Catholic Daughters and the Knights of Columbus and the Men’s Club –  will be geared to young parishioners, a fun afternoon in late fall – play, laugh, and help the church overseas.

The centerpiece of the Winter Wonderland will be a Secret Santa shop, where kids can buy a Christmas gift for parents for pocket change. (That’s an ancient phrase referring to coins, like a quarter.) The Catholic Daughters will wrap the gift for Christmas, labeled carefully. Proceeds go to Honduras. Form good habits young!

Organizing a fundraiser often requires making a binary decision: will there be kids, or alcohol? This is an alcohol-free kids’ event. But it’s fine if adults come, bringing more than a few coins. There will be raffles for pre-decorated Christmas trees, a sleigh-ful of toys (sleigh included), and gift baskets. There will be a Santa workshop, with an MCPS-certified art teacher (!) helping kids create treasures.

Every sappy Hallmark Christmas movie includes hot chocolate. There will be hot chocolate, provided by the Knights of Columbus. They will offer real food too.

Peter Wood, the renowned Collector of the Impossible, is coming! He’s a magician and comedian who has entertained folks from various small businesses like Microsoft, Adobe, and Frito-Lay. He’s from the parish, but he has been combing the world for astounding items and feats.

The rumor is, Santa is coming. It’s before Advent, and St. Nicholas is liturgy-savvy, so he might not wear red. But maybe he doesn’t have any clothes that aren’t red, so we will have to wait and see.

That’s the afternoon of November 16, in the Parish Hall. Mark your calendar!

Missionary Priest Preaches at St. Paul

 

On September 28-29, the parish scheduled a visit from Fr. Bill Ryan, who has been a missionary in Togo for decades. He is an exemplar of all the works of mercy, offering God’s love on every level of human experience – corporal and spiritual and everything in between. He dug wells, built grist mills, erected one massive church and many village chapels, founded a school system for the youngest through excellent college prep. And also, he has baptized hundreds of people, and he has encouraged a vibrant sacramental life. St. Paul has always supported mission activity generously, especially in Honduras but around the world as well.

Fr. Ryan’s work is shown in vivid photos in the Very Young Catholic project, a series of books published by Holy Heroes. The project offers stories and pictures of children in each of the 24 time zones around the globe. The author, Emily Koczela, wants children to know it and feel it: “From the rising of the Sun to its setting, the Mass is being said everywhere in the world!” 17 of the 24 books are finished; 15 are published. In launching the project, the Togo book was key, helping young readers see and understand Catholic life in a far distant culture.

 

 

 

 

Fr. Bill Ryan added St. Paul to his list of visits drumming up support for his mission in Togo. One source of additional insight and info about the mission is Very Young Catholics in Togo. The community in that book is Fr. Ryan’s.

 

Knights Prepare 40-Days-For-Life Activities

 

Submitted by the Pro-Life Committee, Council 11105

 

The 40 Days-for-Life program was started in 1998 in Bryan Texas in opposition to a Planned Parenthood facility in the city and has become international in scope. The program promotes peaceful prayer vigils outside or near abortion facilities in twice-yearly 40-day vigils – in spring and in fall. The fall 2024 program runs from September 25 to November 3. The Knights of Columbus at St. Paul have lined up three ways to participate.

 

First, the Knights will lead the parish in prayerful vigils near the Bethesda late-term abortion clinic in Bethesda on two Saturdays, September 28 and October 19, from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. The Knights will pray all 20 decades of the Rosary. If you can join, the Knights will provide Rosaries, prayer cards, and pro-life signs to carry. They will also have “Precious Feet” lapel pins, the international symbol for pro-life. There will be carpools from St. Paul’s parking lot to the abortion site in Bethesda, leaving at 10:15 am and returning by 1:45 pm.

 

Second, every Sunday after the 8:30 Mass throughout the 40 Days, the Knights will lead the parish in praying the Rosary in the church – for unborn children and for all who are affected by abortion. The Catholic Church has made October to month of the Holy Rosary since the late 1800s, and designated October “Respect for Life month” since the 1973 Supreme Court decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.

