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Worship Aid for Fourth Sunday in Lent
Lenten Observances
Fasting: Food equivalent to one regular meal, one small meal – Ash Wednesday and Good Friday
Abstinence: No meat – ALL Fridays
Parish Soup Suppers: Fridays in Lent, 6pm
Stations of the Cross: Fridays, 7pm in English, 8pm in Spanish, in the church
Lent Confessions: Wednesdays, 6:30-8pm, Saturdays, 3:30-4:30pm (as usual). Please plan confessions early in the season to avoid running out of time.
Parish Penance Service: Tuesday, April 8, 6:30pm
Bishop’s Lenten Appeal continues we are currently 78% of our parish goal of $ 560,000. Pledge envelopes can be found in the pews of the church or visit : www.arlingtondiocese.org/BLA. Please indicate you are a parishioner on the envelope.
Now accepting applications for PRE-Kindergarten in our school. Interested in joining our school community? We focus on faith formation, academic excellence, and community service. Visit our website: www.stbernschool.org/admissions-process/
Come one, Come all! Saturday, 5 April 10am-2pm. Please come help spruce up the church in preparation for Easter. Many hands make light work. We will be working on pews, floors around the pews, candle areas, altar, and choir loft. https://signup.com/go/gOiQRAS
All Saints Church Multi-Car Raffle is still in full swing. Four vehicles will be raffled along with a $20,000 cash drawing, plus other cash drawings. The final deadline for ticket returns is April 29th. The drawings begin at 1:00pm Saturday, May 3rd, at All Saints Parish in Manassas. Please return all tickets by mail directly to All Saints in the envelope provided.
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
This past week we celebrated the Solem-nity of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It always surprises me because every year it is deep in the season of Lent and we are focusing on being reconciled to God preparing for the upcoming passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Doing the math, of course, Jesus is con-ceived by the Holy Spirit nine months before his birth — March 25. We just aren’t thinking about Christmas right now.
It occurs to me that the day deserves more significance than it receives, and could even qualify as a holy day. Culturally, we are conditioned to think of Christmas and Easter as the high feastdays the Church gathers around with special solemnity. Think of it: although Jesus’ birth and resurrection are central to faith, would not the incarnation, God entering into our humanity in Christ be as important, if not more, than his birth? By the time he is born, Jesus has already been living our humanity for nine months.
The feastday is titled the Annunciation because it makes very clear that Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit and this was confirmed by the message of the angel Gabriel, thus strengthening the dogma of the one person/two natures of Jesus. But it is the moment of conception that is the beginning of this new life of incarnation.
I think this would be the perfect oppor-tunity for the Church to use this feastday as a teaching moment. Didactic feastdays (like the Assumption of Mary or Immaculate Conception) are obligatory because they teach Church dogma through the living practice of the Church. One of the concepts one learns in theology is lex orandi, lex credendi, the law of praying is the law of believing.
This is the absolutely perfect feast for the Church to proclaim the sacredness of human life. A pro-life feastday rooted in the story of Jesus himself, no one would deny that the moment of Jesus’ conception by the Holy Spirit was the event of the Incarnation. All life is precious.
This is the Fourth Sunday of Lent, traditionally known as Laetare Sunday. Laetare, means to rejoice. It is proposed to us as a disposition for today, but it may not be your first reaction to Lent. We tend to tone down our celebrations during Lent to reflect a more meditative, even somber, mood. Sorrow for sin, penance, fasting. You may have noticed we haven’t been lighting the stained glass in the sanctuary, a kind of fasting for the eyes, as no recessional hymn is a kind of fasting for the ears.
But in the middle of it all, if you seek it, there still exists the kind of joy that is unshakeable even in adversity. Jesus certainly wasn’t happy on the cross, but there was a joy he sustained because he knew he was accomplishing his Father’s will. The little sacrifices we make (or the large ones, too) can be united to Christ in his self-gift to our loving Father, and we can know his joy and make it ours.
