St. John Neumann Catholic Church

Served by the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales

Current Mass Times

Saturday: 5 p.m.

Sunday: 7:30 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 2 p.m. (Spanish), 5 p.m.

Monday-Friday: 9 a.m.

Monday-Wednesday-Friday: 12:10 p.m.

Watch a livestreamed or recorded Mass

Confession

Saturday: 10 a.m.-10:30 a.m. (English)

Sunday: 3 p.m.- 4 p.m. (Spanish)

Feast Day of Oblates Founder

by Fr. Michael S. Murray, OSFS

Blessed Louis Brisson, OSFS

Priest, founder (1817-1908)

Feast: October 12

Louis Brisson, a priest of Troyes in France, founded the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales in 1876. As a diocesan priest, he was assigned as the full-time chaplain to the monastery of the Visitation of Holy Mary in Troyes. Mother Marie de Sales Chappuis, the superior of that community was convinced that it was, in fact, the will of God that their humble chaplain start a religious order of men to follow the spiritual legacy of St. Francis de Sales.  He resisted.

However, the presence of God continued to stir within Fr. Brisson, climaxing in an apparition of Jesus Christ. This moment of prayer provided Fr. Brisson with the impetus to begin his work to gather men as Oblates of St. Francis de Sales. He also started, with St. Leonie Aviat, the founder of the Oblate Sisters of St. Francis de Sales, to redress the injustices of industrialization as it impacted poor girls in the urban districts of Troyes. Together, they began schools to ensure that these students would be protected from poverty and conscripted employment.  

Fr. Brisson was beatified, at the authorization of Pope Benedict XVI, in 2012, in Troyes, France. The cause for his canonization remains active. 

The dream, inspiration, and vision of Blessed Louis Brisson and Mother Marie de Sales Chappuis — embraced over and over again by each new member of the Community — is the ongoing story of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales.

Pictured Right: Cardinal Amato receiving the Oblate Sister of St. Francis de Sales, who served as the Postulator for Fr. Brisson’s cause.



Pictured Above: Carlos Peraherrera standing with the image of Louis Brisson after the celebration of the Mass during which Brisson was beatified.

It was Carlos’ healing from a severe injury he sustained as a boy that was attributed to the intercession of Fr. Brisson. 

You might be familiar with the song that Aretha Franklin made popular in the late 1960s and 1970s, “Respect.” Part of the lyrics are:

“R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Find out what it means to me. R-E-S-P-E-C-T… I got to have (just a little bit). A little respect (just a little bit).” © Cotillion Music, 1967.

These lyrics have been on my mind much recently because it seems we have lost the art of showing respect to someone when we disagree with them. Our founder, Bl. Louis Brisson, OSFS, put it this way: “Respect must permeate our bearing at every moment: respect towards boys, girls, men, and women. Then we will be everywhere what God wants us to be.” (Chapter 1888: 39)

I spent a year on the Pine Ridge Reservation of the Lakota Sioux in South Dakota. I taught Religion and Music, drove a school bus, and worked our weekly Bingo Game for people to win prizes of food and clothing. Early in the semester, Richard, a sixth grader, raised his hand and asked me: “Paul, do you try to speak like us because you’re trying to get to know us or because you want to make fun of us?” It was a very insightful question. I responded, “Oh, Richard, I would never try to make fun of you. I respect you too much to do that.” He turned around to his peers and said, “He’s OK. Let’s work with him.” That was an important lesson for me about the need for showing respect to others.

When I was a teenager, my grandfather and I were having a heated discussion. I had not shown him the respect he deserved and expected. He said to me, “Be careful boy. You don’t speak to me in that tone.” That stopped me cold in our discussion because the last thing I wanted to do was disrespect him. I can still picture the two of us in our living room and how it made me feel. It changed the tone of the discussion. That was the first step in repairing the relationship that I had threatened by my disrespect. That was another important lesson for me about the need for showing respect to others and the damage that showing disrespect can do.

A little respect goes a long way. Much respect goes even longer and is what Aretha called for in her song. Fr. Brisson connected respect with doing God’s Will. When we show respect to a person “we will be everywhere what God wants us to be.” But that’s not always easy, is it? And yet, when we show respect, even to someone who is disrespecting us, when we remember not to speak to someone in that disrespectful tone, healing can come, common ground can be discovered, and we can take a discussion and a relationship to a new level.

