Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter (B)

When I was in high school I received as a gift a crucifix, not unlike the one we have in our sanctuary here. I remember being very fond of it and in fact it still hangs in my bedroom today. I also remember someone saying to me when they saw it, “oh I don’t like crucifixes with Jesus’ body on it – all the blood and nails and thorns. It’s too gory and depressing. I’ve always preferred a plain, simple wooden cross.”

Even at a young age I had some sense that there was something not quite right with this sentiment. On the one hand, I knew, that the churches my non-Catholic friends attended were very likely to have a cross without Jesus’ body on it.

On the other hand, because a parish in our area had recently been renovated, I also knew that Church law required a crucifix in the sanctuary – a statue of the risen Christ, for example, was not sufficient.

And because I lived in such an ethnically diverse community, I also knew that some cultural expressions of Catholicism, like Mexican, Pilipino, or Italian Catholics not only had crucifixes, but they preferred particularly exact and even brutal depictions of Christ’s wounds.

Still, this was all on the level of experience and instinct. These were the things I had observed to be true, or heard to be true, but I didn’t yet have an understanding of why they were true.

Perhaps you’ve made similar observations, but still wonder why things are the way they are. Maybe you too would prefer a plain wooden cross, and wonder why Catholic art, architecture and liturgy seem to heavily stress Christ’s wounds.

I think today’s Easter Gospel helps us answer some of these questions and come to understand the real importance of the holy wounds of Jesus Christ.

St. Luke records that on Easter Sunday evening, after the two disciples recount what had taken place on their journey to Emmaus, Jesus Himself appears where the disciples were gathered. Though His first words are, “peace be with you,” the disciples are “startled and terrified.”

Certainly, they imagine they are seeing a ghost. But perhaps their fear goes deeper. I think it’s reasonable to assume that they also fear Jesus’ retribution or revenge. After all, they had failed their friend – they had fled in fear when He was arrested, and Peter had even denied knowing Him. They all knew very well the guilt and shame of sin.

And so Jesus says to the Apostles, “Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts?” Going right to the heart of their fear, He seems to be saying yet again, “have I been with you so long and yet you still don’t know me?” Of course He is not coming for revenge, He is coming to bring them forgiveness and healing.

What Jesus says and does next is thus of crucial importance. “Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself . . . touch me and see . . . and as He said this He showed them His hands and His feet.” Jesus is not only trying to prove that it is really Him, and that He is no ghost – He is showing His disciples the proof of His love and the very source of their forgiveness and healing.

In words and in actions, Jesus is reminding the Apostles of the testimony of the prophet Isaiah: “He was pierced for our offenses and burdened by our sins – by His wounds we are healed.”

All of our readings today link the wounds and suffering of Christ directly to the healing and forgiveness of sins that we receive through them.

In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter says to the people that all the prophets had announced that the Christ would suffer and then exhorts them to “be converted, that your sins may be wiped away.”

St. John, in his first epistle, says that Jesus is “expiation for our sins and the sins of the whole world,” and that to know Him we must “keep His commandments.”

And most importantly, Jesus Himself says to the Apostles “it was written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead . . . and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins would be preached in His name to all the nations.”


The Church has always venerated the holy wounds of Christ, and depicted them in art, not because it is macabre, and not merely because it is concerned with historical accuracy, but because the Church understands that it is precisely in the wounds of Christ that we find healing and the forgiveness of our sins.

It was in taking our sin, suffering and death upon Himself that Jesus defeated sin and death and liberated us from their power forever. We rejoice in Christ’s glorious wounds because more than being a mark of our sinfulness, they are physical proof of the depth of His love.

In all of the Easter appearances of the Risen Christ, Jesus greets His disciples with the words, “Peace be with you.” The peace that the Risen Lord brought into their midst released them from the shame and failure of having abandoned the Lord and misunderstood His mission of reconciliation. It was a peace that transformed those fearful and frightened disciples into missionaries and martyrs for the faith.

