Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mothers, Grandmothers, Step-mothers, and Godmothers who are reading this column.

Today we would normally celebrate Saint Joseph the Worker. But since today is the Third Sunday of Easter, Saint Joseph the Worker is omitted. But I am going to write about this Feast Day just the same! “May Day” has long been dedicated to labor and to working men and women in Communist countries. In response to this and to foster a deeper devotion to Saint Joseph, Pope Pius XII instituted this feast in 1955. The Holy Father hoped that by doing this he would accentuate the dignity of labor and bring a spiritual dimension to labor unions. It is appropriate that Saint Joseph, a working man who became the foster-father of Christ and patron of the universal Church, should be honored in this capacity on this day.

During the fifty days of the Easter Season I enjoy reading Luke 24 where Luke discusses the Resurrection, the Appearance at Emmaus, the Appearance at Jerusalem, and the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven. I particularly like to read over the account of the Appearance at Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). I am particularly struck with verses 30 and 35, which I will repeat here: “And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them” (Luke 24:30). “Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread” (Luke 24:35). To follow up on what I am writing in this column please refer to The Gospel of Luke by Father Pablo T. Gadenz in the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture series.

One of the features of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday evening was the Presentation of the Oils. I want to devote the column today to a discussion of three oils consecrated or blessed by the archbishop at the Chrism Mass. I am going to use a nice explanation that was printed in the back cover of the worship aid for the Chrism Mass four years ago. The blessing of the Oil of the Sick occurred before end of the Eucharistic Prayer, while the blessing of the Oil of Catechumens and the Holy Chrism came after Communion at that Mass. I was among many concelebrants who renewed our priestly promises to Cardinal Gregory during the course of the Chrism Mass last Monday afternoon. A bishop is permitted to schedule the Chrism Mass on another date during Holy Week. Cardinal Gregory exercised that option.

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month. Pope Francis calls to walk together in synodality. He invites as we walk together on this path to reach out to people on the margins, especially to people whose voices have not been so readily heard in the past. It would be important to reach out actively to those who have been impacted by child abuse.

April is Child Abuse Protection Month. The Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has prepared a very nice resource booklet of which I am going to make use for my column today.

On March 11, 2022 Cardinal Gregory, Archbishop Lori of Baltimore and Bishop Koenig of Wilmington, the three (arch)bishops who lead dioceses in Maryland, wrote a guest commentary for the Baltimore Sun in which they urged support for women and their children and not an “unnecessary, symbolic” bill that would enshrine abortion in Maryland’s Constitution. Here is an excerpt from their op-ed commentary:

Archbishop Boris Gudziak, the archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia was in Washington on March 10, 2022 for a memorial prayer service at the Ukrainian Catholic National Shrine of the Holy Family. The prayer service was offered to honor those killed in the war undertaken in recent days by invading Russian forces. In a press conference held before the memorial prayer service Archbishop Gudziak made the following remarks:

Jesuit Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade died on March 6, 1751 at the age of 76. We don’t much about his life except that he spent his priestly life in a series of somewhat obscure assignments. One of his assignments was to serve as the spiritual director to a convent of Visitation nuns in France. In that capacity he prepared a series of conferences and wrote a series of letters for the benefit of the Visitation Nuns at that convent. Political events in France over the next seventy-five years or so kept things in a state of upheaval. It wasn’t until a century after Father de Caussade’s death that the nuns living at the convent thought to publish de Caussade’s writings under the title Abandonment to Divine Providence.

After the 5:00 p.m. Mass on Sunday, February 27, 2022, a woman originally from the Ukraine stopped me to ask that we pray for the people of the Ukraine. This individual still has family members living there and implored with me to pray and get other people to pray for this intention as well. This was a most timely request. Both Pope Francis and Cardinal Gregory have urged us to pray for peace in the Ukraine and other hot spots in the world in recent statements.

