“It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, at all times to acclaim you, O Lord, but on this night above all to laud you yet more gloriously, when Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. For he is the true lamb who has taken away the sins of the world; by dying he has destroyed our death, and by rising, restored our life.”

Dear Friends,

Palm Sunday inaugurates Holy Week by placing the Church before a paradox that unsettles every shallow understanding of power, success, and faith: salvation comes through obedient self-emptying, not through domination or resistance. We are not invited liturgically to a sentimental admiration of Jesus’ suffering but required to have a theological clarity and personal decision. The question posed is not whether Christ suffered, but whether we are willing to follow the path by which suffering becomes redemptive.

“Behold!” It's a word that we hear at each Mass, but it takes on an even deeper meaning during the Sacred Triduum, as there is indeed a great amount to behold during its most holy liturgies.

Dear Friends,

As we continue our Lenten journey and approach this 5th Sunday of Lent, the Church invites us to continue looking more deeply into our hearts. Lent is often the time when we try to “fix” ourselves—we give something up, we pray more, we try to improve. But sometimes, without realizing it, we spend more time looking at the sins of others than examining our own.

In the course of just 3 days, the most important, most symbolically rich, most dramatically beautiful liturgies of the entire year take place, with those three days having their own special season of the Liturgical Year: The Holy Triduum. The Triduum encompasses Maundy (Holy) Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday’s Easter Vigil. These three liturgies together act almost like one continuous Mass, with there being no dismissal such as “go forth, the Mass is ended” given the end of the Easter Vigil, and no greeting of “In the name of the Father…” given on Good Friday.

Dear Friends,

As a young boy, I used to think eyeglasses looked "cool." Now that I have to wear them always, and my vision continues to change, I often wish I didn’t need them at all. Moreover, I tend to misplace them often. We usually assume that everyone wants to see perfectly, but as a colleague recently pointed out to me when I was sharing my situation, there is a strange "middle ground" where your vision is just good enough to get by, but bad enough that you have to carry your glasses everywhere. Life is actually simpler when we admit we need help to see clearly. This is what the gospel reading today reminds us of.

While on my last trip to Italy, I visited a place I had been wanting to see for quite some time, called the Capuchin Crypt in Rome. This crypt is located under the Holy Mary of the Conception of the Capuchins church, which was constructed by the Franciscan Capuchin Friars in the year 1626. In 1631, Cardinal Antonio Barberini, OFMCap, ordered the remains of thousands of Capuchins to be exhumed and transferred to the crypt below the church.

Dear Friends,

Two weeks ago, following the whirlwind of "Name Tag Weekend," I was finally settling down into the quiet of my evening. That peace, however, was suddenly interrupted by a single phone call from the daughter of a former parishioner at St. Andrew the Apostle. Her message was brief but urgent: "Father Robert, your friend collapsed in church and is being rushed to the emergency room at Banner Thunderbird Medical Center in Glendale."