Just as Jesus said to the Apostles, He says to us: “you are witnesses of these things.” We too are healed by the wounds of Christ and strengthened by the peace He brings. Like the first Apostles, we are sent on mission to extend His forgiveness to all people.

Friends, we, the Church, are born from the pierced side of Christ. Nourished in this Eucharist with His very body broken for us as bread, and His very blood poured out for us as wine, may we witness to the world the forgiveness and healing that is to be found in the glorious wounds of the Christ.

The Old College Try

During my trip to South Bend for the Holy Cross ordinations I was announced to the men of Old College as their new assistant rector for the coming academic year.

Old College is the undergraduate seminary program for the Congregation of Holy Cross, and it is housed in the oldest building on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. I was not an Old Collegian during my undergraduate days, but several of my close friends were, including now Frs. Michael Wurtz, CSC and Nate Wills, CSC.

The program is currently directed by Fr. Kevin Russeau, CSC, Mr. Gerry Olinger, CSC and Bro. Ed Luther, CSC. They have a great group of guys under their care, and I am excited to be a part of the program for the coming year. I will live in Old College with the men, and assist in their formation, while I prepare for graduate studies and do some work in the Cushwa Center.

Back At It In Portland

It's been a whirl-wind April as I traveled to and from Nome, AK for Holy week, and to and from South Bend, IN for the Holy Cross ordinations. I am finally back in Portland and back at work at Holy Redeemer. 

I'll have more pictures and posts about both trips, but for now, here are some from my first full-day back at the parish.

I celebrated the weekly school Mass:

and participated in the annual school Jog-a-thon. Here, the second graders rest from their laps and cheer on the upper grades . . . and me . . . as we do our laps!

Thanks to parishioner Fran Smith for all of these pictures!

Homily for the Second Sunday of Easter and Mass of Thanksgiving for Rev. Vincent A. Kuna, C.S.C.

We are all, of course, very familiar with this Gospel for the Second Sunday of Easter, and with the story of Doubting Thomas. As all of us face from time to time, the challenge of keeping faith, and the temptation to doubt, we rightly look to Thomas as a source of consolation and inspiration: even in his doubt our Lord appeared to him and strengthened his faith.

But in rushing to that resolution of the story we can’t gloss over the great insight contained in Thomas’ question. Having not been with the others when Jesus first appears and proves that He is no ghost, Thomas correctly asserts that the living Jesus could only be a phantasm or a figment of the imagination, unless He was truly the Jesus of the Cross – the very one the disciples had first followed in Galilee, and then abandoned, and seen tortured, murdered and buried. He needed to bear the marks of His Passion as we too bear the marks of our suffering.

Seeing with their own eyes that the Risen Lord was in fact Him would had been raised up on the cross, Thomas and the other Apostles come to truly believe in the Resurrection. And having received the breath of the Holy Spirit, they bore witness with great power to the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

As we hear so often during the Easter season, from the Acts of the Apostles, this is the essential content of the Apostles’ preaching and ministry: it is Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead that they proclaim, and it is in the name of the Risen Lord that they teach and heal. The power of their witness to the Resurrection was so compelling that on just that first day of their ministry three thousand persons were baptized.

And yet, in our own time so many people – perhaps even many who once called themselves Christians – find it nearly impossible to believe in Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. They can, perhaps, accept the historical Jesus as some kind of teacher or moral exemplar, but they find it difficult to take seriously that the same man, killed like a common criminal some 2,000 years ago, is now the risen Jesus who lives to die no more.

Looking at the world around them and at their own lives, they see so many signs of suffering, of pain, of loss and grief. ‘How’ they wonder, ‘can Jesus be the Lord of Life if we continually experience such suffering and death?’ For them, the Resurrection seems to be just a fantastical legend or a pious myth, and like Thomas they say, “I will not believe.”

Our second reading from the First Letter of John tells us that, “the victory that conquers the world is faith.”

If our world is increasingly unable to recognize or understand Jesus, risen from the dead, perhaps it is because we have failed to make our faith in the Resurrection as compelling as the Apostles first did. Perhaps, we have failed to bear witness to the Resurrection by tracing the marks of the cross, pointing out to others the transformative, life-giving power of Christ’s cross even as it appears in our own daily struggles, and daily Resurrections.

