St. Elizabeth’s Parish in Rockville Celebrates 50 Years
Sunday, November 16, 2014
WASHINGTON – The Catholic community of St. Elizabeth parish celebrates 50 years of serving the people of Rockville this year. Today, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington celebrated Mass with the parish faithful to mark the special milestone anniversary.
In his homily, Cardinal Wuerl referenced the 2005 encyclical by Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est (“God is Love”) where the description of the ancient Church was used to describe Church life today. “The first Christian ‘parish’ that we read in the Acts of the Apostles, describes that a parish is to pray, to hear the teaching of the Apostles, to build community and to join in the breaking of the bread, the Eucharist,” the Cardinal briefly summarized.
The Cardinal then focused on the explanation of the celebration of the Eucharist by quoting Saint John Paul II’s 2003 encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia. “When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, the memorial of her Lord’s death and Resurrection, this central event of salvation becomes really present and ‘the work of our redemption is carried out.’” Cardinal Wuerl then continued, “What we see here at Saint Elizabeth Parish, we see throughout the entire diocesan Church, we see in fact throughout the whole Church Universal. We are God’s people. We come together to be formed by God’s Word. We come together to be nourished by the sacraments most particularly the Eucharist. And we come together so that out of God’s love for us and our love for God and one another we can care for the needs of one another.”
“What we celebrate today, then, is the fidelity of this portion of God’s family to the mission of the Church, to God’s plan, to God’s word, to God’s sacramental presence with us and to the recognition of our identity as God’s family. But we do not just celebrate the past and look back on the accomplishments of the parish. Today we look also to the present moment and to the future.” The Cardinal concluded his homily by calling on the faithful of St. Elizabeth’s that they must pass on the faith just as those before them in the parish had done, and urging them to look forward to the future with faith.”
St. Elizabeth parish was established in June 1964 to accommodate the growing number of Catholics in the Rockville area and today is the spiritual home to almost 1,300 families.
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The Archdiocese of Washington is home to over 620,000 Catholics, 139 parishes and 95 Catholic schools, located in Washington, D.C., and five Maryland counties: Calvert, Charles, Montgomery, Prince George’s and St. Mary’s.
CONTACT: Chieko Noguchi, 301-853-4516 or [email protected]