One last thing — someone asked me last weekend what the rocks were doing in front of the altar. I realized we put out the bucket of rocks and never told anyone about it. It is something I started at my last parish and brought it here, so most probably know about this already. I call it “Living Stones” and here is how it works: During the season of Lent, approach someone who has left or been away from the Church and invite them back. After you have personally made this invitation, you then take a stone from the container and place it in front of the altar.
The other thing I never mentioned is that those stones are there as a reminder that we must pray for these people after the invitation has been made. When you are at Mass, pray for the people represented by these stones. It might just be the prayer that will help them to feel welcome again. And tell them they are being remembered! In a certain sense, it will be like they have already been present to us if they decide to give faith another chance.
Like the feast of the Annunciation, in the silence of Lent allow yourself to be surprised by a moment of joy this weekend as with hope we observe the coming feasts.
The Lord be with you.
Worship Aid for Third Sunday in Lent
Lenten Observances
Fasting: Food equivalent to one regular meal, one small meal – Ash Wednesday and Good Friday
Abstinence: No meat – ALL Fridays
Parish Soup Suppers: Fridays in Lent, 6pm
Stations of the Cross: Fridays, 7pm in English, 8pm in Spanish, in the church
Lent Confessions: Wednesdays, 6:30-8pm, Saturdays, 3:30-4:30pm (as usual). Please plan confessions early in the season to avoid running out of time.
Parish Penance Service: Tuesday, April 8, 6:30pm
Join us for our monthly (third Monday) Taizé Prayer Service on Monday night, March 24, 8 - 8:45pm. Come for a peaceful moment of simple song and silence and pray for unity.
Bishop’s Lenten Appeal continues we are currently 65 of our parish goal of $ 560,000. Pledge envelopes can be found in the pews of the church or visit : www.arlingtondiocese.org/BLA. Please indicate you are a parishioner on the envelope.
Now accepting applications for PRE-Kindergarten in our school. Interested in joining our school community? We focus on faith formation, academic excellence, and community service. Visit our website: www.stbernschool.org/admissions-process/
All women in the parish are invited to a Lenten Night of Reflection with a special talk given by Fr. Don, Saturday, March 29th from 7-9:00pm in the Saint Bernadette School Gym. Please join us for refreshments and for small group discussion.
Come one, Come all! Saturday, 5 April 10am-2pm. Please come help spruce up the church in preparation for Easter. Many hands make light work. We will be working on pews, floors around the pews, candle areas, altar, and choir loft. https://signup.com/go/gOiQRAS
All Saints Church Multi-Car Raffle is still in full swing. Four vehicles will be raffled along with a $20,000 cash drawing, plus other cash drawings. The final deadline for ticket returns is April 29th. The drawings begin at 1:00pm Saturday, May 3rd, at All Saints Parish in Manassas. Please return all tickets by mail directly to All Saints in the envelope provided.
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
Some weeks are easier than others to meet a bulletin deadline with an article. This week I’m struggling. As I write this, the ceasefire in Gaza has ended and escalated destruction is promised. There were another thousand dead and wounded people today as missiles destroy their tent cities. Focused on all the news here, the destruction of the West Bank (what is left of Palestinian territories) is underway, largely overlooked by the news cycle. East Jerusalem and Bethlehem could become another Gaza. Apparently our loyalty to Ukraine is no more after losing nearly 500,000 soldiers, according to U.S. officials. Not to mention the family that each of these Ukrainians and Russians leave behind. It is heartbreaking, all of it.
We have also been praying for people in Sudan, a conflict that I am ashamed to say I knew little about. Sudan is on the other side of Egypt from the Holy Land, to the south. I looked it up. In 2003 there were already a million refugees in Sudan from South Sudan and neighboring countries. Military overthrows by warring factions following an autocratic leader have, in the past five years, displaced 12.5 million people. Last year, complicated by new climate realities, an officially confirmed famine threatens everyone. Half of the population, some 25.6 million people, need assistance and protection and face acute food insecurity, 8.5 million of them at emergency levels. Cholera, measles and malaria are spreading at a time when two thirds of the population do not have access to health care. 90 percent of the country’s 19 million school-age children have no access to education.