Friends, we should long, like Thomas, to reverence the signs of suffering that our brothers and sisters bear in their flesh and in their spirits – not because we doubt the Resurrection, not because we glorify pain, but precisely because we believe that the cross is our only true hope of eternal life.

Our faith in the Resurrection, our commitment to the victory of life over death, compels us to sit with the patient dying alone in hospice care; to assist a struggling mother to choose life, and care for the child she carries to term; to feed and clothe the homeless, sleeping on the streets; to give medical treatment to the child dying in poverty from a curable disease.

Only when Christians reverence the wounds of their brothers and sisters; only when we remind ourselves and others that Jesus suffered with and for us; only when we choose life always and everywhere, especially when it seems so hopeless – then and only then, do we give the powerful and compelling witness that leads others to believe in Christ’s Resurrection.

Yesterday, in this sanctuary, Fr. Vince, and his classmates, Fr. Aaron and Fr. Charlie, were ordained priests through the Sacramental sign of the laying on of hands. Our Lord said to these men, as surely as he said to the Apostles, “as the Father sent me, so I send you.”


By the grace of ordination, now conformed to Christ the Head and Shepherd, Fr. Vince stands in the person of Jesus Christ. When he visits the sick, and comforts the dying, or counsels those who suffer; whenever he enters into upper rooms filled with the grieving, the fearful, the doubting, Fr. Vince will be the presence of Jesus Christ, speaking that beautiful greeting we hear so often in the Easter readings: “Peace be with you.”

Through his preaching and teaching, and especially through his administration of the Sacraments, Fr. Vince will serve God’s holy people – he will trace the mark of the cross in the lives of the faithful, and assure them of the new life it promises.

In Baptism, he will claim us for Christ with the sign of the cross, he will wash us clean of sin and give us the promise of sharing in Christ’s life, death and Resurrection.

In the Eucharist, he will offer the very sacrifice Christ offered on the cross, and he will feed us with the bread of life, which is a foretaste and promise of the heavenly banquet.

And in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, in accord with Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel, Fr. Vince will forgive us our sins, heal souls scarred by sin, and reconcile us to God.

We give thanks to God for the gift of the priesthood and for God’s care for us in and through Fr. Vince’s ministry. And we give thanks to Fr. Vince for laying down his life in service, conforming his life to the mystery of the Lord’s cross and giving witness to the Resurrection.

But as we give thanks in this celebration, we also recognize our own obligation. Fr. Vince’s priestly ministry is a gift to the Church meant to enliven and support the priesthood of all the baptized – to send all of us out to preach Christ crucified and witness to His Resurrection.

All of us share the vocation to trace the mark of the cross in every part of our lives and in every part of the life of the world – to claim all things for Christ, signing every aspect of life with the sign of our only hope. Friends, if we do this faithfully, we will be saying to all our brothers and sisters, not only with our words, but with our actions and our very lives: “Do not be unbelieving, but believe” – “and through this belief have life in His name.”

Homily for Easter Sunday

Beginning today and throughout the Easter season, the Church invites us to reflect on the Acts of the Apostles in a special way. And so today, our second reading is from the Acts of the Apostles, and at each daily Mass of the entire Easter season a reading from Acts is always the first reading.

The focus of these readings is often the preaching of St. Peter, as is the case with our second reading this morning. And Peter always preaches about the Resurrection. But the Resurrection isn’t only the content of Peter’s preaching, what he preaches about; it’s also the source, the energy behind the preaching and ministry of the Apostles.

Peter says today: “We are witnesses of all that He did . . . He commissioned us to preach to the people and testify that He is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead.”


You see, we read from the Acts of the Apostles during the Easter season, because it is the story of the birth of the Church, beginning with Jesus’ Resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. Peter and the others are witnesses and have been commissioned to preach.

So I think it’s important to note that the title of this particular book of the New Testament is the Acts of the Apostles—“not the Good Intentions, or the Excellent Plans, or the Plausible Alibis of the Apostles, but their Acts” – because as important as words are, actions are even more important.