Sometimes we need the insight of a student like Richard and ask the hard questions. At other times, we need the directness of my grandfather to put a discussion on hold and give us time to reflect on what we are doing and how we are doing it. At all times we need to let “respect…permeate our bearing at every moment.” No matter what we think of another person, she or he is a child of God, like we are. Whether they show us respect or not, it’s up to us to “Let us always be polite. Let us give everyone great respect because the proper respect for our neighbor is the basic rule of love.” Maybe “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” can be the ear worm that reminds you and me to live Bl. Louis’ words during this election season, and at all times.

Printed with permission from Fr. Paul H. Colloton, OSFS, D.Min. Originally published in DeSales Weekly.



“Our defense of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm, and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development. Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned, and the underprivileged, the vulnerable, infirm, and elderly exposed to covert euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms of slavery, and every form of rejection. We cannot uphold an ideal of holiness that would ignore injustice in a world where some revel, spend with abandon and live only for the latest consumer goods, even as others look on from afar, living their entire lives in abject poverty.”

— Pope Francis, Gaudete et Exsultate, #101.

Pope Francis, in his Apostolic Exhortation, "On the Call of Holiness in Today’s World" written in 2018, points out that all life is sacred and has dignity; he states that we must fight for the dignity of the person in all stages of life as stated above. This is what is at the heart of our Gospel and is described in detail in our seven themes of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) as outlined by the United States Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) here.

These themes of CST outline specifically how every life has dignity, the importance of our social structure, our responsibility for the right to human decency, putting the needs of the poor and vulnerable first, the dignity of work and workers, loving our neighbor wherever they live, and care for creation. In our modern world we know what is happening all over the world almost instantaneously and that increases our responsibility to understand that we are one human family connected to each other and to the earth. For example, last weekend we saw news reports of the flooding associated with Hurricane Helene in the U.S. For several weeks prior we also saw news reports of substantial flooding and loss of life in Hong Kong, Greece, Libya, and parts of Asia. What does this mean for us as global citizens?

The term "seamless garment of life" imaged in John 19:23 was originally coined by Eileen Egan in 1971 who wrote, “the protection of life is a seamless garment. You can’t protect some life and not others.” Cardinal Bernardin, past chair of the USCCB’s pro-life committee, used this term often, and it became popular. The concept is that being pro-life involves a defense of life at every stage including abortion, euthanasia, human trafficking, racism, the death penalty, war, social injustice, anti-immigrant sentiment and many other social issues that can result in the death of human beings directly or indirectly. Bernardin emphasized that it is not possible for us all to engage in each issue, but it is both possible and necessary that the Church cultivates a conscious connection among the issues. Bernardin believed that this concept could cross both religious and political boundaries.

The seamless garment imagery in John 19 is not about competing priorities but about all life issues being interrelated and intertwined. At Jesus’ crucifixion the soldiers discovered that Jesus’ tunic was seamless and could not be divided without tearing it apart so they cast lots to see who would get it. When we talk about pro-life being a seamless garment, we cannot separate the issues without tearing the fabric of the pro-life label apart. In other words, life issues are of one piece and can’t be separated without the whole premise unraveling. The seamless garment of the church’s pro-life stance is consistent with Catholic doctrine. The values and ideas that permeate it are consistently applied with no break in logic.

I love this quote by one of my favorite Catholic authors:

Whether we are discerning a personal decision, voting, defending Catholic doctrine, conversing with a friend, participating in a bible study, talking to a family member, caring for a child, or spending money we need to keep in mind the seamless garment of life as modern Catholics. We live out our life as Catholic Christians by our actions and decisions in these situations and choose to defend the basic dignity and sacredness of life.  



 As we mark this year’s Respect Life Month, the programs of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Arlington (CCDA) and similar efforts at the parish level to defend, heal, feed, clothe, shelter, and counsel the most vulnerable provide valuable reminders of what we are celebrating and illustrations of what more we have to do. In addition to directly benefitting expecting mothers and fathers, the medically uninsured and underinsured, the hungry, the homeless, the immigrant, and the spiritually and emotionally troubled, these programs enable volunteers to model the culture of life and demonstrate what our Church’s vision of such a culture entails. 

