Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Aspen Hill, MD

The mortal remains of our ancestors rest in a variety of places, each uniquely special. Among the newest of these burial sites is Gate of Heaven Catholic Cemetery in Montgomery County, Maryland, dedicated and consecrated in 1956.

Catholic Maryland

Maryland has a rich Catholic history, having been founded by Catholics on the principle of religious tolerance. The colony was named to honor Our Lady and, secondarily, Queen Henrietta Maria, the French-Catholic wife of Anglican King Charles I of England. The first recorded Mass in the English-speaking colonies was celebrated by Father Andrew White upon their landing on the Feast of the Annunciation in 1634. A 40-foot tall cross on St. Clement’s Island on the lower Potomac River commemorates the site and event. The first American bishop was native-born Marylander John Carroll, who in 1789 founded Georgetown University, the oldest Catholic college in the United States. Archbishop Carroll also oversaw the construction of the first American cathedral, the Cathedral of the Assumption in Baltimore, in which Bishop Carroll’s remains are interred. John’s cousin Charles Carroll of Maryland was the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, a mother, widow, and the first American-born canonized saint, founded the Sisters of Charity and the nation’s first Catholic girls’ school in Emmittsburg, Maryland in 1809. Her remains lie in the nearby Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton.

Catholic Cemeteries

Where possible, the Church is to have its own cemeteries or at least areas in civil cemeteries that are designated for the deceased members of the faithful and properly blessed.

Code of Canon Law 1240

“As the Church… grew, parish Churches such as historic St. Ignatius Church, Port Tobacco, Maryland; … St. John’s, Forest Glen, Maryland; St. Mary’s, Rockville, Maryland; and many others, buried their dead nearby. In 1858, Mount Olivet cemetery was established in heart of Washington, D.C., becoming the first central Catholic cemetery in the area to serve many parish communities.” ¹ St. Ignatius was founded in 1641 by Fr. White in a settlement of native Potobac (Portobacco) Indians at Chapel Point on the upper Potomac River.² The parish boasts the first Catholic chapel and first Catholic cemetery in the thirteen colonies. The current brick church dates to 1798. St. John’s Cemetery in the Forest Glen community of Silver Spring surrounds the site of the ca. 1774 Carroll Chapel, then the property of the future Archbishop’s mother.³ A lovely replica chapel was built on the site in 1906, at which was celebrated the 1995 Guevara-Simmons sacramental wedding. In 1936 a cenotaph honoring John Carroll was installed in the historic cemetery. St. Mary’s Cemetery in Rockville is the final resting place of author F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington, D.C. is also on former Carroll family property, and is the final resting place of Archbishop John’s brother Daniel, who signed both the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution. In the early 1900s, “the Archdiocese implemented a plan to provide additional centralized cemeteries for the burial needs of parishes in the growing suburban areas.” ¹

Gate of Heaven Cemetery

Gate of Heaven was the first of these centralized cemeteries in Montgomery County. Like historic St. John’s, the cemetery is nominally in Silver Spring, about five miles north of Forest Glen at the intersection of present-day Georgia and Connecticut Avenues. The 10-acre central section is laid out in the shape of a cross, with a chapel and mausoleum at the center of the cross beam. Burials have expanded throughout the 92-acre property. There is a section set aside for priests just east of the chapel, in which are buried a few men of our acquaintance, notably our beloved childhood pastor Bishop Thomas W. Lyons.

Gate of Heaven is a peaceful site, if somewhat unexceptional. There are trees along the roadways and some purposeful woodsy areas, but otherwise the landscape is open, interrupted only by the few buildings and the religious monuments placed within each burial section. Most burial memorials are flush-to-the-ground bronze plaques, especially in the central section. Many upright stones are scattered throughout the outer sections, however.

Family Plots

Our grandparents Leon (1906-1993) and Mary Bell Grayson (1909-2001) were natives of Savannah, Georgia. They moved to Washington D.C. in the early 1930s when Leon was offered a job in the Justice Department. The couple pre-purchased a burial site at Gate of Heaven, and upon their deaths they were interred within the cross-shaped central section, just south of the chapel within the cross beam. Their only child, our mother Mary Ann Grayson Guevara (1942-2015) chose a plot there as well when our father Nick J. Guevara Sr. (1938-2002) passed away. Ann’s burial service at Gate of Heaven is a story in and of itself.

Dragonfly

A lone dragonfly appeared from behind the celebrant, hovered for more than a few seconds, then flew off toward the tree line about 40 yards away.

Ann loved dragonflies. They decorated her purse and smart phone, were embroidered on her wallet, carved into her walking sticks, and adorned her return address labels and computer backgrounds. Her scarves, sweaters, pajamas, and stationery all seemed to bear these icons. She must have had two dozen or more dragonfly hat and lapel pins. For as long as we live, every dragonfly we see will bear a part of her spirit back to us.

One of her daughters thought it would be a touching tribute if her 8 children and 15 grandchildren were to each wear one of her dragonfly pins the day of her funeral. And so we did.

Ann was able to communicate her desires for her memorial service. Among those were the involvement of her pastor, her former pastor, and her long-time friend and organist, whom she asked to play César Franck’s Panis Angelicus. The morning funeral Mass and reception were held in the city, with the burial service later in the afternoon at suburban Gate of Heaven. It was primarily family members, most wearing her dragonfly pins, that gathered on that unseasonably beautiful November day. As the family assembled, Ann’s former pastor invited the family to sit in the six velvet-lined seats under the awning. As her eight children eyed the six chairs and each other uncertainly, five of the smallest grandchildren decided that if no one else was going to sit down, they would!

Following the liturgy, as Ann’s pastor announced, “This concludes the burial service,” a lone dragonfly appeared from behind the celebrant, hovered for more than a few seconds, then flew off toward the tree line about 40 yards away. As many began to point and exclaim excitedly, some blinked in confusion, others in surprised recognition, but all later felt as if the Holy Spirit was sending a sign that Ann was not dead, but was returning to her true home.

A parade of her grandchildren began gathering handfuls of the flowers that overflowed from around Ann’s casket, and paraded toward her parents gravesite some 125 yards or so to the north, where they shared with Leon and Mary Grayson the bounty of their daughter. Four generations of family, sharing history and eternity in one short moment in time at Gate of Heaven, now itself relegated to history. It is likely many of those gathered that day will choose to be buried there as well.

¹ “History of Catholic Cemeteries,” https://ccaw.org/history-of-catholic-cemeteries

² St. Ignatius Church History https://www.chapelpoint.org/history

³ “History of Place,” St. John the Evangelist Parish, http://www.sjeparish.org/community/history-place