When the first Apostles said they had witnessed Jesus’ ministry and come to believe in His Resurrection, they didn’t just say that – they acted like they believed it, because they really did believe it, and they proved it by going to ends of the earth, even to the point of dying, to spread the good news of the Gospel.

A Protestant minister by the name of Clarence Jordan, once said, “The crowning evidence that Jesus was alive was not an empty tomb, but a spirit-filled fellowship; not a rolled-away stone, but a carried-away Church.”

Yes, of course, Jesus did indeed rise physically from the dead, and the grave really was miraculously empty. But what makes our Christian faith convincing in today’s world is the very same thing that made the Apostles preaching so powerful – it’s how we Christians act, and live out our belief in Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.

It’s often the case, however, that we can become apathetic or lazy about our faith.
We can reserve our faith for an hour on a Sunday morning, and leave it in church when we walk out those doors. We can refuse to act, choose to remain silent, when our Baptism demands that we speak out, that we sacrifice ourselves in some way to way to witness to Christ and serve our brothers and sisters.

We can convince ourselves that we are too weak, too sinful, too unimportant for God to do anything new or special through us. We make excuses, we accommodate to sin and relieve ourselves of any obligation to live differently because we are Christians.

But Easter calls us out of such complacency and despair. It reminds us of the hope we have in the Risen Christ – and of the vocation we have as members of His Church, called to be His presence in the world until He comes again.

If the Church today is going to change the world the way the Apostles and first disciples did, then we need to be the same kind of spirit-filled fellowship, the same missionary community that the first disciples were. So how did they do it?

The Acts of the Apostles tells us that the early disciples “devoted themselves to the teaching of the Apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.”

They devoted themselves. That means they gave over all of their hearts and minds, their whole selves, their very beings. Are we whole-hearted like that in our commitment to the Church, or do we hold back? Do we give everything, or just as much as feels comfortable?

They devoted themselves to the teaching of the Apostles. Do we listen to the Apostles by reading the Scriptures they wrote – and by respecting their successors the bishops?

They devoted themselves to the communal life. Do we participate in the life of our parish community? Do we give of our time, our talent and our treasure to support the common life we share, or do we leave it to others to do the heavy lifting? Do we see ourselves as belonging to one another, or do we think that faith is a private matter?

They devoted themselves to the breaking of the bread. Are we faithful to Sunday Mass? Do we excuse ourselves from sharing our Communion with the Lord and one another – from being nourished by His body and blood, even if a priest isn’t present on a given Sunday?

And finally, they devoted themselves to prayer. Do you pray each day? Do you spend even just five minutes a day speaking with the Lord, telling him your hopes and fears, asking for His help? If we don’t pray, then we can’t claim to have a real relationship with Jesus. Prayer is a sign of our faith that Jesus has not left us, but is with us until the end of time, just as He promised.

Brothers and sisters, the world needs us, Christ needs us, to be his missionaries – to act in the world in a way that proves our faith is real. Only then will Christ be able to work through us, bringing other people to life in Him; changing the face of the world.

This Easter let us recommit ourselves – let us devote our entire selves to the teaching of the Apostles, to our common life as a parish, to the Eucharist which makes us the Church, and to our life of prayer. If we do, we can be the spirit-filled community that shows to the world that Jesus is not dead – He is risen, as He said!

Homily for the Easter Vigil (B)

When Mary of Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome arrive at the tomb, prepared to anoint Jesus’ dead body, they find that the stone at the entrance of the tomb has already been rolled back.

Entering the tomb, they see a young man clothed in a white robe; an angel; and Mark recounts that the women are amazed.

And yet the angel says to the women: “do not be amazed! You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified. He has been raised; He is not here.”

Mark doesn’t record any reaction from these women, but one can easily imagine what they were thinking to themselves . . . ‘No kidding, He’s not here! That’s why we’re amazed! The stone has been rolled away, and His body is gone and now, you, an angel are speaking to us, telling us that Jesus who we saw crucified has been raised from the dead! And we’re not supposed to be amazed by all of this?!’