Pregnancy and Adoption Services

Since well before the establishment of the Arlington Diocese and the Roe vs. Wade decision, Pregnancy and Adoption Services has offered transformative care to individuals and families affected by unplanned pregnancies and seeking adoption assistance. Gabriel Project provides a central hotline to parish-based efforts to counsel and assist expecting parents, and Project Rachel offers post-abortion counseling. These programs have become highly visible models of the pro-life movement, but as the volunteers readily acknowledge, they are part of a much larger effort to protect human life at every stage and in the face of multiple threats.

Medical Care for the Poor

The diocese’s free medical clinics offer particularly good illustrations of the motives, goals, and actions of the Respect Life movement. CCDA assumed sponsorship of the first Mother of Mercy Free Clinic on the site of a former abortion center in 2017. Initially able to offer only a few services, the Clinic has grown and expanded, acquiring another facility in Woodbridge and providing primary, women's health, mental health, and other care as well as health and nutrition education, prescription assistance, and physical therapy to over 2,000 patients. Its dozens of doctor and nurse volunteers and its many retirees, benefit from, as well as enable, the clinics’ mission by continuing to provide the life-affirming care that attracted them to their profession. The clinic’s volunteers also include aspiring medical professionals—students serving as medical assistants and scribes to prepare themselves for medical schools. Their service exposes them to Catholic medical ethical standards and practices and to statements of Catholic teachings that — we hope and pray — will shape their views throughout their careers. While respecting the privacy of their patients, the clinics also are able to refer them to CCDA’s non-medical programs for food, housing, legal aid, and counseling.

Food, Housing, and Other Material Assistance

With over 250,000 residents of the diocese classified as “food insecure” and homelessness a tragic reality even in the most affluent neighborhoods, programs to feed and shelter the needy are critical to building a culture of life. CCDA’s Christ House Evening Meals Program and the St. Lucy Project’s warehouse and network of food pantries respond to the need for nutrition assistance. The St. Margaret of Cortona Housing Program shelters expecting mothers and children, many victims of domestic abuse, and helps provide the counseling and material support to transition to safe and independent futures. The Mobile Response Center delivers personal hygiene and sanitary products to impoverished rural communities. The St. Martin de Porres Senior Center operated by CCDA in partnership with the City of Alexandria provides exercise and ESOL classes, social activities, field trips, and entertainment to elderly residents. Recognizing that these efforts are not enough, the diocese also encourages parish-level programs and collaboration with other churches and agencies. Our parish’s participation in the Hypothermia Prevention Program, Cornerstones, and support to the Embry Rucker Shelter are cases in point.

Immigrant and Refugee Services

CCDA provides a broad range of services to immigrants and refugees. Hogar Immigrant Services is a leader in multilingual legal assistance to immigrants seeking green cards and citizenship. Migration and Refugee Services, an affiliate of the nationwide program of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is among the handful of agencies in Virginia to which the U.S. Government turns for assistance in resettling refugees such as those from Afghanistan. Immigrants constitute the majority of the patients of the Mother of Mercy Free Medical Clinics and are the recipients of a variety of good and housing assistance.

Responding to Urgent Requests

Volunteers and staff at CCDA’s Arlington office, some of who are members of our parish, also respond to phone calls and email requests from individuals in search of financial, legal, and other support. Largely limited to referring their callers to individual CCDA programs and other sources of assistance, the staff and volunteers can offer eloquent and sometimes heart-breaking testimony to the frequency of such pleas and to the resources that would be required to satisfy them.

As we focus on the Respect Life mission throughout October, we recognize all the truly crucial programs and ministries both in our diocese and in our parish. At the same time, we acknowledge the growing needs in our community and that fact that much, much more is needed to support and encourage a culture truly respecting life.



