Dearly Beloved,
 
"My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will" (Mt 26:39). A significant act and event in the life of Jesus Christ is his sacred passion. The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson's 2004 movie on the Passion of Christ, portrays how deep and intense Christ's act of love for the redemption of the world from sin and death was, illustrating the gore, the bloodletting, and the bodily pain associated with his humble submission to the Father's will. It is counterintuitive to imagine that God, who is love, would demand the free obedience of his beloved Son to pay such a high price for the sake of sinners. However, it is truly an act of love when Jesus became "obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Phil 2:8) to save humanity from eternal doom. Jesus drank the chalice; he freely took upon himself the suffering that our sins triggered. 
 
Chris's passion is central to our salvation history, and the Church has dedicated an entire liturgical week to commemorate it. "Holy week is ordered to the commemoration of Christ's passion, beginning with his Messianic entrance into Jerusalem" (Universal Norm, 31). Our Lenten season reaches its crescendo during Holy Week, from Monday to Thursday inclusive. It climaxes in the Sacred Triduum when we remember and spiritually participate in the paschal mystery- suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ. 
 
Today, on Palm Sunday, we recall Christ's entrance into Jerusalem to fulfill his paschal mystery. In the procession, we spiritually entered the sacred moment marking the beginning of our redemption. Let us keep the spirit of passion alive in the days ahead. "What, really, do the liturgies of the triduum celebrate?" Nathan Mitchell raised this question in an essay titled "The Three Days of Pascha." Is it just about stepping into a historical moment and walking the way of the cross with Jesus? It is more than that. Mitchell provides an answer: "What the paschal triduum actually celebrates is mystery, not history; anamnesis, not mimesis.... They celebrate not once what happened to Jesus but what is not happening among us as a people called to conversion, gathered in faith, and gifted with the spirit of holiness."
 
May the spirit of Christ's passion take full possession of our hearts to do the Father's will and participate actively in the liturgies and services of the Holy Thursday of the Lord's Supper, Friday of the Passion of the Lord (Good Friday), and the solemn Holy Saturday. Please pray earnestly for our elect, Sophia, who enters the last week of a long preparation for the reception of the sacraments of initiation. We look forward to celebrating the triumph of the Risen Christ, but first, let's enter into the mystery of Christ's passion. The passion is the prayer; let's pray it.
 
In the passion of Christ,
Fr. Alayode, O.P.
 

​Beloved in Christ,
 
Mary and Martha’s experience of grief at the death of their brother, Lazarus, is a universal one. Jesus, who loved Lazarus and his sisters, similarly expressed the same sorrow when he met the reality of Lazarus’ death and how it threw his sisters into emotional distress. In truth and deed, death stuns and stinks. Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus because he experienced the sting of death and it must have dawned on him at this close connection to the death of a loved one that this was not God’s original plan for humanity at creation. Sin brought about death and graves. Jesus, however, did not stop at sharing in human grief over death. Jesus wept, but he followed his display of sorrow with the restoration of life to Lazarus. Jesus says to Mary, “I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will never die” (Jn 11:25-26).
 
Jesus defeats sin and death through the life-giving spirit of God. Jesus is the author of life. Turning to his Father in prayer, Jesus called Lazarus, who had been dead for four days, back to life: “Lazarus, come out!” (Jn 11: 43). In Jesus is the ultimate fulfilment of Ezekiel’s prophecy to the Israelites in exile: “O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them” (Ez 37:12). Jesus brings to fulfilment the promise of God to restore life to the dead through his spirit who gives life: “I will put my spirit in you that you may live” (Ez 37:14). The spirit that death snuffs out at death is returned by Jesus who not only declared himself as the resurrection and life but indeed was raised from the dead on the third day. All who believe and live through his spirit will not be defeated by death because Jesus made a promise to bring them to life at the resurrection. St. Paul affirms Jesus’ promise about spirit and life in the following words: “If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit that dwells in you” (Rom 8:11).
 
The necessary condition for placing hope in the resurrection of the dead is our faith in Jesus. In his words
to Martha, Jesus declares, “Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
(Jn 11:26). As believers in Jesus, as people who live in and by the spirit of Christ, we must never allow the stench of death to suffocate us. As Christians, we are hopeful of life after death because Jesus assures us. Beyond Lazarus' death lies the hope of the resurrection of glorified bodies of those who believed in Jesus and lived in his spirit. May God keep us striving against all the sufferings of life and walking confidently through the dark valley of life.
 
Next Sunday is Palm Sunday. Let us be prepared to walk with Jesus into Jerusalem to fulfil his mission
of dying to bring us life. Let our hearts be prepared to encounter the spirit of Christ in the liturgy of the
Holy Week.
 
In Christ,
Fr. Alayode, OP
 

 Beloved in Christ,
 Happy Laetare Sunday!
 We have come into the second half of our annual Lenten season.
The church offers us a little respite from our penitential discipline,
and filled with deeper devotion and eager faith,  we hasten toward the solemn celebration of the Easter joy. In the spirit of anticipation, we can have some flowers to decorate the altar, play more instruments to enhance our liturgical worship, and have the celebrant wear rose-colored vestments. Using the words of Prophet
Isaiah, the church bids us rejoice: “Be joyful, all who were in mourning.”
 
