Homily preached at the Church of the Little Flower, Bethesda, Maryland, on 7 October 2006,
at the Vigil Mass, for the 100th anniversary of the blessing of the cornerstone
of St. Agnes Catholic Church, Glen Echo, Maryland.

One hundred years -- and one hour -- ago people gathered for the blessing of the cornerstone of St. Agnes Church in Glen Echo. According to the Washington Post, several thousand people were there. I doubt that it was even several hundred, for there were only a few dozen households in Glen Echo.

In any case, the blessing was done by Bishop Alfred A. Curtis, Auxiliary Bishop of Baltimore. Bishop Curtis was 75 years old. He was a former Episcopalian minister who had been received into the Catholic Church by John Henry Cardinal Newman.

The sermon was given by Father Walter Elliott, a famous missionary preacher -- a member of the Paulist society. He was an impressive figure, six feet three inches tall, 64 years old, and a veteran officer of the Union Army. Someone said that his sermons were “calculated to arouse ‘the emotions of fear, reverence, awe, hatred of sin, and the love of God,’ to ‘convict [his hearers] of sin and infuse the fear of the Lord into their hearts by the terrors of judgment.’”

It was said that he saved his best for his temperance sermons.[1] Given Glen Echo’s reputation at the time, he might well have preached fire and brimstone on this occasion. According to the New York Times, Glen Echo was, and I quote, “one notorious hole of vice of every kind. Gamblers and keepers of all sorts of dens inhabited the place; parties from Washington given over to riotous and questionable conduct frequented it. The few reputable people who lived in the community, mortified and chagrined at the stigma which attached to them for living in such a place, came to the conclusion that they would put a stop to these things.”[2]

So, just over a century ago, reform got under way. The town was incorporated, and the first mayor was elected: John Garrett was 22 years old, a lawyer, the youngest chief executive in the country -- and a Catholic. He was the uncle of our own Rosemary Hartley. He wanted a decent town, and a decent town had to have churches. The Episcopalians built the Chapel of the Redeemer in 1905 -- the structure still stands, down the street from the post office.

In his sermon, Father Elliott described how the Catholic church came to be. According to the Post, and I quote, he “told how the efforts of two little girls had brought about the building of the new edifice. There was no church of any denomination at Glen Echo [-- this is not true --] and the young girls, realizing better than their elders the necessity of a house of worship, set about in their own small way to gather funds for the building of a church.... It was but a year ago [-- that is, just after the Episcopal church was built --] that the little girls began an agitation for the establishment of a place of worship.”[3]

They were not named in the article, and perhaps not in the sermon, but the girls were Annie Ogle, then 12 years old, and Marguerite Moran, who was 8 years old. Many years later, Annie said that the two of them began to ask Maggie’s parents to write to Cardinal Gibbons in Baltimore to request that a priest come to Glen Echo to say Mass on Sundays. We can only imagine what Mr. and Mrs. Moran went through when the girls began their “agitation.”

It happened that James Moran was a good choice to make the request. Not only was he a government clerk who knew how to do official correspondence, but he and his wife Kate were very devout Catholics. In fact, James had been in the seminary, but was unable to continue because of his health. Still he was a very capable man who knew nine languages.[4] He was later also the clerk-secretary for the Glen Echo town council.

The request was granted. In January 1906 the Post reported that Cardinal Gibbons had given permission for a mission to be established. Father Mallon, the pastor of St. Ann’s, held a meeting with about 75 people. They decided to solicit subscriptions in a serious way in the hope of building a new church.

It is not known with certainty how the name St. Agnes was chosen, but it happened that when Mrs. Garrett -- the mayor’s wife -- was confirmed by Cardinal Gibbons at Holy Trinity Church in 1893, her confirmation name was “Agnes.”[5]

In the mean time, the Cardinal designated Father George Hurley, a priest of the Diocese of Springfield, Massachusetts, who was studying with the Paulists, to come out to Glen Echo. The first Mass was probably in the Moran home on Sunday, 21 January 1906. It is not quite clear which house this was in Glen Echo, but it probably stood where 16 Wellesley Circle stands today. Later the town council voted that Catholics would be allowed to rent the town hall for one hour each Sunday for a fee of one dollar.[6]

In the summer of 1906, Father Hurley’s assignment came to an end. In June a pastor was assigned: the Reverend Malachy Yingling. He was from Westminster, had studied at St. Mary’s Seminary and at Catholic University, and came to Glen Echo from being pastor of St. Mary’s Church in Newport.