What the angel says next is, I think, the key to understanding why the women weren’t supposed to be amazed. He says: “go and tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see Him, as He told you.”

If we really examine this sentence closely, and grapple with its deep meaning, I think we will find that it is a much more powerful sentence than we might have originally imagined.

First, Galilee, where the angel tells the disciples to go: Galilee was the base of operations for Jesus’ ministry of preaching and healing. It was in Galilee that the disciples had first met and followed the Lord – it was their home, where their normal everyday lives were to be found.

And the angel tells the women, and through them the Apostles, to go back home – back to the beginning, so to speak – back to their everyday lives, even after the tremendous, life-changing events they had just witnessed in Jerusalem

Isn’t it the same for you and for me? Even after the most life-altering events – a marriage, or the birth of a child; a terrible accident, or the death of a loved one – eventually, we must return home, back to our everyday lives.

In very important ways, our life may indeed have been radically altered – by bringing a spouse or child into the home; or by losing a loved one, or losing our good health – and yet, there is still life to be lived, and work to do: there is laundry to be done, and meals to be prepared. There are still good days and bad days, waking and sleeping – in many, many other ways, life is still very much the same.

And that’s precisely what the angel sends the disciples back to, when he sends them back to Galilee – back to their normal lives. But he says something else that is crucially important: he says that Jesus is going there “before you” and that “there you will see Him.”

Friends, the great Good News of Jesus’ Incarnation, and now His death and Resurrection, is that there is no place we can go, not even suffering and death, that Jesus hasn’t gone before us. In becoming human, and being tempted, and facing betrayal and fear, and mourning the death of Lazarus, and suffering torture and death, Jesus has blazed a path; He has shown us the way to be truly human – He has shown us the way to the Father.


And what is more, He didn’t just go before us, He goes with us also! Wherever we go and whatever we experience, there, in the day to day events of life, we can see Him there with us – because it is into every moment of our lives that Jesus wishes to enter; not just the moments of some great revelation – moments of triumph and joy – but every moment, the good, the bad, and the mundane.

This realization that Jesus was present to them at every moment of their lives must have been amazing to the disciples. And if we truly believed this, and lived our lives in a way that proved we believed it, we too would be amazed at the difference it would make in our lives and the life of the world.

But still, the angel said, “do not be amazed.” So there is one last part of the angel’s message to examine: “He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see Him, as He told you.”

“As He told you.” The reason that all of this – Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead, His blessing of our normal lives and His presence in every moment of them – the reason these things shouldn’t amaze us, is that this is precisely what He had foretold and promised: and God always keeps His promises.

Our Easter celebration is the high point of the Church year, and along with Christmas, one of the two hinges upon which the Christian calendar revolves. Tonight, Jesus accomplishes the salvation He was born to win for us. God’s promise to not abandon us, to save us, and to be ‘Emmanuel,’ God with us, is fulfilled.

And as amazing and wonderful as this is, maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised. Perhaps, even after our forty days of Lent, and the special liturgies of the Triduum, perhaps its okay for us to go back to our homes, back to the routines of our everyday lives, and know that Jesus has gone before us, and that we will see Him there, as He has told us.

Homily for Good Friday Celebration of the Lord's Passion

In just a few minutes we will do a most unusual, even a scandalous thing. We will carry into our church an instrument of torture and death: a cross will be borne in procession, and we will be summoned to adore, even to kiss, this ancient tool of execution.

We are so used to seeing the cross on buildings, hanging on our walls, even wearing them around our necks, that it can be easy to forget just how frightful and tortuous death on a cross really was.

In our liturgy today, though, we are transported to Golgotha, to the central and crucial moment of all of human history – that moment toward which all of time, before and since, flows like rivers and streams to the ocean.

And like the people who passed by Golgotha that Friday afternoon we come face to face with the very harsh reality of the cross, and with them we are faced with a choice.

We can jeer, and deride, and mock the cross, and Him who hung upon it; or we can simply ignore it and pass it by, which is really the same thing; or we can heed the summons and stand in awed silence and adore the holy cross.