Last week I wrote a column introducing our most recent Doctor of the Church: St. Irenaeus of Lyon. This week I want to write about what he taught and why he is still significant. Some Doctors of the Church (like St. Augustine) left us with a massive library of works. Others (like St. Thérèse of Lisieux) had a more limited input. In the case of St. Irenaeus, aside from a few letters, most of what survives from his teachings are a collection of books entitled Against Heresies, written around 180.

On January 21, 2022 Pope Francis issued a decree declaring Saint Irenaeus to be a Doctor of the Church after receiving and accepting a proposal to that effect from the Congregation of the Saints. Irenaeus is the first Doctor of the Church believed to have been a martyr. Since he died around 202, Irenaeus holds the distinction of being the most ancient of the Church’s now thirty-seven Doctors of the Church. Saint Irenaeus would be most remembered today as the earliest systematic theologian for his authentic teaching of the Church’s faith and defense of it in the face of errors that were emerging in the late second and early third centuries. St. Irenaeus remains a relevant model for bishops, apologists, catechists, and theologians owing to his articulation of the Gnostic heresies that are still with us today in various forms.

The turning of the calendar to February means Lent is just around the corner. This also means it is the time of year when I will again ask you to make a gift to the Annual Appeal in support of the many charitable works of our Archdiocese.

Recently I have received a number of questions about our parish pastoral council. Let me pose some of those questions now and supply some answers based on the Archdiocese of Washington Parish Pastoral Council Policy and Implementation Guide issued in 2013.

On Friday, January 21, 2022, a seventeen year old student shot a fifteen year old student at Colonel Zadok Magruder High School. This has been a very traumatic event for the Magruder community of which includes many families from this parish. I was reading through guidelines produced by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network and thought that I would share a few of their tips of things that we can do for ourselves and things that we can do for our children after experiencing a school shooting.

Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, Director of the Vatican Observatory, is someone whom I have followed now for a number of years. Smart and witty, he has written a number of articles and given a number of addresses that I have consistently found helpful. Recently I saw that Carol Glatz wrote in Catholic News Service about an article he had published in the Italian Jesuit Journal La Civiltà Cattolica. In that article Brother Guy stating that those who were stubbornly skeptical of science and those who eagerly embrace science as infallible both have a dangerous misunderstanding of the nature of science. This is the temptation to turn science or faith into a fortress against the basic and human fear of uncertainty.

Last October Cardinal Gregory celebrated a Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral to mark the opening of the Archdiocesan Synod that will be held over the next several months as part of the preparation for a Synod of Bishops that will be held in Rome in October 2023. You may be wondering: Why are we doing this? The answer is that Pope Francis wants to hear from the local Church about what is happening in local parishes. He and the bishops want to know what individuals think we should be doing to help make our parishes better. The Holy Father is proposing that we do this through a synodal process. Synod comes from a Greek word that means being on the road together or perhaps better, being on a journey together. This journey involves listening to the Holy Spirit and to each other in order to discern the path we are called to walk together.

January is Poverty Awareness Month. Pope St. John Paul II wrote in his encyclical On Social Concern (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis), no. 38 a useful description of Solidarity. There he said that “[Solidarity] is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself of the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all.”

The 55th World Peace Day was celebrated yesterday. Pope Saint Paul VI instituted the World Peace Day, which is celebrated on January 1, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. It has become the custom of the Holy Father to provide a message for this occasion that is sent to foreign ministers around the world. In the message for this year Pope Francis states that he wants to promote a dialogue between generations, education, and work because there are tools for building lasting peace. Pope Francis would like to see a new alliance between the young and the elderly to address the problems of isolation and self-absorption heightened by the corona virus pandemic. Pope Francis notes that the wisdom and experience of the elderly is needed by young people. At the same time the young can provide support, affection, creativity, and their dynamism to our senior citizens. He would also like to see a “hearty politics” become the driving force of a new dialog between generations.

The Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours for today quotes from an address that Pope Saint Paul VI gave when he visited Nazareth on January 5, 1964. The Holy Father said on that occasion that Nazareth was a kind of school where we could discover what the life of Christ was like and even to understand his Gospel. At Nazareth we can observe and ponder the simple appeal of the way the Son of God came to be known, profound yet full of hidden meaning.