These are the places where CRS, Catholic Relief Services, uses our support to help people. Every rice bowl from you makes a difference.
We consider the penance we are doing in Lent as effective for the reparation of our own sins, personally, but our Lenten sacrifices and good works are also efficacious when applied to the sins of the world in a broader sense.
We can apply the grace of our actions for the benefit of others. When I talk about this with my non-Catholic friends they find it a strange concept, because faith for most of the world is just “between me and God.” According to Catholic tradition, you can ask God to use that grace for whomever needs it most. Maybe you can receive Holy Communion and ask that the grace be given to your non-Catholic wife or husband, or a son or daughter who might not be coming to church anymore.
Sometimes you will hear that the Pope has declared a day of fasting for the intention of world peace, or for the sanctity of life. We do not pray for concepts, but to benefit people. Our prayers, fasting and almsgiving may be offered to God for a person who might be able to bring about the change that is needed, or people who might die of hunger today in Sudan. Or they may benefit the Christian and Muslim families who, in the Gaza tragedy, are largely forgotten.
They might be offered for the conversion of heart of the very ones who are causing so much suffering and death.
Consider this for Lent. Take a day each week and fast or pray a little extra, or intentionally offer up your joys and sorrows, your successes and failures, breakthroughs and frustrations for these, the least of our brothers and sisters, as Christ himself clearly explained to us.
Who knows what the general judgment on last day will be like? The Church teaches that it will take place at the end of time, after the resurrection of the dead, when Christ returns to judge the living and the dead, revealing the full consequences of human actions and determining eternal destinies.
Not the particular judgment which every soul will experience at the hour of death, this “universal judgment” is the moment when all people will be judged at the end of time, according to what we did to care for one another and how the consequences of our good or evil deeds have affected the overall virtue of all.
We are responsible for each other, bound together... so let us get going with our prayers, good works and sacrifices for the benefit of those who need the grace we can share to do the right thing.
The Lord be with you.
Worship Aid for Second Sunday in Lent
Lenten Observances
Fasting: Food equivalent to one regular meal, one small meal – Ash Wednesday and Good Friday
Abstinence: No meat – ALL Fridays
Parish Soup Suppers: Fridays in Lent, 6pm
Stations of the Cross: Fridays, 7pm in English, 8pm in Spanish, in the church
Lent Confessions: Wednesdays, 6:30-8pm, Saturdays, 3:30-4:30pm (as usual). Please plan confessions early in the season to avoid running out of time.
Parish Penance Service: Tuesday, April 8, 6:30pm
Bishop’s Lenten Appeal continues we are currently 64% of our parish goal of $ 560,000. Pledge envelopes can be found in the pews of the church or visit : www.arlingtondiocese.org/BLA. Please indicate you are a parishioner on the envelope.
Now accepting applications for PRE-Kindergarten in our school. Interested in joining our school community? We focus on faith formation, academic excellence, and community service. Visit our website: www.stbernschool.org/admissions-process/
All women in the parish are invited to a Lenten Night of Reflection with a special talk given by Fr. Don, Saturday, March 29th from 7-9:00pm in the Saint Bernadette School Gym. Please join us for refreshments and for small group discussion.
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
You may have noticed a new addition to our worship space last weekend. Half a year ago I designed and contracted the finish carpenter, John Matson who made all our sanctuary furnishings in the style of the altar, to make us a baptismal font.
For nearly nine years I have celebrated baptisms in the vestibule and it has never seemed right. Although it is beautiful, its utility is limited. It is a tight space with an uneasy step up/down to the font, and people have fallen. If you have more than two families it is uncomfortable, gathering in what seems such a transitional space with no seating. This does sometimes become a problem because grandparents and great grandparents often need to sit, and they can’t. Conscious of this, I have been aware of rushing baptisms because the space is simply uncomfortable.