 

Third, the Knights encourage the parish to pray a nine-day novena for life, from October 26 to November 3. Participants are asked to pray the Rosary, a decade of the Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and/or other devotion for the pro-life cause. These daily devotions may be prayed at home, or at work, wherever and whenever is convenient. The minds and hearts of those favoring abortion will only be changed through the power of the Holy Spirit, invoked by our prayers.

 

Our pro-life prayers take on special urgency in Maryland this fall. On the November Maryland ballot, Question #1 – titled the Reproductive Freedom Act – seeks to enshrine abortion in the Maryland constitution. This includes late-term abortion other pro-abortion protections, and can open the way to sex-altering measures on minor children, even without their parents’ consent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 2024

 

Pilgrimage to Poland: A Parish Event

 

Fr. Mark Cusick led a pilgrimage to Poland, to the home and land of St. John Paul II, October 13-23. A pilgrimage can and should be a multi-layered event, and this one is still unfolding. The pastor shared some of the experiences of the pilgrims after Mass on December 1, and described his hopes going forward.

There were 16 people who made the pilgrimage, including two priests – Fr. Cusick and Fr. Rob Maro – two people from the tour company, four friends of Fr. Maro, and eight parishioners. In addition, two of the pilgrims – Pat Stack and Mary Ann Green – collected petitions from dozens of parishioners, and the envelope holding those petitions was on the altar at every Mass. Then about 45 people showed up to listen to Fr. Cusick’s remarks. But these people are the beginning, not the whole story.

He said that the pilgrimage had three phases: first the trip itself, then a time of meditation about it, and then the enduring fruit which is better communication of the Gospel. The third phase includes the whole parish. Following in the steps of St. John Paul II, the pilgrims prayed for holiness for the parish, and Fr. Cusick intends to encourage more devotion built specifically on groups sharing the Rosary.

The pilgrimage included seeing the ancient painting of Our Lady of Czestochowa. Tradition has it that this icon was painted – or “written,” as one says about an icon – by St. Luke. There are four paintings attributed to St. Luke, including two in Rome, one in Russia, and this one in Poland. For sure, it’s ancient. And the figure in the painting resembles the Virgin of Guadalupe, which is not nearly as old but was created in a miraculous fashion in 1531. In both, Mary is shown with a long slender nose, a small mouth, a delicate chin, thin arched eyebrows, and almond eyes. But the test of authenticity is not her nose; it’s whether people pray.

The pilgrims visited the home of young Karol Wojtyla, and saw the kneeler that the future pope’s father used – a piece of furniture in a modest home used solely for prayer. Karol’s life of holiness grew out of his family’s life.

During his life – as priest then bishop then pope – John Paul II resisted the Nazis and then the Communists who oppressed Poland and slaughtered millions. The pilgrimage included a visit to the Chapel of Divine Mercy; the Pope said that dedicating that chapel was the happiest day of his life. “Great good can come of great evil,” he said.

Pilgrims saw two great gates. One was opened for a Holy Year. John Paul II opened doors at the major basilicas in 2000, recalling the Lord’s words that he is the gate, and urging prayer and renewal. Pope Francis altered the tradition in 2015, having doors opened in every diocese throughout the world, including Krakow. 2025 will be another Holy Year, with the doors in Rome opened at Christmas (2024). The pilgrims also visited Auschwitz, with the iron greeting over the gate, “Work makes you free,” a greeting on the way to hell and death.

The pilgrims visited sites of the early Solidarity movement, including the grave of Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko, the chaplain to strikers, who was killed by Communists. He has been beatified, and may be canonized soon.

Will the parish implement hopes from the pilgrimage, stepping through the Lord’s gate into a life of renewed holiness? There are already several groups in the parish currently praying the Rosary together. The Knights of Columbus lead the Rosary after Mass monthly, and pray outside an abortion clinic regularly. The Catholic Daughters routinely open their meetings with the Rosary. A small group stays after daily Mass to pray the Rosary. Barbara Zellers coordinates a group inspired by Fr. Francis Martin, walking around the church property once a month, praying the Rosary. Pat Stack organizes a public Rosary each year recalling Fatima.

Who knows what the Holy Year will bring?

 

The parish pilgrimage included seeing the image of Our Lady of Czestochowa, an inspiring image with an intriguing history.