Make no mistake about it, just as on that day people in our own time, even in our own city pass by the cross and ignore it. They refuse to take seriously that a man killed 2,000 years ago is in fact the origin and turning point of all of history.

Worse, they still laugh and scoff at the cross, because they know that truly adoring it demands an end to their self-centeredness, and ultimately requires them to pick up their own cross and to face their own suffering.

Or, worse still, like the criminal killed along side Him, they taunt and blaspheme the cross: “If you were really the Son of God you wouldn’t have been executed like a common thief! If you were really the Son of God, you wouldn’t allow so many to suffer and die of starvation, and disease and war! If you were really the Messiah, I wouldn’t be suffering the burdens of my own cross.”

By our being here today we have made a different choice. We have chosen to heed the summons, to come and stand at the foot of the cross and silently adore Him whom we have pierced.


We have come to stand here at the cross because we know that on the cross hangs the Word of God, the only word that can be spoken to answer all of those jeering questions – Jesus, who is Himself the Word made flesh, who suffered with and for us.

And we know, therefore, that it is only from this vantage point of the cross that the rest of human history, the rest of our own lives, can be seen in such a way that they make any sense at all.

And so we come to stand at the foot of the cross.

The little ones, even those too young to fully understand, come to adore the cross, because there they find Him who called the children to Himself and compared the Kingdom of God to them.

The homeless, the hungry, the refugees come to adore the cross because there they find Him who was born so poor that He had no place to lay His head. They find Him who fled war into Egypt, and knew the hunger of fasting in the desert.

Those who feel they are on the margins, those who feel burdened by guilt, they come to adore the cross, which, though it is outside the gates of the holy city, is in fact the very center of the universe, and on the cross they find Him who ate with tax-collectors, and Samaritans and sinners like us.

The sick and the suffering, those who are blind or lame in body or in spirit, come to adore the cross, because there they find Him who made the blind to see and the lame to walk.

The lonely and the fearful come to adore the cross, because on it they encounter Him who hallowed all fear as He sweat blood that night in the garden – they find Him whom even the Apostles abandoned or denied.

Widows, and widowers – mothers and fathers who have buried children – all those who mourn and are filled with grief come and stand at the foot of the cross, because there they are with Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows and with her they see the eyes of her Son, which wept over the death of Lazarus – and they can see those same eyes filled with love and compassion for them too.

All of us, come to the foot of the cross because we know that if we do not shirk the cross, or despise and deride it, but if we embrace it and adore it, and even join Christ and carry the cross in our own suffering and death, we will thereby be able to share in Christ’s glory as well – and so we see in His cross not merely an instrument of torture and death but a thrown of glory that Jesus mounts triumphantly.

“Behold, behold the wood of the Cross, on which is hung our Salvation. Come, Let us adore.”

Homily for Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper

Imagine for a moment if you can, what it would be like to be incapable of remembering anything – having no memory whatsoever. Our ability to recall our family relationships, our past experiences, even our own names . . . these things so much make up our very sense of self, that it’s almost impossible, even to imagine, what it would be like to not remember them.

As you all know well, that’s what makes the passing on of culture and tradition so important – and what makes watching our loved ones endure dementia and Alzheimer’s so painful and tragic.

Memory, we might say, makes us who we are.

That is exactly what our first reading, indeed our entire Liturgy this evening, is all about.

In the Book of Exodus, we hear the Lord describe to Moses how the Hebrews are to prepare for their liberation from slavery in Egypt. The night before God will free them, they are to slaughter a lamb, apply its blood to their doorposts and lintels, and eat its roasted flesh with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.

But this meal that God prescribes for the Hebrews is not a one-time only event. The Lord instructs Moses and Aaron that this is: “a memorial feast . . .which every generation shall celebrate . . . as a perpetual institution.”

The Passover is the constitutive event in Israel’s history: it is the event that makes Israel the people, the nation that it is. And so, as our teens learned this past Sunday at their sedar, every year faithful Jews fulfill God’s command and celebrate the Passover.