In our joyfulness, however, we do not slacken in our Lenten journey of self-discovery and conversion.
God is still at work, leading us closer to himself. This Sunday, the Gospel is about the man born blind.
The healing of this man's blindness is not only a case of physical healing; it also points to fulfillment in
the prophets that the Son of man will come to heal the blind. The blindness has a mystical or spiritual dimension. Jesus is the one Prophet Isaiah was referring to in his work (see Is. 29:9, 18; 35:5; 42:7, 16, 18-19; 59:10, etc.). Jesus came to heal our spiritual blindness. Like the scribes and Pharisees who opposed Jesus, we too may be suffering from spiritual blindness of pride and other sinful dispositions from a hardened heart. Jesus wants to heal us of any form of spiritual blindness so that we begin to see, recognize, and bear witness to him as the blind man in this Sunday’s gospel. Jesus wants to lead us from darkness into the radiance of the faith through the sacraments. We were once in darkness, but now we must be light for the world.
 
We celebrate Sophia Hoglund McGuirk’s second scrutiny today. Our Elect this year is being led from spiritual blindness to sight as she prepares to receive the sacrament of initiation during the Easter season. We must continue to pray for her as we pray for one another to experience healing from our spiritual blindness, so that, coming to a deep faith in Jesus, we may courageously testify to him publicly by our deeds and words.
 
Monday, March 16, a day before St. Patrick’s feast, is our parish Penance service. Please consider it an opportunity to receive healing for spiritual blindness. Nothing blinds the soul more than unconfessed sins. There will be six priests available to hear confessions. Let us make it our Lenten duty to go to confession, if needed, before Easter. Tomorrow night, from 7 pm, is our opportunity to do so. On Thursday, we shall gather once again here to celebrate the solemnity of St. Joseph, spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary; we shall sing the Gloria that we have fasted from since Ash Wednesday! Come, join the celebration.
 
In Christ our Light,
 
Fr. Alayode, OP
 

​Beloved in Christ,
 
“A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, ' Give me a drink” (John 4:7). This verse within the pericope of this Sunday’s gospel captures a fundamental aspect of our spiritual life- the desire for union of love with Christ. We are made with a need for water, not just natural water but spiritual water that sustains our need for eternal life and union with Jesus. The spiritual water here symbolizes the Holy Spirit, love, and faith. In our journey to faith, we will be tested by dryness, emptiness, neediness, and a general human lack. In this state of spiritual dryness, we, like the people of Israel, “In their thirst for water” (Ex 17:3), may find ourselves questioning God. In the Exodus account, God instructed Moses to strike the rock at Horeb and water “flow from it for the people to drink” (Ex 17:6). But the water Moses provided was not satisfying; it was not the living water that sustains continually without end. Only Christ, the new Moses, the Rock of our salvation, can provide that life-giving water of faith and love.
 
It is to Jesus we must go to drink of the living water of grace and faith. The thirst for true love and faith represented in the Samaritan woman (who has married five times to false lovers) will be satisfied only by Jesus when we approach him at the well. Like the Samaritan woman, we have at different times in our lives looked for the thirst quenching water in the wrong places of the secular world, but now we know it is in our coming to Christ that “we have gained access by faith to this grace in which we stand” (Rom 5:2). The love we have and in which we live now is because we have asked and have received from Christ. Paul affirms this when he writes, “the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). It is Christ who generously poured his love and faith into our hearts, that is hearts that have softened, not the hardened hearts of the Israelites at Meriba and Massa (Ps. 95:8).
 
We must never stop going to the well to meet Jesus, the Rock, who provides the living water that satisfies, to ask him to assuage our thirst for him. The words of the Samaritan must come forth frequently from our lips: “Give me living water, that I may never thirst again” (Jn 4:15). The question is: do we accept our need for Christ’s living water to nourish and sustain our spiritual life? Do we understand that our faith and relationship with Jesus can only grow profoundly when we ask Jesus for his gift of living water? “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water” (John 4:10). In this Lenten season, a time of grace, let us approach Jesus, the Rock of our salvation, and ask of him to fill our repentant heart of flesh with the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Living water. Let us ask him to strengthen our faith in him to the point of sharing that gift of faith with others, so that they, too, like the Samaritans, may come to believe and know that Jesus is “truly the savior of the world” (John 4: 42).
 
As we continue to open our hearts to Jesus during this season of Lent, may our hearts be converted to thirst for Jesus, who also thirsts for our faith (see John 19:28), and may he kindle in us the fire of divine love (from the Third Sunday of Lent preface). In conclusion, I invite you to praise and thanksgiving using the words of the Psalmist: “Come let us sing joyfully to the Lord; let us acclaim the Rock of our salvation (Ps 95:1). Let's approach the well that is Jesus and draw water. The Lenten season is a profitable time to pursue this noble and holy act devoutly.
 
In Christ, the Rock,
Fr. Alayode, OP