Celebrating a Mass this spring marking the 40th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood, Father Paul Lee, the pastor of the Shrine of St. Jude in Rockville, Maryland, noted his special bond to that parish. After his ordination, his first assignment as a priest was serving as a parochial vicar at St. Jude’s from 1983 to 1989, then he returned to serve there as pastor in 2012 and has led the parish since then.
“This was my first parish. You could say it’s my first love,” Father Lee said.
The anniversary Mass on May 28, Pentecost Sunday, included a homily by Msgr. John Macfarlane, a priest who formerly served as the pastor of St. Elizabeth Parish in Rockville from 1992 until his retirement in 2016. He poked fun at his friend, and also praised his priestly service.
“Isn’t it ironic Father Paul Lee is assigned to the parish for hopeless cases? St. Jude is the patron saint of hopeless cases,” the retired priest joked.
Msgr. Macfarlane noted that the Shrine of St. Jude includes more than 60 different nationalities working together, and it is known for serving the poor through its food pantry and teaching children at its Catholic school and religious education program.
“There’s no ‘we and they’ at St. Jude’s, only ‘us.’ What a blessing and a grace,” he said, and then he praised Father Lee’s leadership there. “You want a priest to be one with God and one with you… You’ve been fortunate here in the last 10 years to have a priest who does that so well.”
The retired priest noted that of all Father Lee’s roles in his four decades of priesthood, “his favorite title is pastor… Best of all, he has offered his life and love to you at St. Jude’s.”
After Communion, Father Lee noted that he had written a book, compiled from his homilies, talks and reflections, titled “I Was Blind but Now I See,” from John 9:25 and inspired by the bas-relief in front of that church’s ambo, showing Jesus curing the man born blind. The priest explained that “the Word of God opens the eyes of the soul.”
And he joked that people might find the book helpful if they are having trouble sleeping.
At a dinner five days earlier following a Mass celebrated by Cardinal Wilton Gregory at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine for priests of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington celebrating milestone anniversaries in 2023, Father Lee said, “I am the only priest from the 1983 class. So you can say I am a class unto myself. Every morning I look in the mirror, I have a class reunion.”
The 67-year-old native of Seoul, South Korea noted that after graduating from the Catholic University of Korea, he came to the United States in 1979 and attended Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland before being ordained as a priest for the Archdiocese of Washington at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in 1983.
“I am the first Korean American priest ordained for a diocese in the states,” Father Lee said. He noted that after being born in Korea and coming to the United States to begin a new life, he also studied in Rome, where he earned a doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Angelicum, in 1994. “My life has been enriched beyond measure, and I feel at home in these three distinct cultural contexts,” he said.
Before being appointed as the pastor of the Shrine of St. Jude, Father Lee served as the pastor of Our Lady of Victory Parish in Washington from 2002 to 2005 and as pastor of Epiphany Parish in Washington from 2005 t0 2012.
From 1994 to 2010, Father Lee served as director of the archdiocese’s Office for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. In 2008 for his 25th anniversary as a priest, he wrote a book called “Bridging.”
“I saw my role as a bridge builder,” he said, noting the importance of helping people at his parishes deepen their relationships with God, and also the importance of “the Church as a sign and instrument of unity and reconciliation” in working with other Christian churches and other religious faiths.
Over the years, Father Lee served as the chairman of the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, as the Korean national delegate for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and as president the National Korean Pastoral Center for Korean Catholics in the United States and Canada.
A key inspiration for the life and work of Father Lee was the loving and faith-filled example of his father and mother, the late Wonkil and Hwasoon Lee, who as refugees fled Communist North Korea and settled into a rural town on the outskirts of Seoul, South Korea with their six children.
With the support of Catholic Relief Services, Wonkil Lee started a food pantry at his home that fed 1,000 refugees daily. He also helped establish a Catholic parish there that that began with five families in the late 1950s and within four decades had branched out to include eight additional parishes serving more than 12,000 members.
In a 1996 interview, Wonkil Lee said, “We have been a Catholic family for generations… I knew the only way to live was with and through the love of God.”
As a 4-year-old boy, Paul Lee followed his father to daily Mass, accompanied by their dog who waited quietly outside the church. He witnessed how his father was a lay leader at the parish and helped the pastor care for the spiritual and material needs of the parishioners. “His hand was in every nook and cranny of the parish where I grew up,” Father Lee wrote in his most recent autobiographical book.
Wonkil Lee, who after fleeing from North Korea and building a new life for his family in South Korea later immigrated to the United States, died in 2001. At his funeral Mass, Father Lee noted, “He was a free man. His freedom was based on his conviction that what is truly important in life” can be found in Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the kingdom of God.”
Father Lee had a poignant reminder of how his father fed people in need, when St. Jude parishioners did the same thing starting in the spring of 2020, as they established the St. Stephen’s Food Pantry at their parish to serve neighbors, community members and fellow parishioners during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, after many residents lost their jobs and needed food for themselves and their families.
“I’m proud of my parishioners. Once we got it started, they were all in,” he said, noting that of the 50-60 parishioners helping distribute food to as many as 400 people each Saturday during the pandemic, dozens of the volunteers were teen-agers and young adults, students from local high schools and colleges.
Praising the parish volunteers who have continued to collect food and distribute it at the parish food pantry on Saturdays, Father Lee said he is “so moved by their compassion and dedication.”
In another reminder of his Catholic roots in Korea, Father Lee celebrates an annual outdoor Mass for the students of St. Jude Catholic Regional School in honor of Father Emil Kapaun, the heroic Korean War chaplain and priest from Kansas known as “the shepherd in combat boots” who received a posthumous Medal of Honor during a 2013 White House ceremony and is being considered for sainthood.
To honor that chaplain, known for braving enemy fire to minister to the wounded and dying and who served fellow prisoners of war of all faiths at a brutal North Korean camp, Father Lee celebrates that outdoor Mass on the hood of a Jeep, as Father Kapaun once did on the battlefield. This year’s Mass in honor of that chaplain will be held on Sept. 22 at 9 a.m. outside the school.
Just as when he was growing up in Korea, Father Lee has a dog accompanying him at the parish. His small white Westie terrier named Rocky joins him sometimes when he visits the school and is a celebrity to the students there. Now some of the students are children of the students he first met when he was a young priest serving at St. Jude’s Parish in the 1980s.
In his free time, Father Lee likes to play golf with family members and friends, and over the years he has gotten two holes-in-one witnessed by his siblings, on the sixth hole of the Bretton Woods Recreation Center course in Germantown, Maryland, and on the ninth hole of the Half Moon Bay Ocean Course in the San Francisco area. Accomplishing those holes-in-one while playing against his brothers was “so sweet,” the priest said, laughing.
At his 40th anniversary Mass, Father Lee thanked his family members and the St. Jude’s parishioners for their support. “In my life and my priestly journey, I’ve been loved and supported by so many people,” he said.
And at the archdiocesan dinner for the anniversary priests, Father Lee noted that as a priest, his ambition has been to help people follow Jesus and seek heaven. And the priest who was teased by his friend for being appointed to a parish named for the patron saint of hopeless cases, emphasized that “the priest is ever a man of hope” because he is touched by God’s love through prayer and the Eucharist, and he said that the priest, inspired by God’s love and mercy, “in turn brings hope to people.”