And in remembering the Passover, the Exodus events are actually made present to the participants, and they not only remember who they are, they are themselves, in the here and now, renewed as God’s chosen people and conformed to the mystery they celebrate.

This is, for us, a crucial understanding of a particular kind of memory – because it is with this sense of memory that Jesus celebrated the Passover, and it is thus the very same sense of memory that animates our celebration of the Eucharist.

Tonight we recall the Christian Passover: the night on which the blood of the Lamb set us free from slavery to sin. We remember, as St. Paul recounted in the second reading, that on the night before He suffered and died Jesus took bread and wine, and gave them to His disciples, saying: “This is my body – this is my blood.” And in each instance our Lord commanded us: “Do this in memory of me.”


Jesus was not inviting us into some sort of nostalgic remembrance of some long ago event. And He was certainly not instructing us to perform some sort of play-acting. Rather, by commanding that we remember His Passover, the Lord desires to make the events of His Passion present to us in the here and now.

As I said on Sunday, within liturgy, time is annihilated: the past of the Upper Room, and the future of the Heavenly Banquet are wed, and they meet here, in the present, at this altar that is Calvary itself.

As in all the Sacraments, Jesus makes Himself present to us: in His holy people gathered; in His Sacred Word proclaimed; in the person of His priest; and especially in His own flesh and blood, under the guise of bread and wine.

And so at this Mass of the Lord’s Supper, and throughout these Great Three Days, we do not passively remember the events of the Christian Passover. Rather, by our remembering, the Lord re-presents the very events that make us who we are.

So, as we celebrate our Lord’s institution of the Eucharist, remember that you are once again re-formed into Christ’s body, the Church. And as we celebrate the institution of the priesthood, pray that we priests remember our Lord’s example of servant-leadership, and that our lives are conformed ever more fully to the mystery of the Lord’s Cross.

It is good, then, brothers and sisters that we remember, and that we remember well - so that we can truly know who and what we are.

Sunday in Nome

It doesn't look like I'll leave Nome to say Mass in any of the outlying villages. This time of year the roads are closed and flying in is a bit more complicated. But I was still able to reach some of these remote areas through Nome's Catholic radio station. KNOM broadcast our morning Mass throughout the bush of western Alaska. I look forward to visiting the station later this week.

After the Palm Sunday morning Mass, I had the chance to meet the majority of parishioners during the after-Mass social. Then the youth of St. Joseph's stayed on for their weekly catechesis - this week it began with a lesson in making palm crosses.

I was able to relax during most of Sunday afternoon, and then in the evening I joined the teens of the parish for their sedar meal. I was impressed at both of these gatherings with the number of children and teens that participated.

Finally, in the evening I walked the few blocks to the home of the Little Sisters of Jesus. Srs. Damiene, Nirmala and Alice invited me to join them for moose stew, and a pie made of local cranberries - both of which were absolutely delicious.

Sr. Damiene is originally from France and though she has lived in Alaska for over fifty years (including over fifteen years on Diomede island with the Alaskan natives) she still has a delightful French accent. Sr. Nirmala is from Sri Lanka and Sr. Alice is from Wisconsin.

These wonderful women are the presence of the Church in this part of Alaska as there is often no priest permanently assigned to where they live and work. We spent a lovely evening together talking about religious life, our respective communities, and our ministries.

On the walk home, at about nine at night, it was perfectly light. During my stay here in Nome the sun will rise two or three minutes earlier (at about 8 am) each day, and will set a few minutes later each day (at about 10 pm). So over ten days we'll pick up approximately forty minutes of daylight!

Nome Sweet Home

I'm still unable to upload full-size pictures, so you'll have to settle for these slightly smaller versions. While I work on some longer posts, I thought you might like to see my home in Nome for the week . . . 

I'm staying in the priest's apartment that is part of the parish church, hall and offices. It's proven to be a most comfortable place to hang my hat during my stay.

Holy Week in Nome, Alaska

For those of you who didn't already know, I am in Nome, Alaska for Holy Week. 

