Dear St. Rita Families,
I know you are all eager to hear what is coming after the Mass Times Survey these last few weeks, and so I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your participation and to update you. Before I can make any changes, we have to work out some more details with the Birchmere, who has been so generous with their parking lot. They have never charged us a dime to use their lot, and, as I have said before, I am very grateful to them. Since any change requires extending the time we are using their lot, they have to make sure it will work with their operations, and that is a logistical question we are trying to sort out.
That said, if all things can work out with the Birchmere, my intention is to go with Option 1, which you will recall, moves the Extraordinary Form Mass to 9:30 AM, the 11:00 AM English ad orientem Mass to 11:30 AM, and the 1 PM Spanish Mass to 1:30 PM. However, this change will not take place until further notice, and I will give you plenty of lead time. I think that Option 1 will help to alleviate some of our parking challenges with the least amount of disruption possible. Again, I appreciate very much all of you who took the time to respond to the survey, as it was very helpful data for me to determine what makes the most sense.
The crowds who come to St. Rita every week are something like that crowds that accompany Jesus in His triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. You are joyfully celebrating and at the same time anticipating the arrival of your King, who has already conquered sin, death, and all evil, and who is preparing for His return which has been immanent for nearly 2000 years. Everyone in the crowd has some particular hope(s) that he expects and desires the Savior to fulfill, but as we all joyfully crowd the Savior in His triumph, we do have to be careful not to become a hindrance for our neighbors, who are also seeking the Lord.
With that in mind, I would like to address a few items that came up during the survey, which I also hope will help to alleviate some of our difficulties. I am a firm believer that, if we see each other as brothers and sisters in Christ, we will be able to strengthen and encourage each other to grow in virtue and to persevere in prayer and the Sacraments, which open us to God’s Holiness. That means that, interiorly, I must reject thoughts (and, exteriorly, words) of “those Latin Mass people” or “those Vatican II people” (I have heard both in less than charitable fashion!). “They” are your brothers and sisters in Christ, and whether the difficulty is that they prefer the old to the new or the new to the old or just that their timing conflicts with your timing, it is imperative to remember St. Paul’s command, “Do good to all men, but especially those of the household of the faith” (Gal 6:10). I do not mean or intend to deny that there are some legitimate complaints, only to say that having a complaint does not give us permission to lose charity.
Therefore, I address myself first to the parishioners of St. Rita, who are (and have been) here at the parish regardless of the language or form of the liturgy. I want you to know how important your generosity has been and to thank you for it. Some of you prefer Mass in English. Some prefer Latin Extraordinary Form. Some prefer Spanish. Regardless, you are the ones who do the heavy lifting of both ensuring this parish can exist and of enabling a powerful presence of the Faith in this part of Alexandria. Without you, the parish would be crippled and might even shutter. The parish exists first for you, so that you have a refuge from the evils of the world and can be strengthened to face the world and to shine the Light of the Gospel into the darkness created by sin and unbelief.
As the world has changed and the Church has striven to respond to those changes, likewise our parish has had to adapt to those changes as well. Our three largest Masses at this time are the 9:15 AM Extraordinary Form, 11:00 AM English, and 1:00 PM Spanish – all of comparable size (though the Spanish is actually the largest). Because of who and where we are, the Extraordinary Form and the Spanish Masses have become necessary at St. Rita. While this creates an added crunch on Sunday as well as other logistical challenges, St. Rita has because of it become a microcosm of the Universal Church in more ways than one. This is a great feather in our cap, and something for which we can be grateful to God and of which we can be humbly proud.
The Diocese has had to seek from Rome (and provide justification for) the request for explicit permission to celebrate the Extraordinary Form here in the parish Church. In other parts of the Diocese, the Extraordinary Form Mass has been relegated to school gyms because it is not permitted in the parish Church. The need to seek such permission has, as you can imagine, left many of those who prefer the Extraordinary Form feeling exiled from their usual parishes, abandoned, and even persecuted by some of the highest-ranking members of the hierarchy. In other words, St. Rita has more recently become a refuge for this particular portion of the Church, in a similar way (though for different reasons) as we have become a refuge for the Hispanic Community which is also such a beautiful part of our parish life.
If things in the Church regarding the Extraordinary Form change, and other parishes are able to celebrate it again in their own Churches, I expect that we would see a decrease in our Sunday numbers at that Mass, though it would not be emptied. This is not a reason for us to be less generous, however, since, like in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37), it is not a question of “Who is my neighbor?” so much as “Will I be neighbor to those whom God puts in my path?” To fulfill this command of the Lord – the second greatest commandment – is to live divinely, to walk as Christ walked, to sanctify by God’s Grace the pathways of this earth. At St. Rita, we have the opportunity to live the unity we desire to see in the Universal Church, where the only thing excluded is sin! This is a great privilege, and, if offered well, can be a means of grace for our beloved Universal Church, to help heal the wounds caused by misunderstanding and our other faults, and make the Church’s witness to the world more authentic and believable. As your pastor, I ask this of you, and I will ask God to bless you and your families because of it, and to strengthen your hearts for this part of the mission.
