Tuesday September 15th marks the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, which my parish celebrates as the parish feast day for Our Lady Queen of Martyrs. In years past, I’ve preached on the history of the parish and on Mary. This year, at the pastor’s suggestion, I’m taking a different approach.

Last fall, I got a phone call from someone at the Prayer Channel – now, The NET – asking me to take part in a series they were doing about churches in Brooklyn and Queens. They wanted to profile Our Lady Queen of Martyrs. So I met with the producer and cameraman one morning in October and spent most of the day giving them a tour of the church, talking about the altars and the shrines and the stained glass windows. And they filmed all that and went on their way.

If you saw it, the program turned out pretty well – in spite of me. (You can see the results here.)

But it wasn’t until later that I realized that something was missing. I couldn’t really put my finger on it, until last weekend, when I started thinking about what I would talk about today, to mark our parish feast day.

The producer and cameraman filmed the church, yes. But they missed the real story. And that’s the story I want to tell you this morning.

Every year around this time, we mark our parish feast day, and take note of the remarkable history that has unfolded on this block, within these walls, in these pews. This church has been a blessed sanctuary for so many, across decades — through wars and recessions and crises of all kinds.

But the story of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs can’t really be told in brick and glass and marble.

It more than just an address, or a building. It’s more than geography.

What tells the story of a parish…are its people. Because in the people we discover nothing less than the Body of Christ.

And it’s people who feel called to be here, in this place – to pray, to worship, to encounter the living God.

This is the real story of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs.

It’s the young father out of work, who comes here to light a candle, and spends his last dollar on a rose to leave on Our Lady’s altar.

It’s the couple with a sick newborn, taking turns going to different masses, so that one of them can stay home with the baby.

It’s the widow who stops by in the afternoons to pray the rosary, and the janitor coming to mass every morning before going to work, and the woman who works at the bank running down Queens Boulevard for noon mass on her lunch hour.

That is Our Lady Queen of Martyrs.

It is the gathering of believers every Sunday to proclaim what we believe – and then to live it.

Many do it through some of the two dozen ministries and organizations we have. It is the lector reading God’s word. It’s the minister of Holy Communion, taking the Eucharist to an elderly woman who has a broken hip.

It’s the usher who holds open the door, and the singer who leads us in song.

It is the choir that fills this space with something so transcendent that it could only be called a prayer.

It’s the altar server who comes running in at 8:30 on a Sunday morning, wearing sneakers and shorts, and he throws on a tattered black cassock that’s two sizes too big because being here, on this altar, is absolutely the coolest thing in the world.

And here’s the amazing part: there are 90 others just like him.

That is Our Lady Queen of Martyrs.

But that’s only the beginning.

It’s the guy at the Easter Vigil, who spent his whole life searching, looking for something, and finally found it, here. And so, on a springtime evening he stands before hundreds of people with baptismal water dripping from his face, mingling with his tears, and he just can’t stop grinning. He is now a Catholic. He is a part of us. And we are a part of him.

And that, too, is Our Lady Queen of Martyrs.

It’s the faithful who turn out, week after week, for novenas, celebrations, devotions.

It’s the dozens who come every Thursday to behold Christ, in the monstrance, at Adoration.

It’s the hundreds who come, year after year, to walk the Stations of the Cross on a cold Friday night with Mary, the Mother of Jesus. I don’t know any other parish in the diocese – or in the city of New York, for that matter – that gets that kind of turnout.

Our Lady Queen of Martyrs is the baby being baptized, the little girl receiving her first communion, the teenager being confirmed, the bride getting married. It is the sacramental life of God’s church, being reborn, again and again and again, in every anointing, in every prayer, in every confession, in every sign of the cross.

And, of course: it is our priests, who make possible the ongoing miracle of the mass.

That is our parish. That is our story.

Ultimately, it is a love story. The story of our love for God – and His for us. It is a story of how we live that love in ways large and small.

The reading from St. James today says that faith without works is dead.

Well, faith with works is vibrantly, brilliantly alive. And the works of this parish are a beautiful testament to a living faith. A faith that grows, and spreads, and touches others. There is a reason we have one of the largest RCIA programs in the diocese. There is something about what we do here that calls out to people: come and see. And they do.

It’s not just the building, or the location. It’s the spirit of the place, and the spirit of the people.

And: I should add, it’s also the spirit of the pastor.

As I like to tell people: Monsignor Funaro never met a devotion he didn’t like. But that’s just part of it. In a time when more and more pastors are “Monsignor No,” – no we can’t do that, we don’t have the time, we don’t have the people, we don’t have the resources — we have “Monsignor Yes.” In his view, even during the toughest of times, the chalice isn’t half-empty. It’s half-full. Or, as we are reminded so often: nothing is impossible with God. His presence here at this altar, every Sunday, at every mass, bears witness to that. You’d be hard-pressed to find another pastor in this diocese who does that with such diligence, and such faith.

And faith is where it all begins. But as James tells us: faith without works is dead. We are a parish of astounding works, and abiding faith. And we are wonderfully alive.

That is the real story of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs. You won’t see it on TV. But look around you. You will
see it being lived, every day.

And on this feast, we celebrate that. We thank Our Lady, full of grace, for watching over us. And we ask that God’s grace will continue to sustain us, and enrich us — that we may continue to be a people of faith, and a people of works.

And so we pray, with joy, and gratitude, and hope:

Our Lady, Queen of Martyrs: Pray for us!