Let's Try This Again

Nineteen, but whose counting? Some of you heard correctly this past Sunday when the writer of this column was the preacher. Your pastor begins his nineteenth year here at Christ the Redeemer. It is a matter of history that I arrived in Sterling in the Fall of 1988! I ask myself “Where have all those flowers gone?” I am willing to keep trying and let me invite you to try it again here in the parish.

I began my ministry here each year with an attempt to share my view of priesthood and parish life with the community. In that way, the hope was that the community would at least know where the pastor was coming from. Let me do that again this year as I complete eighteen years and begin the nineteenth.

Play It Again
In the movie Casablanca, the request of the piano player is to “Play It Again, Sam.” Actually, I learned in liturgical studies, that request is only partially possible of fulfillment. The fact of the matter is that Sam, like all pianists, can only approximate the song as performed and heard the last time. Sam performed the music and sang the lyrics with many different people around his piano and their stories have intermingled with his. These stories reshape his interpretation and performance of the song. Sam plays it again, but not exactly in the same way. It’s got new and different meaning, which shapes the experience of performer and audience.

As parishioners notice that I’ve been here a long time, they have questions. “Is this normal?” “Don’t they move you priests more often?” Then there’s amazement that I’ve survived for so long. Some of the amazement is that my questioners have been at CTR for a long time. Their children have grown, and, not unusually, come back for marriage. Times change. Our world changes. Our relationships change. Can we say that our Church and our parish are different for us as the years pass?

As I often share with parishioners and friends, I can stay because things change and offer new possibilities. Eastern Loudoun County like all of Northern Virginia, has grown and grown. Our parish center has changed in the last six years with our new

church, new chapel, and educational wing. Our numbers have grown and our ministries have correspondingly moved to larger fields of service. Parishioners, who were here before I arrived and who have actively worked in the community, have come and gone and some have even returned again!

We have become a diverse community. When Christ the Redeemer Parish gathers for Eucharist, we see and experience the Body of Christ in all of its expansive cultural, ethnic, and social diversity. No small part of our mission has been blessed with incorporating a large number of Spanish speakers.

We keep on doing and being a parish community. Under the ever-changing dimensions of our lives, there is a constancy in church life. What still holds us together is the worship life of the parish, the sharing of the faith in various formation activities, and in missionary outreach within and outside the parish. They continue to be where we gather to find the Lord and where the Lord calls us together.

Pastoral Ministry
The less obvious dimension of parish life is the so-called pastoral care of the people. This is the more personal and intimate activity of the Church. It is here where the priests, and professional staff as well, interact with parishioners with various needs. It is where the community gathers for funerals, weddings, confessions, sick calls. There Christ continues to be intimately available to believers in the parish. Along with the liturgical life, these personal encounters are the wellspring of the gathering community.

Evalgelization and Enculturation
The challenge within Christ the Redeemer Parish is mission. In one sense it is evangelizatio which is the preaching of the gospel with the new and cultural clothes of art, music, language, and relationship. In the language of missiology, the living of the gospel invites us to both bring Christ to people where they are and to discover his presence already among them. The vibrancy of the Church is to preach vigorously, but also to reverently receive the Word which is sown where we find ourselves. Parish life is still exciting and calls us to do it again with joy.

CDH