The new font in the center of the church will allow us to truly celebrate the Rite of Baptism with standing and sitting as the Rite is written. People, seated in the back center sections of pews will be able to see and participate in the Rite without distractions.
Brides: don’t get nervous. The font is moveable and the aisle is still yours!
I don’t know if you have ever attended the Easter Vigil, probably the most ancient and beautiful Rite of our Church – the blessing
of fire, the lighting of the candle, the blessing of Easter water, the celebration of the sacraments of initiation, the renewal of our baptismal promises – if you have, you will see immediately how beautiful this is going to be, baptizing new members in the heart of the assembly. The font we have used for the past eight years in the sanctuary (actually a landscaping water feature) has become too heavy to lift as we get older.
(By the way, the Easter Vigil this year is on Saturday evening, April 19 at 8:30pm, until probably about 11pm. Try to join us and celebrate with all the new members of the Church and their families. You will be glad you did.)
As we have had a lot of new members join the parish, I find that many people do not know the story of our altar, a great treasure. If you look to the left just inside the front doors of the church around the corner, you will see a photo of Saint Pope John Paul II celebrating Mass in 1979 on the Mall in front of the Smithsonian Castle. That is our altar, the biggest relic I’ve ever seen. In its first years it was smooth and square... Made from green wood, over time it has dried, shrunk, twisted in a most interesting way, and provides a great reflection for us for Lent. We often hear of the cross as Jesus’ altar of sacrifice, but few people can meditate on an altar that literally looks like the wood of the cross!
The Lord be with you.
Worship Aid for First Sunday in Lent
Lenten Observances
Fasting: Food equivalent to one regular meal, one small meal – Ash Wednesday and Good Friday
Abstinence: No meat – ALL Fridays
Parish Soup Suppers: Fridays in Lent, 6pm
Stations of the Cross: Fridays, 7pm in English, 8pm in Spanish, in the church
Lent Confessions: Wednesdays, 6:30-8pm, Saturdays, 3:30-4:30pm (as usual). Please plan confessions early in the season to avoid running out of time.
Parish Penance Service: Monday, April 4, 6:30pm
40 Hours and Parish Lenten Mission: Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Sunday–Tuesday, March 16-18. Begins with 5pm Mass Sunday followed by adoration and mission talk by Fr. Bill Quigley, CICM, director of Missionhurst’s Mount Tabor Retreat House in Arlington at 6:15pm. Additional Masses on Monday and Tuesday evening at 6:30pm followed by Lenten Mission talks at 7:30pm. Close of 40 Hours with Benediction, Tuesday night after the talk.
Bishop’s Lenten Appeal continues we are currently 39% of our parish goal of $ 560,000. Pledge envelopes can be found in the pews of the church or visit : www.arlingtondiocese.org/BLA. Please indicate you are a parishioner on the envelope.
Now accepting applications for PRE-Kindergarten in our school. Interested in joining our school community? We focus on faith formation, academic excellence, and community service. Visit our website: www.stbernschool.org/admissions-process/
All women in the parish are invited to a Lenten Night of Reflection with a special talk given by Fr. Don, Saturday, March 29th from 7-9:00pm in the Saint Bernadette School Gym. Please join us for refreshments and for small group discussion.
No Taizé this month in lieu of our 40 Hours Observance. We will resume next month 21 April at 8pm.
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
Now that we have begun the season of Lent, I thought I would offer to you a perspective of the season that might be a little different from they way you have approached Lent in the past.
True, it is a penitential season: we do penance to make amends for the sins we have committed. We often use the word reparation -- a repairing or healing of the disorder we have caused in our own lives, the way we have impacted others, been unfaithful or indifferent to God, and his creation.