 

 

 

Christmas Gifts Here and Abroad

 

The Winter Wonderland, November 16 in the parish center, was an afternoon of delight raising funds for the St. Paul clinic in Honduras, and it was appropriately wonderful.

In one corner, there was a magic show with globally renowned Peter Wood, and the reporter for OPT didn’t figure out how any of the magic worked, because it’s magic. In the opposite corner, Kris Johncox was helping kids produce artwork, which was even magicker.

In a third corner, there was a shopping mall for kids buying for parents: no adults allowed in. The entrance to that area was low, and people who didn’t fit didn’t belong. There was a smiling and friendly but very firm lady at the entrance, explaining things to large people.

It was startling that this OPT reporter wandering around from booth to booth in the parish hall knew all the workers (no surprise) – but knew almost none of the people who came for the show. The outreach reached out, way beyond the borders of familiarity.

Also, this same reporter learned that the people he knew – he didn’t know well. That elf, for example, is a very controlled person – reliable, quick, hard worker. Who knew she had a green elf inside?

The next Honduras event will be a week of service, February 10-17, in Tegucigalpa. Medical professionals and volunteers will provide free services to our brothers and sisters there.

 

 

 

On workdays at 9, the elf is Cindy Mengle. Santa, of course, is St Nicholas. We were very fortunate to have Santa show up in person; it took a little Christmas Finagling to get him there. (Photo: parish archives)

 

Preparation for the Christmas pageant moves forward steadily, happily.

 

 

2025: Jubilee Year

 

 

 

January 2025

 

Parish Begins Holy Year Observations

Pope Francis inaugurated a Holy Year on Christmas Eve, and focused Catholics on the virtue of hope. We look forward to life with the Lord forever, and this year we look for a new beginning in our lives. Pilgrims from around the world will make their way to Rome, including some from St Paul. Deacon Dave Terrar is working with at least five parishioners who are making plans to go to Rome as pilgrims and also as volunteers helping other pilgrims.

In the Archdiocese of Washington, there will be less extensive pilgrimages – to Holy Year sites including the Cathedral of St. Matthew, the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and the Saint John Paul II National Shrine.

At St. Paul, came back from his pilgrimage to sites in Poland hoping to see a number of small groups forming to strengthen and revive faith. On January 12, this initiative began, with 65 people meeting in the parish center to sketch their hopes for a dozen small groups – some continuing their on-going activity but inviting others to join, and some starting up for the Holy Year.

There’s the Men’s Ministry offering fellowship and works of charity, the Men’s Club offering monthly pancake breakfasts and offering a place for the non-Catholics associated with the parish, and the Knights of Columbus with a new young acting Grand Knight offering service including pro-life activities.

The Catholic Daughters continue their numerous services but will also offer a Lenten retreat and a pilgrimage to a local Holy Year site. In addition, there are two more women’s groups, one exploring the feminine genius and the other made up of wise women reading several encyclicals and other magisterial documents.

One group will sing evening prayer each Sunday, praying with millions of other Catholics worldwide, using the Liturgy of the Hours.

One group will read and study the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, which St. John Paul II commissioned as a tool for evangelization in the Third Millennium.

One energetic group intends to take pilgrimages seriously, walking all over the state to various pilgrimage sites – emphasis on walking.

Two groups will meet simply to pray and share, one of them praying the Rosary.

In the cold of winter, in the calm order of Ordinary Time, the parish is bursting with hope.

 

 

Socks from the Knights

The parish provides a long list of services to people in need – food for the homeless in Gaithersburg, support for abused women and pregnant women in shelters in the county, clothing and other services through the St. Vincent de Paul Society, hospital visits – the list goes on and on. Amidst the steady labor, there’s a simple humble service worth noting. The Knights provide socks for the homeless.

A bag of needed items for someone on the streets might include a wool blanket and two heavy duty plastic bags and cigarettes and water and granola bars and a dry bath pack. But sometimes, the most important item is simple: clean, dry socks. So the determined and faithful Gary Boughan has challenged the Knights year after year to collect socks, or buy socks (donations to “K of C 11105” with a note “socks for the homeless” are welcome), and get them out. Hundreds and hundreds of pairs of socks.

People often think of socks as a reusable item, and that’s not a bad idea if you live in a house. But that’s not always good sense.