To you who are devotees of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, I continue with the image the Good Samaritan. While in some ways you have been bloodied and bruised and left half-dead, you have also been brought to an inn, where you can, by God’s Grace, recuperate and be healed. What does that healing look like? It is not, as some might have us believe, jettisoning the Extraordinary Form and “getting with the times” or “following the spirit of Vatican II.” The “spirit of Vatican II” is a false caricature of what Vatican II actually was and intended, and is rightly being rejected. Reading and spending time with the documents of that ecumenical council should be sufficient in this regard. While preferring Mass according to the 1962 Missal is not tantamount to rejecting the Second Vatican Council, it is important to remember that neither is preferring the Novus Ordo tantamount to rejecting all of the Church’s tradition. I know that most people’s opinions (in either direction) are often more nuanced than that, but “most people” is not the same as “all people.”
Practically, this means that healing begins with dialogue and understanding, which, for the record, can be terrifying, especially if you believe that eternal salvation is on the line. In this regard, we must remember that Christ promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church (Mt 16:18). Therefore, if you believe that the Novus Ordo/Ordinary Form is invalid, you are wrong and have placed yourself outside the Church of Christ, the Catholic Church, because you have rejected Her authority over the Sacraments which have been entrusted to Her. (By the way, that would also mean that all of our Masses here, Ordinary Form or Extraordinary Form, are invalid, since we priests were ordained in the Ordinary Form. Therefore, it makes no sense for you to come to St. Rita until you have repented.) I don’t think anyone at St. Rita actually believes that, but it is a line that must not be crossed. In contrast to this, most people simply prefer to pray at one liturgy or the other. It is a very different experience at either Mass. Other people fall into the trap that the Extraordinary Form is inherently better than the Ordinary Form. While we can argue the merits of one liturgy over the other until the cows come home (or until the Parousia), what is most important here is to remember that simply going to one Mass or the other doesn’t necessarily make me holier. Only repentance from sin and receiving God’s grace does that. So, choose the Mass that helps you turn away from sin. At St. Rita, you have many options!
I propose, then, that dialogue and understanding at our parish first means recognizing the generosity of the regular parishioners of St. Rita, some of whom regularly or almost exclusively attend the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. But the parishioners who come to the 8:00 AM and the 11:00 AM Mass must also be considered. Since I arrived at St. Rita 5 years ago, I have received somewhat regular complaints from folks at those Masses that they are being or feeling crowded out by those who attend the 9:15 AM Mass, and so you need to be aware of that dynamic. I know that many of you like to arrive early and pray before the 9:15 AM Mass, but I ask you to be mindful of those at the 8:00 AM who may feel that just by being there, you are rushing them to get out when they would like to stay and pray for a few minutes. Therefore, please make an effort not to arrive before 9:00 AM so as to give our 8:00 AM crowd the space to pray.
In the same vein, our 11:00 AM Mass crowd has found it difficult both to find parking and sometimes even to get into the Church because many of you linger for quite some time after the 9:15 AM Mass. While I do not wish to shoo you away (it is good that the parish has this sort of life!), I ask of you a couple of accommodations to assist with the smooth functioning of the parish and with respectful interaction between people who prefer different Masses. First, if you regularly or on one particular Sunday plan to stay longer at the parish after your Mass, please try first to park at the Birchmere. That will hopefully help to free up the spaces in our own lot for those who need to come and go more quickly. Second, if you are congregating after Mass, please make an effort to do so outside. When you congregate inside the vestibule, it gets VERY loud, which is disrespectful to those coming to the 11:00 AM Mass and who are praying in preparation for Mass. I know that makes it hard to congregate when it is raining or when it is cold, but charity must prevail for us all. Third, when you are congregating outside, please be mindful of those who are coming in for the 11:00 AM Mass. It is good that you greet them and perhaps even get to know them a little bit. If we are to be truly healthy as a parish community, we need appropriate, charitable, and good rapport and interaction between the folks who attend the different Masses.
Our comportment with both God and neighbor must always be exemplary, or else we risk becoming whitewashed tombs.
Forming a parish community where Ordinary and Extraordinary Form Masses, English, Latin, and Spanish Masses, are all possible and respected by all members of the community will enable the healing that I spoke of earlier. Living in close quarters while forgetting ourselves and tending to the wounds of the others, relying on the Grace that comes from God, is the perfect environment for this healing to happen. God has provided it for us as a parish, and if we all respond well, there is great hope for us and for the Church. It proves that we as a Church can in fact love God and neighbor in a unified, yet multi-faceted manner, which is a witness that the world needs to see! The world doesn’t believe in Christ partly because of the fractured nature of Christianity as a whole. We must not let those same kinds of fractures destroy our witness from within the Church Herself. Souls are on the line – our own and those of our neighbors!
Thank you for reading and praying with this much longer than usual missive. As we enter into Holy Week, we have the opportunity to receive many graces, and these graces often seem to come in the form of upsetting various apple carts. Or, perhaps a better image is the storm on the Sea of Galilee as the Apostles are crossing to the other side. If that is you – whether because of my missive or for some other reason – please know of my extra prayers for you. Weathering the storm by doing all we can to keep the ship afloat is good, but remember that Christ is in the boat with you, even if He is peacefully asleep in the back on a cushion (Mk 4:38). Stay in the boat – the Barque of Peter, the Church – and you will arrive safely at the other shore!
In Christ,
Fr. Christensen