One wonders whether young Annie Ogle’s recent loss of her father, the departure of an older brother and a sister, the death of another older brother, and her mother’s recent re-marriage, fed the young girl’s desire for a Catholic church right in the seedy hamlet of Glen Echo, and later her devotion to its pastor. Seventy years later she wrote of Father Yingling, “He was a great influence in my young life, and his kindness to me is gratefully remembered in my old age.” Father Yingling is still remembered today for his devotion to children. Annie recalled the early days of the parish. She wrote, “I taught the Sunday School, played the organ, [and] sang [-- remember, she was in her early teens, about the age of our altar servers --]. I asked some of the ladies to keep the altar linens laundered; in the summer, when there were flowers, I put them on the altar; on Saturday I swept, and dusted the church. In cold weather I went early in the morning and started a wood fire in the stove. I helped Father Yingling with his vestments before and after Mass.”[7]

After it was built, St. Agnes was not consecrated as a church, but only blessed, because the building had to serve many purposes. Annie said that the parishioners gave parties, dances, and plays there, and did anything else they could think of to raise money. There was even at least one jousting tournament, in Potomac, to benefit St. Agnes.[8]

Regarding these fundraisers, Mayor Garrett reported to the town council that Mr. Edward G. Boswell -- and I quote -- “complained that the entertainments given in the hall next to his house are very disgraceful and that he wants the nuisance stopped.” The minutes continued, “Clerk instructed to notify the priest in charge that he must have it stopped and that there will be an officer stationed in the hall every evening they have an entertainment.”[9]

Boswell was an Episcopalian and a Mason, and one wonders how his complaint was received by the town’s Catholics -- I don’t mean Mayor Garrett and Town Clerk Moran, but such rowdies as Boswell’s own mother-in-law, his sister-in-law, and his brother-in-law, a town councilman, who were all involved in the “disgraceful” entertainments. Even the town directory gave the location of poor Mr. Boswell’s home as “near Electric Railway and Catholic Church,” which must have been galling to him.[10] Later, Moran reported to the council that he had seen Father Yingling and that the priest would, and I quote “use his best efforts in abating the nuisance.”[11]

In the end, the source of Boswell’s annoyance was short lived. Very quickly there was a shift in plans for the parish. In fact, on the morning of the day that the cornerstone was blessed -- that is, one hundred years ago this morning -- Father Yingling celebrated the first Mass for what would become Our Lady of Victory parish, at the home of Nicholas Lochboehler, on what is now MacArthur Boulevard, near the Exxon station.[12]

A short time later construction began there, too. Father Yingling celebrated the first Mass in the new hall at Our Lady of Victory at 6:00 o’clock on Christmas morning, 1906; he then celebrated a Mass at the girl’s reform school at 8:30, and at 10:30 the solemn Mass was celebrated at St. Agnes.[13]

But St. Agnes’ Church had a very short life -- it was gone after only five years or so. Of course, all the people who were there 100 years ago are gone. Bishop Curtis died in 1908; Father Elliott passed away in 1928; Father Yingling died in 1931, still the pastor of Our Lady of Victory Church.

As for the girls, Annie Ogle went to nursing school. She met a young doctor, and in 1913 was married to him by Father Yingling at Our Lady of Victory Church -- or perhaps it was at St. Agnes. The newlyweds moved immediately to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they raised a large family, and where Annie passed away in 1979.