Socks – new, white, athletic or crew. Gloves (brown cotton insulated) are good too, but especially socks. You can drop them in the sock box in the back of the church. In the cold on the streets, the most vulnerable point is your feet.

The Knights have worked tirelessly to protect unborn children and help women and couples facing pregnancies they didn’t plan. They help coordinate participation in the March for Life each year, including prayer at the church during the March for those who can’t make it downtown. They organize prayer to support counselors at a local abortion clinic. They led the Rosary after Mass regularly, praying for those threatened by abortion.

But also, don’t forget the homeless. Say hi; be respectful; help when you can. Simple things help. Socks.

If you have questions, call Gary Boughan.

 

March 2025

Catholic Daughters: Pilgrimage to Holy Site

During the Jubilee Year led by Pope Francis, the Church around the world is focused on hope, and millions of people are making pilgrimages both long and short. At least seven people in the parish hope to visit Rome as pilgrims this year, but there has already been a pilgrimage to a designated Holy Site a few miles south. The Catholic Daughters organized a retreat and pilgrimage to St. John Neumann Church on March 1, the last weekend before Lent.

The retreat began with the Rosary and then Mass at St. Paul, with over 100 parishioners attending. After Mass, Barbara Zellers offered an extraordinary reflection on hope, exploring the Feast of Tabernacles and the Transfiguration. She offered repeated challenges: Jesus said we are to be light, so are we? Does our prayer bring light – to us and to the world? Does inner light give us strength against the dark?

Her meditation was followed by breakfast – free, remarked Fr. Cusick, about 30 times. And abundant and delicious, said everyone else.

Then participants became pilgrims, and made their way to a site designated by the archdiocese as one of the Holy Sites for the Jubilee Year, the church of our neighbors to the south, St. John Neumann. There, Deacon Louis McHale offered another reflection on hope. He said that we can learn and practice the natural virtues, like justice and temperance, but not the theological virtues of faith and hope and love. They are gifts, and our role is cooperate with God’s work in us. However, we can hedge in the virtue of hope with two natural virtues, humility and magnanimity. Humility is not demeaning yourself systematically, but rather seeing yourself honestly. Magnanimity is like ambition, having a “large soul,” seeing yourself as a citizen in the community of God. God asks things of us, and they can be small – or large. If the Lord asks large things of us, we should respond “I can do that … I will do that.”

The pilgrimage closed with the “Litany of Trust” and the Jubilee Prayer.

Hope: the Kingdom comes.

 

Pope Francis, announcing the Jubilee, wrote: “The coming Jubilee will thus be a Holy Year marked by the hope that does not fade, our hope in God. May it help us to recover the confident trust that we require, in the Church and in society, in our interpersonal relationships, in international relations, and in our task of promoting the dignity of all persons and respect for God’s gift of creation. May the witness of believers be for our world a leaven of authentic hope, a harbinger of new heavens and a new earth (cf. 2 Pet 3:13), where men and women will dwell in justice and harmony, in joyful expectation of the fulfilment of the Lord’s promises.”

 

 

Parish Secretary Steps Aside

After six incredible and tumultuous years, the secretary of the parish is leaving her position. Megan McFarland is not leaving St. Paul, nor even the office; she will stay on, part time, as the administrator for the religious education program. Still, it’s a huge change for the whole parish.

Obviously, the pastor leads the parish, and is the celebrant when the community gathers to worship at Mass. For many people, the secretary is invisible, anonymous, hidden in the background. When someone first makes contact with a parish, and knocks on the door, it’s the secretary who looks up and responds. And when people visit the church office to talk about births or deaths of marriages or sacramental life, the face they see first is the secretary.

Megan was that face for us. But also, she provided stability and continuity during a time of chaos. She supported and worked with 14 priests – three pastors, one apostolic administrator, and ten short-term substitutes – all wonderful but not quite as deeply grounded in Damascus as she is.

Megan was born in the Shenandoah Valley, near Waynesboro. She went to high school at Stuarts Draft, in a class of 160, then went on to Clemson in South Carolina. S he moved to Maryland in 1992, married, and raised three kids in Damascus. They are all independent now, and she has two grandchildren.