Like Christmas, Halloween has become deeply commercialized, but did you know that Halloween is a purely Catholic holiday? Or at least that is what we as Catholics profess. In truth, like so much of history, the version told depends largely upon who is telling the story. Most secular historians give a nod to the pagan Celtic festival of Samhain as the foundation for Halloween. They go on to say that Christians, specifically Catholics in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales assumed the holiday as theirs: On History.com, Patrick J. Kiger writes, “…the holiday is rooted in an annual Celtic pagan festival called Samhain (SAH-wain) that was then appropriated by the early Catholic Church some 1,200 years ago.” Samhain was celebrated October 31-November 1, and the Celtics believe it was a time when the spiritual world and the earthly world were most closely aligned, allowing beings from the other side to slip through and play tricks on humans. For this reason, they ensured all crops were harvested by this date, to protect their harvest from destruction or damage by the spiritual tricksters. Fr. Steve Grunow, CEO of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, is among many Catholics who disagree that we appropriated Halloween and All Saints Day from the Celts. He says, “…the true substance of Halloween belongs to the Church. Halloween (or “All Hallows Eve”) is the festive precursor to the celebration of the Church’s public commemoration of All Saints Day. There has been an appropriation of the festivities of Halloween by modern pagans, but please understand that modern paganism is precisely modern and should be distinguished from the cults of ancient religions.” I do not presume that I will put to rest any arguments over the origins of Halloween, but I will side on the narrative of Halloween as a Catholic celebration for the eve of the solemnity of All Saints Day.

The fact is that All Saints Day was not even originally at harvest time as the pagan celebration Samhain was. According to Fr. William Saunders’ article published in the Arlington Catholic Herald in 2004, “The exact origins of this celebration are uncertain, although, after the legalization of Christianity in A.D. 313, a common commemoration of the saints, especially the martyrs, appeared in various areas throughout the Church. For instance, in the East, the city of Edessa celebrated this feast on May 13; the Syrians, on the Friday after Easter; and the city of Antioch, on the first Sunday after Pentecost. Both St. Ephrem (d. 373) and St. John Chrysostom (d. 407) attest to this feast day in their preaching. In the West, a commemoration for all the saints also was celebrated on the first Sunday after Pentecost. The primary reason for establishing a common feast day was because of the desire to honor the great number of martyrs, especially during the persecution of Emperor Diocletian (284-305).” (Note: In the Eastern Orthodox Church, All Saints Day is still celebrated the first Sunday after Pentecost.) In 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated Rome’s Pantheon as a church to honor both the Blessed Virgin Mary and all martyrs on May 13. (Built around 25 B.C., the Pantheon was originally dedicated as a temple to the twelve Roman gods.) It is believed that the date of the observation for the feast of All Saints then moved to November 1 when Pope Gregory III (731-741) dedicated an oratory in St. Peter’s Basilica to all saints. Nevertheless, other Church historians believe that Pope Gregory IV (827-844) officially dedicated the liturgical celebration as November 1, while still others credit the November 1 date we celebrate to Pope Gregory VII (1073-85). For our purposes, it is safe to assume that a pope by the name Gregory was involved in declaring the liturgical date of November 1 for the feast of All Saints that we celebrate in the Church today.

All Hallows Eve (Halloween), the Solemnity of All Saints (holy day of obligation), and the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls) make up the liturgical trifecta for Catholics. These are days we remember those who have gone before us. In this regard, the celebration of Halloween is somewhat similar to celebrating Christmas Eve—often in history Catholic festivals and celebrations spanned not just one day but included the celebration on the eve of a great solemnity. The traditional name of All Saints Day for some cultures is “All Hallows Day.” The archaic meaning of hallow is holy person or saint. When we celebrate the saints on October 31-November 1, we are celebrating the community of saints, not just canonized Saints—we are looking to them and their holy guidance. In the early Church, of course, most saints were martyrs, but today when we liturgically celebrate the feast of All Saints at Mass on November 1, we are celebrating those whose sainthood is known only by God—those in Heaven—we celebrate the Church Triumphant. (As a parenthetical note, the canonization of saints first began with Pope Urban II (1089-99) who held an investigation into the “cause” for sainthood for Nicholas of Trani. Canonization was adopted under Church law in 1234 by still another Gregory…Pope Gregory IX.) As Pope Benedict XVI beautifully said in his homily for the Solemnity of All Saints in 2006, “The Saints are not a small caste of chosen souls but an innumerable crowd to which the liturgy urges us to raise our eyes. This multitude not only includes the officially recognized Saints, but the baptized of every epoch and nation who sought to carry out the divine will faithfully and lovingly. We are unacquainted with the faces and even the names of many of them, but with the eyes of faith we see them shine in God's firmament like glorious stars.”