A couple of years after the blessing of the cornerstone, the Morans moved back into Washington, to a home near the Franciscan Monastery. Maggie grew up, was married at St. Joseph’s Church on Capitol Hill, and lived a long life in this area. She passed away in Rockville in 1987. (One of her grandsons is our County Executive, Douglas Duncan.)

So, St. Agnes Church is gone; the people are gone; even the building -- reopened in 1929 as the Chapel of the Little Flower -- is gone; and the lot in Glen Echo is empty. All that is left for the eye to see is the cornerstone, and even it has traveled far compared to most cornerstones. (For almost 50 years it sat near the entrance to the school, and it has recently been moved to the outside of the church, near the bell tower.) But it gives us much to ponder.

In 1909, even as St. Agnes was passing away, the same Father Elliott preached the sermon at the laying of the cornerstone of the permanent structure for Our Lady of Victory Church. I wonder whether the irony came to his mind as he observed rhetorically, and I quote, “How many finely cut cornerstones lie buried beneath the rubbish of decayed generations.”

In that sermon he contrasted the mere perishable cornerstones of buildings with the cornerstone of the faith. The church’s cornerstone, he said, “typifies the Son of God made man. The divinity of Christ is the foundation of the Christian religion.” He went on: “The stone that is Christ, the Son of God, is a living force; nay: He is life itself, life eternal. The divinity of Christ is the dogma that reveals the secrets of God’s commerce with men, fills our souls with the light of holiest knowledge by the grace of Christian faith, gives us child-like trust in our heavenly Father, and sweetest love for God, now made our brother and our advocate.”[14] Note that phrase: The foundation stone that is Christ gives us a “child-like trust in our heavenly Father....”

It is completely providential that this celebration should fall on a day when we would have the particular readings that we have heard. The event took place a century ago; our readings were chosen some 40 years ago; today they come together, in a special way, just for us.

In God’s providence, at this commemoration, with today’s readings, Father Elliott, speaking a century ago, in two separate sermons, given three years apart, without knowing who we are or what his words would mean for us, speaks to us of the real theme of our celebration today: “Child-like trust in our heavenly Father,” and the cornerstone -- the foundation -- of that trust, which is the faith.

In today’s gospel, Jesus says, “Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.”[15]

Today we celebrate not a mere stone, but the child-like faith of the children who gave us our parish, Annie and Maggie, and the child-like faith of the children who have been our patron saints, Agnes and Thérèse. A hundred years from now, when we are all gone, and when this building may be gone, perhaps people will gather to remember them and us, as we remember today. Our prayer for them, as it is for us, is that, under the inspiration of two young people, St. Agnes and St. Thérèse, and following the example of two other young people, Annie Ogle and Maggie Moran, their faith in the Father will be child-like, and built on the firmest foundation, the everlasting cornerstone who is Christ Jesus.

Whatever else may pass away, we know that the faith will endure until that time when all of us, as the beloved children of God, will enter the Kingdom He has prepared for us.

 
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Notes:

1. Jay P. Dolan, “The Catholic Revival Meeting,” in Catholic Revivalism, The American Experience, 1830-1900.

2. New York Times, 26 May 1907.

3. Washington Post, 8 October 1906, reprinted in the Montgomery County, Maryland, Sentinel, 12 October 1906.

4. Conversation, Eleanor Hughes Duncan with Rev. George E. Stuart, 11 August 2005.

5. Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Confirmation Register, Special Collections, Joseph Mark Lauinger Library, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

6. Minutes, Glen Echo Town Council, 19 July 1906.

7. Letter, Ann W. Atkins (Annie Woody Ogle) to Florence O’Callaghan, July 18, 1974, Roses & Thorns, September, 1974.

8. Washington Post, 22 July 1908.

9. Minutes, Glen Echo Town Council, 7 November 1907. An annotation identifies the priest as Father Yingling.

10. Justus C. Nelson, Nelson's Suburban Directory, various years.

11. Minutes, Glen Echo Town Council, 5 December 1907.

12. Washington Post, 20 September 1909.

13. Washington Post, 23 December 1906.

14. Washington Post, 20 September 1909.

15. Mark 10: 14.