April 5, 2026

Dear Parishioners,

Around the middle of Lent I did the Stations of the Cross with our religious education program. It was a “teaching Stations,” where I explained each Station in our church and pointed out some of the features of the paintings. We have beautiful Stations and there are many interesting little symbols discretely portrayed in each of the paintings. One of the symbols throughout the corpus has to do with sight and seeing. Let me highlight the 8th Station: Jesus Meets the Women and Children of Jerusalem.

In this painting on the back wall of our church, Jesus has just left the gates of Jerusalem, having made it through the city streets. He is about to set on the path through the grass and hills to reach Calvary. A slave boy carrying the titulus leads him forward. This same slave boy appears in the 4th Station, carrying in that scene the nails to be used to crucify Jesus. This slave boy represents a perversion of the innocence of which Jesus spoke when he encouraged the disciples to be childlike to enter into the Kingdom.

Another side feature of the painting is the water well on the left, which should remind us of Jesus encountering the Samaritan woman at the well earlier in his ministry. If you recall that scene, which we read about in the third week of Lent, Jesus opened the heart of this woman and brought her into the Kingdom by going into the darkest parts of her path (her previous marriages). Jesus descended into the “dark well” of her soul. This woman felt the love of Christ. She didn’t feel judged about her shameful past. Jesus truly saw her, and this beholding of her heart—the good and the bad—purified her. This propelled her on to being a missionary. She would be able to go boldly into the town and speak of her encounter with God.

Likewise, now at the Passion, Jesus is seeing these women and children by the well. He is seeing into their pure hearts and elevating them, which is why they love him and want to be there in his darkest moment. When we truly love someone, we see them and love them always, even in their imperfections. In fact, we love them all the more in their imperfections. We want to be with them in their darkest moments. You’ll notice Jesus reaching out to the women and them reaching out to him. They want to be near each other. They are also, in a way, blessing each other with this outreach.

But what strikes me most about this scene is how the women and children want to be near Jesus and see him. I especially love the woman in the back. She is lifting her child up above the crowd. It is similar to what you see at a papal audience, where people lift up their children to see the pope passing by. It’s like they want the presence and gaze of the pope to strike their child. There is precedent to this. We read in the Acts of the Apostles: “As a result, they would carry the sick out into the streets and lay them on cots and mats so that when Peter came by, at least his shadow might fall on some of them” (Acts 5:15). If these children see Jesus, they will receive the grace of their life. Veronica already saw Jesus and had forever printed on her veil the face of Christ.

We generally don’t want people to see us at our lowest. We dress ourselves literally before going out into public—wash our face, brush our hair, tuck in our shirts. We want them to see our best. And generally we either don’t want to see ugliness. We try to hide our children from violence.

Christ’s passion, it could be claimed, was ugliness at its worst. Not only Jesus tired, sweating, bleeding, dirty, but Jesus being abused, mocked, and rejected. This is something, you’d think, people, especially women and children, would want to turn away from. But they don’t. They want to see it. And not because they are sadists, but because they, again, love the heart of Jesus. When we love someone truly, we want to be around them when they are hurting and being hurt. And seeing Jesus, in particular, especially when he is hurting and being hurt, will indeed save us. I imagine these children growing up to be disciples of Christ.

Mary the Mother of God was the first to see Jesus in his Easter glory because she was also there to see him in his Good Friday shame. The same with Mary Magdalene—the second to see Jesus on Easter Sunday and also there to see it all on Good Friday. May we learn from their example. May we look upon the Church with love always, especially when she is not at her best. May we look too upon our loved ones with care and desire when they are at their worst. Our love will sustain them, as their look upon us at our worst will sustain us. Then we’ll be able to truly appreciate one another in our glory, a glory which Jesus certainly wants us to experience.

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Happy Easter to you all. I want to take a moment to thank all those who worked so hard to make the Triduum services so beautiful: our musicians, our sacristans, servers (especially seminarian Greg Wilk for MCing), and ushers (including the Knights of Columbus), our church (and gym) decorators, and our parish staff. Easter blessings to you and your families. I pray you experience the resurrection in your life.

The Easter Mass schedule today on Sunday, April 5 will be the following: 7:30 am (UC), 9 am (UC) and 9 am (GYM), 10:30 am (UC) and 10:30 am (GYM), and 12 pm (UC). Remember, the Saturday Easter Vigil on April 4 is at 7 pm and is a special liturgy.

Congratulations to all of the OCIA candidates and catechumens: Gabrielle Anne Rosas, Kirk Behrens, Julian Andres Robles, Joshua Campos, Howard Robert Leach, Anthony Kuzmanic, Joseph O’Brien, Heidi O’Brien, Nicholas Marella, Eve Remien, Rose Kosatka, and James Wolfe. We are proud of you and look forward to your journey with us in the Kingdom. Thank you to our OCIA team who have been working with this great group since September. Please pray for these individuals and be sure to welcome them into our Church when you see them.

One final note, Easter week, Monday, April 6th through Friday, April 10th there will be no 6:25 am Mass. There will instead be communion services at 6:25 am. We will still have the 8:30 am Mass those days. There will be no daily confessions.

Our parish school is on spring break this week. Enjoy your time away.

Yours in Christ,

Fr. James Wallace