Looking out at the people attending the Sept. 25 Mass celebrating the 60th anniversary of St. Matthias the Apostle Church in Lanham, Father Avelino González, the pastor, said the gathering offered “a taste of heaven.”
He noted how St. John the Evangelist’s account in the Bible’s Book of Revelation describes a vision where people from every nation, language and race were together in heaven.
“What we see here today is something very beautiful. It’s a taste of heaven,” the priest said, adding, “That is something we see here in this church, not just as we begin this Mass, but it’s something we see every day.”
Standing together in the Maryland church was a diverse congregation that included many African women and men wearing colorful headdresses and robes, alongside families from several Latin American countries, and longtime parishioners who were African-American or had family roots in European countries.
St. Matthias the Apostle Parish, which has 750 registered families, encouraged people to attend the anniversary Mass wearing dress reflecting their diverse cultures, and the liturgy was followed by a celebration featuring African and Latin American food and dances outside behind the parish’s Friendship Hall.
In June 1960, St. Matthias the Apostle Parish was established, with Father E. Albert Hughes as its founding pastor. The new parish had 265 families drawn from St. Mary’s in Landover Hills and Ascension in Bowie. St. Matthias the Apostle School, staffed by the Sisters of Divine Providence, opened in September 1961 with two classrooms for 90 students in the first and second grades. Then in February 1962, the parish’s new church was blessed and dedicated.
Hundreds of people filled St. Matthias the Apostle Church for the 60th anniversary Mass celebrated by Father González, a native of Cuba; and concelebrated by two priests who help preside at weekend Masses there, Father Canice Enyiaka who is from Nigeria, and Salesian Father Parthi Banraj Soosai, a doctoral student at Catholic University from India.
Prayers and the Scripture readings were recited in English and Spanish, and the music was led by an African choir and musicians at the front of the church and an Hispanic choir and musicians and a children’s choir in the loft.
“We have wonderful unity in diversity,” Father González said in his homily, noting that parishioners gather together for Mass there to remember the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. “It is the center of our life,” he said.
The priest noted how the word “Eucharist” comes from a Greek word for thanksgiving, and he added, “We are thankful for the gift of faith.”
Also during his homily, he reflected on that day’s Gospel reading, the parable of the poor man Lazarus having a prized place in heaven, and the priest pointed out how St. Matthias Parish has a pantry that gives food to the poor.
Later, prayers were offered for the priests who served there over the years, and for parishioners past and present who worked to build up and support the parish and school over the last six decades.
Father González invited people there to pray the Our Father in their native language. After Communion, the African choir sang “Fill My Cup, Lord.”
At the end of Mass, the priest led the congregation in saying a prayer to St. Matthias, a disciple of Jesus who joined the company of the apostles after Judas’s betrayal. They prayed that they might reflect the uprightness of life of their patron saint and be called by that same spirit to wholehearted service to the Church.
The closing hymn, the African praise song, “Bend Low and See What the Lord Can Do,” was led by Yvonne Onwuazor, a St. Matthias parishioner from Nigeria.
Praising her parish after the Mass, she said, “It’s more like a family. The African community here makes me feel at home.”
Members of the parish’s Immaculate Heart Choir, most of whom have roots in Cameroon, wore traditional brightly colored robes with ornate stitched patterns.
Dieudonne Kuku, a native of Cameroon who directed the choir and played large drums for some of the songs, said the parish “brings people closer to God.”
The second reading at the Mass from St. Paul’s letter to Timothy was recited by Carla Ferrando-Bowling, a native of Peru and St. Matthias parishioner who recently served as the director of the Office of Family Life for The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. After the Mass, she praised “the diversity and the unity in community that this parish offers to everybody.”
Her husband Shahn Bowling, who is originally from Ohio, agreed, saying, “Everybody’s welcome.”
After the Mass as people gathered outside for the multicultural anniversary celebration, Father González was greeted by longtime African American parishioners, Margaret Richards who is 93 and began attending the parish in the mid-1960s, and her daughter Patricia Richards.
“We live a mile from here,” said Patricia Richards, who noted that she got married at St. Matthias Church. “We always came… I just feel like it’s my home church. It’s where I grew up.”
During the parish’s multicultural celebration, people lined up inside the hall for traditional African food including dishes featuring chicken and assorted meats and jollof rice and couscous. Outside, people lined up for Latin American food including tacos and pupusas.
As people sat at big tables under a tent enjoying their dinners together, they watched African and Latin American dance performances.
Before becoming St. Matthias’ pastor in January 2022, Father González served since 2016 at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity at the Vatican. He said the diversity of his parish “is a great continuity with the heart of the Church that I experienced in Rome.”
The priest, a native of Camaguey, Cuba, noted that his family had been refugees, moving first to Spain and eventually to the United States, where he grew up in St. Mark the Evangelist Parish in Hyattsville, Maryland. After being ordained as a priest for the Archdiocese of Washington in 2006, he later served as the pastor of St. Joseph’s Parish on Capitol Hill and St. Gabriel Parish in Washington, D.C.
“It’s my first parish with a school,” he said, noting that the Academy of St. Matthias the Apostle now has nearly 200 students in pre-kindergarten through the eighth grade, its highest enrollment in recent years.
The parish has Spanish Masses on Saturdays at 7 p.m. and on Sundays at 1:30 p.m. to serve parishioners who come from several Latin American countries and the Caribbean. Father González said the faith of the immigrant Hispanic and African parishioners at St. Matthias have enriched the parish community.
Rosario Andrés, a native of Mexico who has been a member of St. Matthias the Apostle Parish for about 20 years and now helps lead the Hispanic ministry there, said the countries that its Spanish-speaking parishioners come from include Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
She said in addition to sharing traditions like devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, those Hispanic parishioners help others in times of need. She noted how some volunteers had been on the parish grounds since early that morning, preparing food.
“They’re happy. This brought all the communities together,” Andrés said, pointing out how children had joined in. “They learn how to help people, help the church, and help the community.”
Chris Lawton, a Paulist seminarian who assists with outreach to the Hispanic community at St. Matthias, said he began serving there during the pandemic and was inspired to see how those parishioners reached out to others, helping to clean the church so people could gather safely for Masses, and helping distribute food to people lined up at the parish’s pantry.
“Despite the extraordinary difficulty of that time, there was such a sense of solidarity and caring for each other,” he said. “…It shows an incredible devotion to the Gospel…This was a community helping their neighbors.”
After the Mass, Nonye Nnawuba visited with a group of fellow Nigerian women outside St. Matthias the Apostle Church, where they are parishioners.
“I love the church,” she said. “This church allows people to practice their own culture, irrespective of where they come from.”
She said the parish is marked by a spirit of love, joy, happiness and forgiveness.
“This is what God asks us to do, because we are the Church,” Nnawuba said, adding that spirit of faith “brings us together as children of God.”
