FROM FATHER JOHN:  “[King] Nebuchadnezzar exclaimed, ‘Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who sent his angel to deliver the servants who trusted in him; they disobeyed the royal command and yielded their bodies rather than serve or worship any god except their own God.’” ~ Daniel 3:95
 
I continue to pray that you and your family are healthy, safe and well. Our mass intention this morning was for Joseph C. Bertino, Sr. I’ve been adding an intention at each daily mass for the health and safety of all the people of our parish and their families.
 
I think it’s important that each of us pray daily for faithfulness and conversion of hearts and minds during this time of pandemic. In my own personal prayer, I pray that all of us will realize unforeseen Graces from God in this time of sacrifice, testing and pain and that these Graces will truly transform us, will truly be a moment of conversion, will lead people back to the Lord our God, will deepen each of our relationships with the Lord and inspire us to be Missionary Disciples who lead other people to our Lord Jesus.
 
Jeremy Hylka, our Parish Youth Minister, has posted a video of him leading (from the Tower Room of our Church) the Divine Mercy Chaplet on our YouTube channel, our Facebook site and our Twitter account. Tuesday evenings are the normal evening when our Follow Youth Ministry gathers for their Alpha nights. They met last night via video conferencing and Jeremy has a link to that on Facebook as well. 
 
Sara Groppe, our Parish Music Director, is working on some music videos for our YouTube channel. We should be posting those sometime very soon. She’s recording some of the great hymns that we all love and sing at church. She’s made the music part of the first videos. She’s working to edit the videos to add the lyrics so you can sing along with the hymns. This is a great way to participate in our faith and to get ready to let your voice sing out when we’re all back together for Sunday mass!
 
Sara and her sisters (I’m not sure her brothers’ sing and play) are going to come to our church and lead us in song for the Holy Triduum. We are going to have music and song as part of our Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, our celebration of the Passion of our Lord on Good Friday, the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday and our celebration on Easter Sunday! I can’t tell you how excited I am. I think you will really enjoy watching our celebrations on these most Holy Days.
 

 
Here is the direct link to the readings of the day: 
 
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/040120.cfm
 
 
My Homily:
I’ve always loved this reading about King Nebuchadnezzar and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the Book of the Prophet Daniel. 
 
The first thing we see in the reading is the faithfulness of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They refuse to worship false gods and stay true to the Lord our God even to the point of willingly going into the white hot fire.
 
Archbishop Listecki of Milwaukee was one of my priest professors when I was in the seminary. Our class was his final Moral Theology class before he was ordained a bishop. One of the things he used to love do in class was throw difficult moral scenarios at us and ask us what we would do, how we would advise a member of our parish who comes to us with a difficult moral situation, etc.
 
One time he painted the scenario for one of my classmates. He said to my classmate, “You’re the Cardinal Archbishop of the capital city of country ruled by an anti-Catholic, anti-Christian dictator. They arrest you. They threaten to kill you if you don’t publically deny the faith on TV. You believe them. They will put you on TV and execute you unless you deny the faith on TV so all your people can see it. What do you do?”
 
Shockingly, my classmate said, “I’d deny the faith.” Archbishop Listecki exploded and a great debate ensued. I could not believe that my classmate could possibly be so faithless. I wondered how he could possibly be in seminary studying for the priesthood. The priesthood is a calling that demands that we give our lives over to Christ Jesus; it demands a great deal of faithfulness. It never surprised me that my classmate left the priesthood after about a year and a half. The faithfulness that he needed to get through the challenging times just wasn’t there.
 
We are living in a challenging time. Faithfulness to our Lord Jesus is required and will see us through.
 
But, our reading from Book of the Prophet Daniel shows us that there is more to it than just being faithful to the Lord. What we see in King Nebuchadnezzar is that faithfulness leads to something; it leads to something that is even greater than faithfulness. It leads to conversion.
 
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego give us a real example of the ultimate in faithfulness. They willingly going into the white hot fire rather than deny the Lord our God. And in doing so, the bring conversion to the heart and mind of King Nebuchadnezzar. The king recognizes the Lord our God when he exclaimed, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who sent his angel to deliver the servants who trusted in him.”
 
In the next line of scripture, we can see how deep the King’s conversion is,
“Therefore I decree for nations and peoples of every language that whoever blasphemes the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be cut to pieces and his house made into a refuse heap. For there is no other God who can rescue like this.” (Daniel 3:96)
 
When we are faithful to the Lord something greater comes into the world; the conversion of the hearts and minds of others. It is our faithfulness that allows us to introduce people to the Lord, to help them develop their relationship with the Lord and to help lead them to ever greater discipleship and love for the Lord.
 
If we want people to realize the Grace of a deep and abiding faith in this time of crisis, then we must first be faithful ourselves so that we can be the instrument of the Lord that brings the people around us to our Lord Jesus.
 
May God Bless you and all those who love the Lord.
 
 
 
 

FROM FATHER JOHN:  “Thus says the Lord GOD: O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them, and bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and have you rise from them, O my people! I will put my spirit in you that you may live, and I will settle you upon your land; thus you shall know that I am the LORD. I have promised, and I will do it, says the LORD.” ~ Ezekiel 37:12 – 14

I hope and pray that this email finds you and your family healthy, safe and well.
 
