March 31, 2024: Easter Sunday of the Lord's Resurrection

The Resurrection is such Good News and we, God's people by faith, are called to proclaim it.

We are no longer under the power of sin, and the Resurrection cleanses us to be made anew, just as Christ was.

We accompany those early Apostles in seeing the Empty Tomb and recognizing a new reality, which causes us to believe that Christ is Alive, bringing healing, forgiveness, and new Life to all.

We go forth to proclaim it even as we live it.

March 30, 2024: Holy Saturday Easter Vigil

God did a marvelous work in creating the world.

The broken relationship between God and humanity gave Him the opportunity to unfold the marvelous work of redemption.

The Old Testament readings at this wondrous Mass point toward the culmination of God's plan in the Death and Resurrection of Christ.

As His people, we are joined to the Paschal Mystery so that we live in it.

March 29, 2024: Cross Friday of the Lord's Passion

Jesus suffered in accordance with the Father's purpose.

He humbly submitted to the immense pain of the way of the Cross and His crucifixion.

Yet the Cross didn't have the final word, because God redeemed it for His purposes.

Indeed, from the Cross, God granted us the great gift of salvation through the Son Who was obedient.

March 28, 2024: Maundy Thursday

On this most sacred evening, Jesus Christ gathered to celebrate the Passover meal with the apostles.  In it, He established a New and Everlasting Covenant in His Body and Blood.

We are called to continue remembering the sacrifice He offered us, and to live in it by following the new command of this covenant to love others in the way He shows us.

March 24, 2024: Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion

The crowds shout as Jesus enters, acclaiming Him with "Hosanna", and calling Him "blessed" and "Son of David", all titles that would indicate He is the Savior.

Yet as the scene unfolds later that week, they don't fully grasp what it means for Him to be the Savior.

He doesn't come with violent force to conquer evil.  Rather, in obedience to the Father, He is an Almighty Servant Who submits Himself to evil, to be even conquered by evil through the excruciating death of the Cross.

Yet that is where God works by the power that He alone possesses.  He regards the sacrifice of Jesus as sufficient, and so Christ rises, exalted by God.  And now we come to the annual custom of Holy Week, hailing Him as Savior.  We are called to move beyond the mindset of the crowds and embrace deep within us what it means for Him to be our Savior as we enter into the Paschal Mystery.  He is the One Who frees us from sin so we can be who God created us to be, a reflection of His presence in our world.

March 19, 2024: Feast of St. Joseph

Even though God asked so much of St. Joseph by taking Mary into his home as his wife, under highly unusual circumstances, God granted St. Joseph a great role in salvation history.

He was part of the fulfillment of the promises of God to bring a Savior into the world.

And St. Joseph had a close relationship with the Savior Jesus, caring for Him and His mother.

St. Joseph has the title Guardian of the Church, interceding for us who call upon Jesus by faith so that we can continue to be faithful to upholding the Church to fulfill its mission in teh world, just as Joseph raised Jesus.

March 17, 2024: Fifth Sunday of Lent

As we get nearer to the Sacred Paschal Triduum, the Gospel reading sets the tone for the important events we will soon commemorate again.

Jesus used a rather simple request from some Greeks who want to see Him as an opportunity to declare His purpose: He is to glorify the Father by being lifted up on the Cross to be the means of salvation for all the world.

Christ submitted obediently to the Father, Hebrews indicates, so that He could become this source of our salvation.

As our Savior, He creates our hearts, making them clean and putting God's law in us so that will truly live His rightoueness in a way that was never fully accomplished in the Old Covenant.

It's a powerful scene when Christ asked God to glorify His Name and God spoke:  God truly revealed Himself in the fullest way in Christ's Paschal Mystery of Death and Resurrection, which now is at work in us who join Him in dying and rising to live by faith and God accomplishes His purpose in us.

March 10, 2024: Fourth Sunday of Lent/Laetare Sunday

At the midpoint of Lent, we rejoice in the gift God offers to us sinners.  Though sin has cut us off from our relationship with God, He has provided a way of salvation for us.  The first reading has a dark tone as it describes how God's people were unfaithful to God.

Then God sent them into exile for 70 years, to bring rest to the land that had missed its Sabbaths.  After that time, He restored His people.

The second reading praises God, Who is rich in mercy, and proclaims the important truth that we are saved by grace, and then we are empowered to do the good works God has in mind for us.

Ultimately, as Jesus told Nicodemus in the Gospel reading, God loved the world, and didn't want to condemn it:  So He sent His Son so that we could be saved.

That is such Good News, and we are called to proclaim it and live it.

March 3, 2024: Third Sunday of Lent

When God formed a special relationship with His Chosen People, He established the commandments that would allow them to experience the fullness of life.  It's fitting that the psalmist in Psalm 19 praises God's Law that created and sustains the world.

In Christ, a new Law emerges, one which fulfills the Old Testament Law, because the New Law commands us to focus on honoring God with our hearts.  Jesus drove home the point forcefully when He cleansed the Temple of commercial practices that weren't helping people encounter God.

This is the wisdom and power of God at work, which is so foreign to Greek wisdom or Jewish insistnece of signs which St. Paul mentions, because God commands us through Christ to honor Him and purifies through His Paschal Mystery so we can do it.

One great example of someone who lived out God's commandments was St. Mother Katharine Drexel, whose feast day is today.  She devoted her immense inheritance wealth and her life's work as part of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament to found institutions to service Native Americans and African Americans, including St. Augustine Mission in Winnebago, NE.

I came with a group here during college, and it was an inspiring experience to walk in her footsteps of serving the people here. With great joy, I am back this weekend to celebrate her feast day and the impact this place had on me.