She was in the corporate world, including time at IBM and Hughes Network Systems, making real money. But then in 2018, Fr. Pierce recruited her into the parish council, and the next year hired her to fill two separate slots – secretary and bookkeeper. It was a huge cut in pay, but the benefits package was designed by a generous Lord. She started on April Fools Day in 2019.

She got herself accustomed to the work before Covid descended. And she was ready to make daily decisions and keep things running smoothly (that’s the way it looked from outside) when the parish embarked on our pastor-a-month program. Replace the floor in the Norris Hall? Ask Megan. Paint the wall of the Church? Ask Megan? Where is anything, and when is anything happening, and how is anything supposed to happen? Ask Megan.

Money got tighter, and the parish couldn’t afford a paid ministry coordinator. Megan took it on. Several other major tasks: Megan took it on.

But now, she has now stepped down, or aside. She’s still in the parish office, working with Matt Curley, the Director of Religious Education.

Reflecting on her years of astounding service, she talks about the many people whom God sent to help. People always showed up to help her to do whatever needed to get done. The parish staff prayed together and ate lunch together; it was a good team. She was fed by her work.

Miggy Burns, who has worked with Megan for decades, including in the parish office, wrote: “Words alone cannot begin to express how grateful our entire parish is to you for being the ‘wind beneath our wings.’ During your tenure as Parish Secretary, you have had to learn to be a financial expert, a computer wizard, a handyman, a confidant, a therapist, a cook and a housekeeper to name only a few of your acquired talents and you did all these well with the minimum of fuss and with endless patience.”

 

Atrium First Communion

Seven children in the Atrium program received their First Communion on March 2. The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (Atrium) was developed by Sofia Cavaletti, based on the educational insights of Maria Montessori. It is a hands-on approach, built on confidence that the Lord speaks to us all, including children, and we and they can discern his voice and respond. Usually when children receive their First Communion, they dress as if for a wedding. That makes sense. But the Atrium children wear robes that recall Baptism. That makes sense too. (Photo: Megan McFarland)

 

  

May 2025

The Living Stations: A Rich Parish Tradition

On Christmas and Easter, the parish has colorful and lively displays that include dozens of young participants, deepening the faith and prayer of all involved – the kids, their families, and the delighted observers. Both events draw extensively on the insights and creativity of a beloved parishioner who is now frail and rarely seen in public, Diane Kanne. The parish has been using her scripts since 1982, when the parish presented the Gospel on stage at the Damascus High School auditorium.

During Holy Week, a long list of people join in presenting the Living Stations. And near Christmas, a similar group presents a joyful Christmas pageant in the best medieval and then American tradition.

The Living Stations – a presentation but also an invitation to prayer and reflection – draw on the talents of about 50 people. There’s the standard cast: Jesus, Judas, Peter, John, Pilate, Simon of Cyrene, Mary, Mary Magdalen, Veronica, the centurion, Joseph of Arimathea, and the narrator. But there are others as well, including a collection of crazed Pharisees, and some weeping women of Jerusalem, and distracted children racing around (with permission) playing in the streets of Jerusalem, and an angry crowd of bystanders. The Roman soldiers get the best costumes – with swords and spears and plumes and lots of red. Then there’s music: piano and guitar and vocalists. And costumes, makeup, and stage crew. And the set and props, including a cross light enough to travel round and round the church, but strong enough to put Jesus up above the crowd safely.

The stage is the whole church. The crucifixion is up by the altar, of course, but the action along the way – along the Via Dolorosa – unfolds everywhere. Simon of Cyrene gets picked out of a pew here to carry the cross over there, and kids erupt and women weep everywhere – in front and in back and along the edges and up and down every aisle. It takes a village to raise a cross.

Amidst all the hoopla, there’s a serious effort underway to recall and imagine the Way of the Cross. “We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.” The prayer of the Church, like the life of mankind, unfolds with depth and breadth amidst chaos and distraction. It’s impossible to predict when a wild-eyed kid will slam on the brakes and observe something profound.

The biannual hero of these events is Peggy Hall, the director. She’s patient and persistent, collecting kids and making it all happen. Kids are a complicated medium of expression, like sculpting with water: you know what you want, but you have to go with the flow.

In the background, there’s the writing and the joy of Diane Kanne. She never spoke; she always sang, at least a little, with a voice full of extra tones and vibrations. She loves kids, and loves the Lord, and loves to see them come together.

