Happy Sunday!

It is good to be back home! Thank you for your prayers while I was traveling. I had the opportunity to stop at Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery in Roswell, NM and offer Mass for the Poor Clare sisters there. I then went to the final vows of a religious sister in Corpus Christi. From there I went to Austin, TX for my 10-year reunion with my seminary classmates from the North American College. We were about 50 of us who were ordained and 30 of us showed up for the reunion. It was a great time to spend together, catch up on the last 10 years, and share what the Lord has been doing in our lives.

In his song, "Lose Yourself," the artist Eminem raps, "the mood all changed."

We all know that moment when the mood changes, when life turns from lighthearted to deadly serious. That happens in today's Gospel. Jesus has just heard that John the Baptist, his cousin, forerunner, and friend, has been murdered. As Matthew tells us, "When Jesus heard of it, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself." Until now, he had been teaching in parables and healing quietly. But John's death signals a new phase. The shadow of the Cross begins to fall. Evil shows its teeth.

Around the time that the gold rushes ended in the nineteenth-century West, a curious phenomenon arose in New England known as money diggers. These were men who roamed the countryside with shovels, divining rods, and superstitious hope, convinced that treasure lay buried beneath their feet. Surely there must be gold under our feet. But there was not. The craze of these wild goose chases caused many to lose farms, families, and sanity.

Happy Sunday!

This weekend we hear the parable of the sower who abundantly sows seed on the path, on rocky soil, amongst thorns, and on rich soil. As with most parables we can unpack them from many different directions. This parable invites us to consider the type of soil we are that receives the seed, that is, the word of God. However, we don't just stop there. We also ask ourselves about the sower himself, who is God.

Happy Sunday! I hope and pray everyone has had a good July 4th weekend! This weekend we are welcoming Fr. Jeff Pooley, our new parochial vicar. He'll be getting settled in over the next couple of weeks, and then I'll be away on vacation. He'll do a great job while I'm gone! I will be traveling the last two weeks of July for my 10-year reunion with my classmates from seminary and then heading to Colorado. I'll be back on August 1.

Happy Sunday! This weekend we are sad to say farewell to Fr. Michael. It has been a great joy to serve alongside him these past two years. His last Mass will be the Spanish Mass on Sunday. Please keep him in your prayers as he begins his new assignment as the parochial vicar at St. Anne parish in Gilbert. With his departure comes the arrival of the newly ordained Fr. Jeff Pooley. He will be joining us starting July 1. It is a great joy to welcome him and to have our parish be his first assignment as a priest. I certainly know how much of a gift it was to start my priestly ministry here in 2016 and I know Fr. Pooley will experience the same. Thank you for offering him such a warm welcome.

Jean Amery, a Holocaust survivor tortured by the Nazis, later wrote about the abyss of human evil. He described his reaction as an "indignant despair." Haven't we all, to some degree, felt that abyss opened beneath us? A sudden loss, a violent head- line, a moment of loneliness or panic, when the world feels fragile and meaning seems to collapse?

Happy Sunday! It's been a number of weeks since I've written a bulletin letter and so much has happened. We were blessed to have the ordination of four new priests for the diocese on June 6 and to host the first Mass for Fr. Nathan Blanchard last Sunday. Please continue to keep these new priests in prayer as they prepare to begin their priestly assignments in July.

When I was a young altar server, I once overheard two very different comments about the Eucharist. One person asked, "Is Father distributing the bread or the wine?" Later, another asked, "Can you go get Jesus from the tabernacle?" Same parish, same Mass, but two very different ways of speaking. I pondered: So, is it bread that we pretend is Jesus? Or is Jesus a tiny white thing in a box? I was utterly confused.