But this was not the origin of the season of Lent, it is what it became around the time of the middle ages when there was a growing obsession with sin itself and who we were becoming. We were not good people who did bad things, but just bad people. The Reformation took place, in part, because the Catholic Church was literally telling people they could buy their way out of hell through the Church. The divisions in Christianity which came later were often driven by different leaders outdoing each other over just how unsalvageable humanity was.
The ancient feast of the Pasch, or Easter, is the day of resurrection. It was the morning that the Church observed Jesus’ rising from the dead and the fullness of our hope. It was always the day of baptism as people converted from non-Christianity to be received into the Body of Christ. The Church celebrated it not only in one day, but grew into a series of days not really to reenact the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus, but to actively, ritually remember it. It is the seamless transformation of the Passover given to Moses by God as a feast forever, given new fullness and meaning as Christ becomes the paschal lamb that delivers us from death by his own sacrifice.
The triduum, the three days of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil/Day expanded as a time for preparation for those who were to be baptized. See the emphasis on preparation: the saving rites that deliver us were yet to come. It is only afterward that we turn it into a penitential time because we have acknowledged that
we have been unfaithful to God’s saving act.
So, those who had come into the Church in previous years soon began to seek a longer time to “put things in order” for the celebration of baptism at the Easter Vigil, when each year the Church renews those baptismal promises which were made in the past. For most of us, those promises were made for us as infants or children by our parents and godparents. We must own them more each year we are alive.
The Church already had, in the blending of Judaism and Christianity, the feast of Pentecost. The coming of the Holy Spirit 50 days after the resurrection, 10 days after the ascension of Jesus into heaven, seemed like a good development. The Church has always like symmetry in her celebrations and this is the classic example. The 40 days up to the ascension and the significance of the number 40 (years wandering in the desert being prepared by God for the promised land, Jesus’ own post-baptismal 40 days in the desert preparing for his public life, the purification of the world by the great flood’s 40 days and nights, the 40 days that Moses spent on Mount Sinai receiving the Torah), 40 being the number in the Bible and Talmud representing change, renewal and transformation made 40 days of preparation before the Triduum the perfect solution. We got Lent.
The season of Lent, then, is for those coming into the Church either by baptism or profession of faith the time of proximate preparation. You will see at Mass different celebrations. The parish Rite of Sending of catechumens Saturday, March 8 to the Rite of Election with Bishop Burbidge on Sunday, March 9. The Penitential Rite for those already baptized on the second Sunday of Lent (9am) for candidates to prepare for their profession of faith. The scrutinies on the third (Vigil 5pm), fourth (9am), and fifth (11am) Sundays of Lent, when the assembly prays over catechumens to open their hearts to fully receive the grace of the sacraments of initiation.
Not so much reparation as preparation: so much more than just giving something up out of sorrow for sin, it is a conscious walking into the new light of Jesus’ resurrection that brings us to life.
The Lord be with you.
Worship Aid for Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Lenten Observances
Fasting: Food equivalent to one regular meal, one small meal – Ash Wednesday and Good Friday
Abstinence: No meat – ALL Fridays
Parish Soup Suppers: Fridays in Lent, 6pm
Stations of the Cross: Fridays, 7pm in English, 8pm in Spanish, in the church
Lent Confessions: Wednesdays, 6:30-8pm, Saturdays, 3:30-4:30pm (as usual). Please plan confessions early in the season to avoid running out of time.
Parish Penance Service: Monday, April 4, 6:30pm
40 Hours and Parish Lenten Mission: Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Sunday–Tuesday, March 16-18. Begins with 5pm Mass Sunday followed by adoration and mission talk by Fr. Bill Quigley, CICM, director of Missionhurst’s Mount Tabor Retreat House in Arlington at 6:15pm. Additional Masses on Monday and Tuesday evening at 6:30pm followed by Lenten Mission talks at 7:30pm. Close of 40 Hours with Benediction, Tuesday night after the talk.
Bishop’s Lenten Appeal in-pew pledge weekend is this weekend, or you can give at: www.arlingtondiocese.org/BLA. Please indicate you are a parishioner here and it will count toward our parish goal of $560,000.
