During the summer of 2019, Frs. Philip Dabney, Francis Gargani, and James Wallace moved to Holy Redeemer Provincial Residence in Washington, DC to begin working as a team responding to the call for a “new evangelization.” The last three popes – John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis – have called for a “New Evangelization,” defined as offering “new expressions, new methods, and a new ardor” in preaching and teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and the faith of the Catholic Church. Such a call is certainly in line with the Redemptorist charism of preaching the gospel to all peoples, but especially to the poor and most abandoned. In our own time and in our present conditions here in the United States and other places where we minister, the Redemptorists of the Baltimore Province have named as their priorities the pastoral care of young adults, immigrants and refugees, and those who have not found the Church’s preaching to be Good News for them.

During the fall of 2019, our Team for Evangelization began by planning to engage in one of our traditional methods of preaching the gospel through a parish mission, a form taken up by our founder St Alphonsus de Liguori in 1732 as a way to reach the people of his own time who were baptized but in need of further conversion and education in the faith. A parish mission has as its goal a deepening conversion of mind and heart. We spent several months developing a new parish mission entitled Feeding the Hungers of the Heart. We hoped this mission would allow us to name some of the present “hungers” the people of our time are experiencing, especially a hunger for a more vibrant relationship with God as revealed in Jesus Christ.

Equally important is the hunger for community to be met by offering an understanding of the Catholic Church as a community of missionary disciples, sent forth to work for justice, mercy, and peace in our world, grounded in God’s gifts to them at baptism of faith, hope, and love, and to invite them to a deeper participation in the life of the parish.

By late fall, several pastors had asked for our mission. Prior to the mission, we asked each pastor to form a Committee for the Mission, who would assist in preparing the parish through promotion and participation in the event itself. We met several times with these committees. The parish mission itself offers three evenings of prayer, preaching, song, and ritual that we hope will nourish the mind, heart, and spirit. Opportunity for the healing sacraments of Reconciliation and the Anointing of the Sick would also be available, along with the daily celebration of the Eucharist.

In addition to the three evening services, the mission could also include meeting with the children of the parish, both those in the parish school and those in CCD classes, offering them an instruction and encouraging them to come to the mission with their parents. And we preach at all Sunday Masses before the mission begins, encouraging parishioners not only to come themselves but to make an effort to bring others, especially those who have been alienated from the Catholic Church. Our first parish mission was given in March 2020 at St. James parish in Woodbridge, NJ. Then our work was halted by the coronavirus. We are now hoping to start up again.

During the remainder of 2020, we began to offer prayer services with preaching on our Redemptorist websites. You can find us on both Facebook and YouTube. Go to either and put Redemptorists in the Search box, then go to Videos. Some of our entries have focused on major feasts: novenas before Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas, several Triduums (a three-day series of services with Mass on the fourth day) for major Redemptorist feasts like Our Mother of Perpetual Help and the Redemptorist saints: Alphonsus, Gerard, Clement, and John Neumann, and a weekly reflection on the coming Sunday readings. You will also find Fr. Philip Dabney’s monthly prayer service to Our Mother of Perpetual Help.

During 2021, in addition to presentations on the Redemptorist websites, we have offered presentations on the theme, “Walking in the Dark, Living in the Light of Christ.” These were done via zoom for a Lenten retreat morning at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, DC, and over two evenings later in Lent for several parishes in the diocese of Syracuse, New York and Manchester, New Hampshire, and remain available on YouTube (under videos).

At present we have begun working on the theme of grieving, caused especially by the loss of loved ones, but also taking into account other losses during the time of the pandemic, with reflections on how to live with personal grief, how to accompany others when they are grieving, and how to move beyond grief to what has been called “a preferential option for the future” – a new normal, a new future.

We hope our work will soon include not only parish missions and reflections offered online, but also retreat mornings, evenings, and single-day retreats, either in a parish setting or here at Holy Redeemer Residence. If you are interested, please contact one of us: Fr. Philip Dabney ([email protected]); Fr. Francis Gargani ([email protected]; Fr. James Wallace ([email protected]).