Since Holy Redeemer's Triduum liturgies are always celebrated by the pastor, in part because they are bi-lingual, I was free to offer my services to a mission diocese that would not otherwise be able to staff all of their parishes for Holy Week. I first offered myself to the Archdiocese of Anchorage, but when they didn't need me, they forwarded my name to the Diocese of Fairbanks. They asked if I would serve St. Joseph's Parish, a priest-less parish in Nome, Alaska.

This past Thursday I flew from Portland to Anchorage and spent a night there with Nick Pustina, a friend who used to teach at Holy Redeemer and now lives in Anchorage. On Friday, I completed the journey to Nome.

Above you can see the exterior and interior views of the Church. On Saturday I spent the day prepping for the Palm Sunday Masses and hearing confessions in the afternoon. I celebrated a small vigil Mass on Saturday evening and then the main Mass on Sunday morning.

I've got lots of other great photos and stories, but Blogger is taking forever to load, perhaps because of a slow connection. So I'll collect my pictures and tales and post them as I can. In the meanwhile, a blessed Holy Week to you all.

Homily for Palm Sunday of the Passion of Our Lord

Today we begin a period of time – a week – that we specifically call Holy. And during Holy Week, perhaps more than at any other point in the liturgical year, the rites of the Church call our attention to time, and to the funny things that happen to time when we enter into liturgy – into the public worship of the Church, the Body of Christ.

For example, in the rites of this day, Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord, the crowd’s joyful Hosannas during Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, are compressed in time with the crowd’s angry shouts for blood from Good Friday.

You see, liturgical time is eternity, and in liturgy the past, the present and the future are as one.

Now, of course, this isn’t how we usually experience time as human beings. In our human experience the past, the long gone good ole days, are regretfully far past – the hoped for, improved future is painfully far ahead – and in the present, time always seems to be moving either way too fast or way too slowly.

Think for a moment about how you’re currently experiencing time:

Well for one, I’m already preaching too long . . .

Maybe you’re waiting for a medical diagnosis or for treatment. You’re caught between the doctor’s tests and a hoped-for recovery – uncertain about how much longer the lifestyle you’re accustomed to will have to be put on hold.

Maybe you’re between jobs – caught between an ending and a beginning, worried about how you’ll make ends meet in the meanwhile.

Maybe you’re anxiously awaiting your wedding day, or the arrival of a newborn child or grandchild. Maybe you’re pressured by deadlines at work or are just desperate for ‘break-up’ and some warmer weather.

However you might be experiencing time right now, I’m sure you have at some point experienced time as a burden that you have to carry like a cross.

In today’s second reading, we hear from Saint Paul’s Philippians Hymn. He writes: “though He was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped. Rather He emptied Himself taking the form of a slave.”

Surely part of Jesus’ self-emptying is the fact that even though He was the co-eternal Word of God, He entered into time as a human being. Jesus humbled Himself, and like us was burdened by the passage of time – He carried it like a cross.

So, during this time, this week we call Holy, perhaps we’re being invited to pray with and through Christ as He too experiences the burden of time:

What was it like for Jesus to know that His hour was coming near – and yet have to wait through the tumultuous events of this week?

What was it like for Him to hear the adoring shouts of the crowd, knowing that soon, one of His own would betray Him, and the crowd themselves would scream for His blood?


What was it like for Him to pray in the Garden, or to wait sleeplessly in a prison cell, knowing that all His friends had left Him and that a day of torture was still to come?

If we think about time, and how we sometimes experience it as a burden, we may also be forced to admit that we would often prefer it, if God would conform His will to ours – do what we want, when we want it. We would prefer Him to remove from us the chalice that is too bitter.

But, if we pray in time, with and through Jesus during this Holy Week, He will teach us how to pray instead for the strength, simply to do the will of God – to do as God wishes, and to accept things in God’s time.

And surely Christ will also comfort us with the assurances of faith we will voice one week from today at the beginning of our Easter Vigil:

“Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, Alpha and Omega, all time belongs to Him, and all the ages, to Him be glory and power, through every age, forever, Amen.”