My Maryland

Back home in the Rockies.

Fr. Mike is in Oregon on retreat this week and Keith and Barbara have returned to their homes in Chicago and Houston. I met a lot of great people and saw some wonderful things during my 9 days away in Maryland and DC. The weather was mild and mostly sunny and the leaves just turning.

It was very enriching to have a priest and pastor of the Orthodox Church of America attending Making Disciples. He is a convert and has a number of converts in his parish which is one of the fastest growing parishes in the OCA.

I spent a whole morning talking to him about his experience of evangelization and pastoral practice in Orthodoxy and I came to understand that almost all the same issues that we face are also faced by the Orthodox, only they are much, much smaller and don't have the huge network of institutions and resources that American Catholics take for granted. He pointed out several times that actual attendance at Orthodox liturgies across the nation is much lower than attendance at Catholic Mass (although his parish is an exception to that rule) with perhaps 40,000 out of a total official membership of 1 million attending the liturgy on Sunday. He seemed to find the insights and practices we covered in Making Disciples exceptionally useful and told me that he thought that other Orthodox priests could also benefit.

Christa Lipiccolo, who heads up Young Adult Ministry for the Archdiocese of Washington DC, (and attended Making Disciples last summer in Colorado Springs) assured me that there is lots of good stuff happening around her diocese for young adults. Almost all of her young adult leaders attending the Day of Discernment had never heard about charisms before but were fascinated and really interested in doing further discernment.

Christa told me of the work of Madonna House in the capital, where they operate a house of prayer and hospitality and offer poustinia rooms for 24 hours of prayer on bread and tea.

I got to visit the Paulists for dinner courtesy of Gashwin Gomes of Maior autem his est caritas. Gashwin is a tall, exuberant, articulate man and passionate Christian in his early 30's,and a Paulist novice, who was raised as a largely non-practicing Hindu in an Indian family and has a remarkable conversion story. His passion is direct proclamation of Christ which is what drew him to the Paulists. Now that I know his real name (Gashwin is a pseudonym)I suppose he'll have to send the infamous albino Paulist assassins to the Springs to make sure I don't talk but it was fun while it lasted.

I didn't realize that the Paulist's huge turn of the century house is next store to the US Bishops and also houses the Paulist National Catholic Evangelization Association. Neither the Paulist community (which is about the size of the Western Dominican Province) nor PNCEA (which is slightly larger but obviously much better heeled than we are) are that large but they maintain a high profile and are making very good use of new streaming technology to offer nation-wide seminars on evangelization.

Telling tidbit. When I asked one of their long term leaders (presuming that they would know of things I hadn't heard of yet), what were the most fruitful, cutting edge evangelization initiatives that they were aware of, the first response was:

"Well, you know, Catholics aren't that enthusiastic about evangelization."

So I've been told.

The Shrine of the Immaculate Conception was an easy walk from where I was staying in DC and a wonderful place to visit if you actually have several hours to spend. I spent two hours walking slowly around (it is the biggest church in North American so just walking around takes time), contemplating the many wonderful altars and art works dedicated to Our Lady as she is venerated around the world and to saints like St. Dominic and Catherine of Siena. I spent two hours of intense, badly needed prayer there, praying for an ever lengthening list of people and needs. It was like a mini retreat and wonderfully refreshing.

I love this marble relief of the Universal Call to Holiness, as well as Mary, Queen of Ireland, Mary, Help of Christians, and a wonderful,tiny chapel devoted to a Vietnamese image of Mary and the infant Jesus, for which the Basilica's website doesn't yet have a link.

Before Making Disciples, Fr. Mike, Daniel, and I had the chance to visit the magnificent National Gallery of Art which could easily consume an entire day. I fell in love with Duccio di Buoninsegna's The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew.

This painting, which graced the altar of Siena's Cathedral and which Catherine of Siena must have known, is the image we have been using in Making Disciples for the moment when a person crosses into discipleship, the "drop-the-net" moment when a man or woman, like Peter, drops their nets to follow Jesus.