I want you to know how much I am looking forward to the time that we come together again physically in our Church to celebrate mass. I celebrated mass (with Deacon John assisting me and his wife Liz reading the first two readings and the psalm) for all our weekend mass intentions.  
 
I have to honestly say that in one sense it is exactly the same; it’s the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Eucharist and the most powerful prayer that our Lord has given the universal Church. But, at the same time the church is empty, it’s a big church, and you’re not there with us physically even though I know you’re with us spiritually.
 
It doesn’t feel the same. Something is different. Something is missing. You and your family! That’s what I miss the whole time I celebrate mass by myself or with Deacon John and his wife.
 
The other thing I have found is that it is much harder to say mass without you! There’s no response during my homily. There’s no one there to laugh at my silly jokes and stories or to greet before and after mass. Deacon John and Liz say all the responses but it’s not the same as 100, 200 or more voices saying, “and with Your Spirit.” There is no choir or cantor to lead us in song. Saying mass to a camera is strange, disconcerting and somewhat nerve racking.
 
But, I hope you watch our video of the mass from St. Paul’s. I hope you find it life-giving, reassuring, comforting and I hope it brings you spiritual well-being. After all, I’m not celebrating mass just to celebrate it. I’m not celebrating it just for me. I’m celebrating mass for our Sunday mass intentions and I’m celebrating it for you! Rest assured, you and your family are in my prayers each day and every time I celebrate the Sacred Liturgy.
 
We are still struggling to stream mass live. I recorded the video and uploaded it our parish YouTube channel. Here is the direct link to view the mass.
 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx1mMbQA2G9jBR0fFDkMMNw
 
You can also go to our Facebook page where a link to our channel has been posted.
Please subscribe to our channel!  I also want to share with you a link to today’s daily readings as well my homily.
 
Here is the link to the readings:  http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/032920.cfm
 
My homily:  (Please note that if you watch the mass and read this text, the two homilies won’t be exactly the same. The spoken homily never comes out exactly the way I wrote. I like to think this is the work of the Holy Spirit in action.)
 
The raising of Lazarus from the dead. Think about it for a moment, Jesus Christ raised Lazarus from the dead! Jesus could only have done this if He is truly the Son of God, the Lord of Lords and the Lord of Life. This gospel lets us know that not only that Jesus has risen from the dead, has ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father but that he shares with us his own resurrected life. Every time we celebrate mass, we celebrate the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus and how we share in His life, how we will share in His Death but, most importantly, how we will share in His resurrection and ascension to the Father.

But, there is even more to this gospel. 
 
My mom hates technology, in fact, she is afraid of technology. She won’t admit it but it’s true. She used to have one of those old flip phones and never texted anybody. Then she discovered that her grandchildren would answer a text within minutes but that they would never return her phone calls. So, she began to text them but it was hard to text with that old flop phone. After a year or so of frustration, my dad and I convinced her to get a smartphone. She didn’t really want it; we actually kind of forced it on her.
 
But, then, after a few weeks she discovered she could talk into the phone and it would text people what she said. She became a maniac, she texts all the time, she sends out more texts in an hour than I do in a week.
 
A friend of hers sent her a text this week from what her friend is now referring to as Prison. She called her home, her prison. It’s a nice home, it’s a good home but sheltering at home can feel like we’re in prison. Even more so, it can make us feel like we’re in the same tomb that Lazarus was in.
 
It’s one of the great spiritual truths of life – we can at times fall into a tomb, where we can feel dead spiritually, where we’ve separated ourselves from the Lord our God and entered into a spiritual malaise.
 
Bishop Barron wrote that “each us, to a degree, is spiritually dead. Maybe you're like Lazarus - four days in your tomb. Maybe you feel there is just no hope for the likes of you. I don't care how far you've fallen. I don't care how dead you are. The voice of Jesus can pull you out of the tomb. Maybe you're sunk in an addiction. Maybe you've done things that you are so ashamed of that you can't even bring yourself to speak of them. Maybe you've fallen out of a relationship with the people you love the most. Maybe you've been a first-class jerk. Maybe you just feel you're a failure. Maybe you're terrified of dying. I don't care. Listen for the voice! ‘Untie him and let him go.’”
 
My sisters and brothers, we need to listen to the voice of the Lord and come out of our tombs. Our Lord Jesus called out, “Lazarus, come out!” Our Lord Jesus calls out to us as well, “Come out! Untie him and let him go.” Our Lord Jesus wants us to come out of the tombs we create for ourselves so much so that he came into the world to lifts us out our tombs. 
 
During this time of crises, remember what Jesus said to Martha,
“I am the resurrection and the life;
whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
Do you believe this?”
She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”
 
Always remember that our Lord Jesus is the Christ, is the Son of God, who came into the world to lift us out of our tombs, to lift us out darkness, to give us new life in the resurrection!
 
Do you believe this? My sisters and brothers, do you believe this? The answer is simple, it’s Martha’s answer, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God.”
 
May God bless you and all those who love the Lord.