 

The Sixth Station: Veronica wipes the face of Jesus. Veronica, portrayed by Rose Cummings, intervenes to wipe the blood and grime off the face of the Lord, presented to Joseph Haddad. The story is not in Scripture; it is from an apocryphal text called the “Gospel of Nicodemus.” The Vatican holds a veil which may be the actual veil, and displayed this treasure during Lent. (photo: Megan McFarland)

Seventh Parishioner Sets Out for Religious Life

In the history of the parish, there have been six young adults who grew up here and then dedicated their lives to the Lord in religious life. God willing, Sophia Flynn will be the seventh. At the end of April, she left Damascus on her way to join the Children of Mary, in Newark, Ohio. It’s a new community; she expects to be the 19th person to join.

Sophia grew up in Damascus, and was home schooled through high school. She spent four semesters at Montgomery College, considering a career in education (upon further examination: emphatically no!) and then nutrition. She had considered religious life for as long as she could remember – that or get married and raise ten kids.

Her sense of her vocation intensified during a retreat at Franciscan University in Steubenville. Then a great-aunt who is a member of the Immaculate Heart of Mary community in Michigan encouraged her. Then at a Mount 2000 event in Emmitsburg, she met some of the Children of Mary. What caught her eye was their purple scapular: who wears purple? The purple people turned out to be a semi-contemplative community, whose focus is adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, to respond to the thirst of Jesus during his passion. They also serve in various ways, including a prison ministry. One small but clear example of their approach is a soup kitchen that includes a side chapel with perpetual adoration; those in need are invited to feed body and soul.

The six parishioners who preceded Sophia into religious life include:

 

• Fr. Rick Gancayco, who was a missionary and miliary chaplain for decades, a diocesan priest who helped out at St. Paul during our year without a resident pastor;
• Charlie Cavanaugh, member of Madonna House, a lay apostolate centered in Combermere, Ontario, with an apostolate of prayer and hospitality:
• Fr. Mel Ayala, a diocesan priest, now the Director of Liturgy at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception;
• Sister Laura Immaculata Clarke, OP,  who joined the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in Nashville;
• Frances Pauline (Polly) Howard, who joined the Little Sisters of the Poor in Catonsville; and
• Colin Miller, who left to join the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal in the Bronx.

 

Sophia notes that communities of women religious are sometimes almost invisible. She knows people who felt drawn to something like that but were pretty sure that nuns were ancient history. So: Hey! Nuns aren’t extinct! Maybe you should join!

 

Two days before Sophia left for Ohio, some of the men and women who gather regularly to pray the Rosary after Mass sat down briefly to share the joy of her decision. (photo: JCOK)

 

 

Parish Welcomes 13 New Catholics

At the Easter Vigil, 13 adults came into the Church. They had come through the preparations in the OCIA (Order of Christian Initiation of Adults – formerly RCIA, the Rite of initiation) – studying the meaning of the Creed, learning the rituals of the Church, and sharing the faith. The program at St. Paul is led by Matt Swaim, the Director of Outreach for the Coming Home Network. Matt is himself an adult convert to Catholicism; he was raised in the Church of the Nazarene. So he understands the joys and challenges of joining the Church. He works with Protestant pastors across the nation who are working to understand the work of the Lord in our time, and are startled to find that Catholics are the most Biblically oriented of Christians.

The adults who came into the Church included six who were baptized and confirmed and seven who had already been baptized but chose to become Catholic and were confirmed. They are Itzel Cecilia Bazan, Nanette Grimmett Gertrude Bell, Ariadna Michael Bila, Ronal Bladimir Michael Campos, Dottie Ann Rose Campbell, Brett Cameron Joseph Dean, Sharon Jarrett Rita Faber, Ryan Edward Rocco Frager, Cooper Lee Jude Griffiths, Aleck Andres Joseph Ladino, Tessa Tana Anne Small, Allison Claire Cecilia Vendetti, and Laura Diane Mary Zarchin.

 

The six in robes were baptized at the Easter Vigil. (photo: Megan McFarland)

 

 

 

 

 

Broad Participation in the Living Stations

Over 30 young people, with supported from another 20 backstage, presented the Living Stations on Good Friday. (photo: Megan McFarland)