Happy Sunday!

This past weekend we celebrated the First Communion and Confirmation for a group of about 100 children and adults. Fr. Thielo Ramirez in Williams came to confer the Sacrament of Confirmation in his role as dean. I am so grateful to Cathy Carlsen and her amazing team who lead religious education for our children. Skyler Wilkie and Michael Vollmer prepared the teens and adults for Sacraments and I am grateful to them and their teams as well!

Happy Sunday!

As we continue the Easter season our parish prepares for our First Communion and Confirmation Mass this coming Saturday, April 25th. I am so grateful to Cathy Carlsen and her team in their preparations for this wonderful event. Of course it is not just an event, but has been two years of preparations, especially through Sunday Mass and catechism classes. We will also have some adults receiving their Sacraments this Saturday. Please keep candidates in prayer as they prepare for this special day.

Happy Divine Mercy Sunday!

Today is the last day of the Octave of Easter and Divine Mercy Sunday. St. John Paul II instituted this feast in 2000 at the canonization of St. Faustina Kowalska. Her diary, "Divine Mercy in My Soul" recounts her personal experiences of Jesus in prayer and his invitation to her to promote His mercy. She was given, by Jesus, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy to be spread throughout the world to encourage souls to trust in the mercy of God.

Our Collect prayer at the beginning of the Easter Mass prays thus, "O God, who on this day, through your Only Begotten Son, have conquered death and unlocked for us the path to eternity ... " The Easter celebration is a celebration of life and the victory over death. In 1 Corinthians 15 St. Paul famously wrote, "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Happy Palm Sunday!

Today we begin Holy Week as we celebrate the entrance of the Lord Jesus into Jerusalem. As the crowds sing, "Hosanna to the Son of David!", we also experience an ominous feeling as we anticipate what will come in a few short days. One of the beautiful practices during Holy Week is to participate in the daily mass readings each day. Each day of readings leads to the next and helps prepare us for the sacred Triduum. If you are able to attend daily liturgies during this week I certainly recommend it.

Happy Sunday!

This weekend we celebrate the 5th Sunday of Lent and the Third and Final Scrutiny for our Elect preparing for baptism this Easter. It's amazing that Lent has flown so quickly. Please keep our Elect in prayer as they prepare in these final weeks for baptism. Keep an eye out for the Holy Week Schedule and the Easter Mass schedule. The Easter Sunday Mass schedule will be slightly different from our normal Sunday schedule as we attempt to accommodate the larger crowds.

If you are like me, it's easy to fixate on our shadows: failures, guilt, shame. Especially when we suffer, it is easy to want to blame ourselves or others. In this week's Gospel, Jesus' disciples ask about the blind man, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?" (John 9:2) They, like us, focus on blame. But Jesus sees the entire situation differently: "Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him."

Happy Sunday!

It is great to be back in Flagstaff! I can't believe how the time has flown. Thank you to everyone for the warm welcome back. It always feels good to be home. On my sabbatical I was able to spend the month of February in Honduras working on my Spanish, praying, and reading. I was very grateful that the Missioners of Christ opened their doors to me and welcomed me into their community.

When I sit down to answer emails or write a Gospel reflection or return a phone call, I sometimes wonder: Does any of this humdrum work matter? Maybe you ask the same thing about your daily labor. Today's Gospel, the Transfiguration, offers a surprising answer.

Jesus leads Peter, James, and John up a mountain. There, "his face shone like the sun face and his clothes become white as light" (Matthew 17:2). That detail regard- ing his clothes is worth considering.

In my second-to-last year of seminary, I woke up one September morning to devastating news: two beloved classmates had died in a car crash. I was overwhelmed with grief and anger like I had never known. I entered therapy for the first time and had intense conversations with my spiritual director. For months I felt lost in a spiritual wilderness. But something unexpected happened: I encountered Christ there. The fear and sorrow didn't destroy me. In fact, that spiritual desert was a time of intense growth in faith.

A few years into my priesthood, I hit a wall. I had taken on too many commitments: Masses, meetings, minis- tries, projects. I couldn't keep up. I was double-booking, forgetting things, running late, and letting people down. My boss at the time, a wise priest, and our shared secretary, noticed. For my birthday, the two gave me a stack of 100 flashcards, each with one word printed in a different language: "NO." It was funny, but also painfully true. If I couldn't say no, my yes was in danger.

I recently learned why zebras have stripes. Scientists used to think it was for camouflage, but new research suggests something more interesting: the stripes help zebras blend in with one another. When a predator looks at a herd, the overlapping stripes make it hard to single out one animal. But if a researcher spray-paints a dot on just one zebra, predators lock on it and eventually attack. The lesson? In the wild, blending in is protection. Standing out can be dangerous.

A priest I know was once falsely accused of a terrible crime. The claim was wild and easily disproved, but for a while, it didn't matter. In the atmosphere shaped by the abuse crisis of the early 2000s, the public assumption was guilty until proven innocent. His name was dragged through the mud, and his ministry placed on hold. I had the privilege - and the burden - of walking closely with him during that time. He was angry.