Following our honoring of the saints, on November 2 we celebrate the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed or often referred to as “All Soul’s Day.” On this date, we remember the souls in Purgatory, being purified for Heaven, and we practice our spiritual work of mercy to pray for the dead. Remembering the dead, of course, is woven into human history, but praying for the dead as part of our Catholic faith originates with 2 Maccabees 12:28-46 when Judas and his army came across the bodies of fallen who wore under their tunics “amulets sacred to the idols of Jamnia.” (2 Maccabees 12:40) Judas and his companions made a sacrifice for their sin, prayed for them, and “made atonement for the dead that they might be absolved from their sin.” (2 Maccabees 12:46)

The fact that we as Catholics pray for the dead is another reason that Halloween has somewhat mixed feels among Christians. While October 31 is the day that we celebrate Halloween or “All Hallows Eve,” among some Protestants, and especially in Germany, October 31 is Reformation Day. In 1517 on October 31, Martin Luther nailed his “Ninety-Five Theses” on the door of none other than All Saints Church in Wittenberg. While it is only speculated and cannot be proven, it is said that the date was intentional. Among the spiral of changes that occurred in the Christian world after that date, was the removal of seven books of the Bible, leaving a Protestant Bible of 66 Books while our Catholic Bible is comprised of 73 Books. Both books of Maccabees were removed and praying for the dead as well as belief in Purgatory became clearly Catholic beliefs differentiating us from many of our Christian brothers and sisters. This circled back around when Irish, Scottish, and other predominantly Catholic immigrants were met with anti-Catholic sentiments in the United States. Catholic immigrants would make soul cakes and children would go door-to-door offering prayers for their deceased loved ones in exchange for a soul cake. This tradition accompanied with widespread misunderstanding of Catholic practices in a young America contributed to the complex understanding of how, or even if, Halloween should be practiced by Christians, leading even to some misunderstanding among Catholics.  

In his “Memorandum on the Celebration of Halloween,” Bishop David Konderla of Tulsa, Oklahoma, encourages “maintaining the Catholic meaning and purpose of all holy days, especially those which have been adopted and adapted by the culture around us.” He maintains the traditions like dressing up can be done in a Catholic spirit, while warning that “we want to intentionally avoid those things that are contrary to our Catholic faith but have become popularized through the secular adaptation of Halloween.” He continues, “So just as we commemorate the feast of All Saints on November 1, beginning with All Hallows’ Eve on Halloween, we also think about and turn our minds really, to the last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. And really our focus should be, since we all must die and are destined to judgment, how then are we to live?” 

In his Memorandum, Bishop Konderla invites the faithful to “urge one another this Halloween to express in every detail of our observance the beauty and depth of the Feast of All Saints. Let us make this year’s celebration”, he says, “an act of true devotion to God, whose saints give us hope that we too may one day enter into the Kingdom prepared for God’s holy ones from the beginning of time.”

Happy All Hallows Eve on October 31. We hope that you will join us in celebrating some of the traditions of Halloween at our Trunk or Treat on Saturday, October 26, 3-5:30 p.m. If you would like to decorate your trunk and hand out soul cakes (candy!) to children, please sign up here. In addition, during the same time, our high school youth will have a Hallowed Haunt Walk beyond the church where you can learn about saints who lived and died for our faith. Come join us as we begin this special time in the church when we remember those who were before us. Please also note, on November 1, we will have the Solemnity of All Saints Mass at 6 p.m. in English and 7:30 p.m. in Spanish. This year due to November 2 being a Sunday, our All Souls Mass will be held at 7 p.m. on November 4. We hope you will celebrate this special time in the Church with us here at SJN.



The Pope's Intention for Prayer and Action

for October

For a shared mission

We pray that the Church continue to sustain in all ways a Synodal lifestyle, as a sign of co-responsibility, promoting the participation, the communion and the mission shared among priests, religious, and lay people.