Now accepting applications for PRE-Kindergarten in our school. Interested in joining our school community? We focus on faith formation, academic excellence, and community service. Visit our website: www.stbernschool.org/admissions-process/
All Saints Church (Manassas) has invited our parishioners to participate in their Multi Car Raffle. Tickets are being mailed to households in the next week A portion of the proceeds raised are granted back to our parish school. See today’s bulletin for more information.
Inclement Weather Delays and Closures
Saint Bernadette Parish and School follows the Fairfax County School System regarding closings for snow and other inclement weather. If public schools are closed, our school is closed and all activities on the campus for that day and evening are canceled. Please take this policy into account when scheduling use of Parish facilities during winter months.
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
There was something incredibly right about our Evening Prayer for Hope and Healing, as we seek to accompany anyone who is worried or scared, or anxious right now over employment and recent events. As I said with my opening comments, this was not intended to be another opportunity for polarization or judgment or even opinion about current events. It was a moment for us to come together as a community to let everyone know that they are not alone but in the embrace of this community, to pray for healing and renewed hope, to listen to the word of God, to be healed through the beauty of music, and receive a teaching from Father Cedric on living with anxiety.
His message was really good. Anxiety is, of itself, not a desired emotion. It has many causes, and many effects on our bodies and our minds. But it is also, in that classic Catholic way of stating the unlikely obvious, an opportunity to experience our powerlessness and tune our hearts to God and grow closer to him. We know, as Father said, that God did not create the situation that faces us, but he is nevertheless sovereign over it. In that reassurance we can confidently confront whatever worries us knowing that, not only is he victorious over all passing things, he actually entered into the experience itself in Jesus Christ, who has gone before us and experienced it all already. Wherever we go, he has been there before, from the danger his family faced at the time of his birth all the way up to his agony in the garden and subsequent execution on the cross.
Anyway, I wish I had had the presence of mind to record his talk, and I could have added it to the website where I post my weekly homily... but I didn’t. Many people came away from our prayer service on Monday night with a renewed peace, spoke of a consolation and healing that they felt restored them and better readied them for whatever may happen. One person told me that she was reminded that our lives are so much more uncertain than certain, and you can convince yourself in moments of difficulty that the world probably isn’t going to go according to my plan for it. There is only One whose plans are big enough for the world to take notice, and the world would have to desire his plan. We are currently in a season when it does not seem to be interested in him.
___ ___ ___
I have been meaning to announce in the last couple of weeks that our parish – as well as the Catholic community of our area – has been invited by the Muslim community to two iftars.
The season of Ramadan, much like our season of Lent, is February 28 - March 29 this year. They observe a mandatory fast from food and water every day of the season from dawn to sunset. Imagine if we Catholics had such requirements! When Ramadan falls in the summer months there is serious concern about hydration, especially for those who have outdoor jobs. Still they do not break the fast until sunset. The meal they gather to celebrate after sunset prayers is called the iftar.
Saint Bernadette has been especially invited to the iftar celebrated in the context of the Interreligious Community Project Sharing Sacred Spaces initiative which we have been active in for the past two years. It is being hosted by the Rumi Forum at Temple Rodef Shalom on March 6 (this week!) at 5:30pm, at 2100 West Moreland St., Falls Church. RSVP by March 2(!). If you would like to go, contact me before the end of this weekend! I will tell them how many of us are coming.
We are also invited to the Northern Virginia Faith Communities’ Iftar on March 9 at 6:30pm, hosted by Rumi Forum’s American Turkish Friendship Association (ATFA) at their center in Chantilly, at 16120 Newbrook Drive in the Westfields area on Hwy 28. Again, if you would like to attend, please let me know and I will tell them how many of us will be coming.
This has become a wonderful way that Christians and Muslims gather, as they say, to connect heart to heart, break bread, and enjoy a conversation. It has long been my experience that we just need to get to know one another to ease the anxiety of stereotypes and false information.
The Lord be with you.