The Bible doesn’t tell us what Jesus looked like, how do we know? Answer: The Shroud of Turin.

Today is Passion or Palm Sunday, where at Mass we solemnly read through Our Lord’s Passion and death. Yet the Scriptures aren’t the only place that testify to what happened to Our Lord Jesus Christ at His death. There is one relic par excellent that irrefutably testifies to the truth of the Scriptures. That relic is the Shroud of Turin – the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.

As part of 1st Century Jewish burial custom, people were wrapped in a burial cloth. “They took the body of Jesus and bound it with burial cloths along with the spices, according to Jewish burial custom.” (Jn 19:40) and “They both ran, but the other disciple [John] ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in” (Jn 20:4). Because of what they discovered on it, the burial cloth that was wrapped around Our Lord’s body, was preserved by his disciples after the Resurrection and became a closely guarded relic.

The last two weeks of Lent are historically known as Passiontide. During this time many churches cover their crosses, images of Jesus, angels, and saints with purple cloth. The season of Passiontide was more or less abrogated in 1969 when the Church came out with a new set of readings for Mass.

It used to be that two Sundays before Easter (5th Sunday of Lent), the Gospel reading was about Jesus confronting the established powers with his divinity; this caused those in authority to pick up rocks to stone him, “but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple” (Jn 8:46-59). Jesus would stay hidden from the religious authorities until his triumphant entry into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday); yet even then, he did not give anyone a chance to seize him until he was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Lent began on Ash Wednesday with Jesus telling us in the Gospel to pray, fast, and give alms; and by us receiving ashes, reminding us of our mortality. On the first Sunday of Lent we heard about Satan tempting Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden and tempting Jesus in the wilderness. In our modern world, Satan’s temptations abound, so much so, that we don’t recognize them much of the time, many people don’t recognize them at all; yet they are all about us leading us into sin and its consequences: slavery, suffering, death, and damnation.

Having fallen, having seen so many others fall, seeing the progress of evil in the world (and in the Church), we naturally become despondent. We can even give up on Christ and join the majority on the broad, easy road to perdition. (Mt 7:13)

This pastor’s column might seem mundane yet it’s important enough for you and the parish that I’m going to run it two weekends in a row. Please continue reading and get plugged in.

Information technology has been around for a generation now and as we all know, it is constantly improving, which is to say, it’s constantly evolving. Beginning this month, we began moving much of the data that we have on file with you to a significantly enhanced system called ParishStaq. We all also starting to transition those of us who are using on-line giving, from Vanco to a much better system called Pushpay. These two systems will work together to substantially improve our current information systems and should last for a long time to come.

This pastor’s column might seem mundane yet it’s important enough for you and the parish that I’m going to run it two weekends in a row. Please continue reading and get plugged in.

Information technology has been around for a generation now and as we all know, it is constantly improving, which is to say, it’s constantly evolving. Beginning this month, we began moving much of the data that we have on file with you to a significantly enhanced system called ParishStaq. We all also starting to transition those of us who are using on-line giving, from Vanco to a much better system called Pushpay. These two systems will work together to substantially improve our current information systems and should last for a long time to come.

Lent has begun and I hope you’ve made a resolution or more, yet it’s not too late if you haven’t. My pastor’s column from last Sunday was chock-full of helpful ideas, check it out on our website if you are still without a resolution or two.

Amongst various things, Lent provides us with an opportunity to focus on spiritually and/or morally improving upon an area or more of our lives; not victory, that’s up to God, but progress through our effort and God’s grace. To this end I want to address the predominant fault that lies within each of us.

Lent is a special penitential season when Catholic Christians try to become better Catholic Christians. Specifically, we try to make some sort of sacrifice for God’s Glory, our salvation, and to atone for our sins and the sins of the whole world. Some people do big things and some people do just one small thing, but we should all do something for the One who did everything for us.

Lent begins this Wednesday, so if you haven’t already made a Lenten resolution, please do so now. Great things, even little things, don’t happen without a commitment and a plan: marriage, parenting, career, good health, etc., all take great commitments and a plan. So does our faith. Martyrs have died for the Lord, and saints have given their whole lives for Him. This Lent please join me in making a commitment, with God’s grace, to a sacrifice that would please the Lord and perhaps better ourselves in the process.

In the Apostles Creed, a prayer we say at the beginning of the Rosary, we hear the words: “He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.” We hear it said again at Mass in the Nicene Creed: “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.” This is often referred to as The Second Coming.

At the end of our lives, all people regardless of their religion or lack thereof, will be judged by Jesus Christ and ultimately end up in heaven or hell. This is a frightening thought for many but not for all. If you read the lives of the saints you’ll notice that they don’t fear standing before the Lord – they long for it! For the rest of us, well let’s just say we still have work to do. Most people ignore unpleasant or scary things yet our final judgment is one of those things we shouldn’t ignore, but prepare for.

Lent is fast approaching and I started thinking about what to do, and more importantly, how to spiritually prepare. This gets me thinking about the spiritual life and a pastor’s column I wrote 18 months ago on the stages of the spiritual life. I reread it and thought I should share it with you again. A reminder, you can access all my past pastor’s columns on our website.

There is a path or way in the spiritual life to holiness or sanctity, common to all saints. Few know of its existence, and fewer still reach the highest stage in this life, most people never even start on the journey. I find it simultaneously enlightening and depressing. Enlightening because I can see the way forward, what can be, and how to proceed.

Two and three weekends ago I wrote pastor’s columns on how special this parish is. If you missed them you can still read them by visiting our website. What those pastor’s columns presumed as good (or even great), were things that are relative. Relative to other parishes in America today, we’re doing awesome. Compared to the early 1960’s not so much.

Over the past 60 years the trend line for religious practice in this country has been going down. People attending religious services or even identifying with a religion has fallen dramatically during that time. In 2019, the last year we have statistics for this kind of thing, 1500 Protestant churches closed – and that was before the pandemic!

A month ago the Wall Street Journal published a story on priests becoming increasingly conservative over the past generation, while the laity have become increasingly liberal. I haven’t read it but I’m pretty sure part of its inspiration comes from the results of worldwide surveys conducted on behalf of Pope Francis’ Synod on the Synod (pastor’s column dated 12/19/21). As part of that process, parishes and diocese all around the world gave input into what focus they would like the Church to have, and changes they would like to see.

Last week I wrote a pastor’s column on many of the objective things that demonstrate how Holy Redeemer Parish is so special. If you haven’t read that pastor’s column, you still can by visiting our website and clicking on the pastor’s column tab. Today I go a step further and write about why I think Holy Redeemer is so demonstratively special. Remember, none of this is to brag [see my commentary on this in last week’s pastor’s column], rather to share good news (gospel in Greek); good news that we all need in these very troubled times.

At the time covid shut us down in March of 2020, our average weekend Mass attendance was nearly 1600, it’s close to 1300 now. That means that nearly 20% of pre-covid practicing Catholics at Holy Redeemer have not returned. I don’t know what the national average is, or even the average for the Archdiocese of Seattle, the Archbishop is yet to release the numbers which is telling. With that in mind, given the news I share with you below, it is easy to draw the conclusion that the people who have not returned to Mass were for the most part, not very committed in the first place. I say that because the people who are attending Mass at Holy Redeemer now are, as a whole, more committed stewards of the faith than about any parish our size in the nation.

Regardless of what is going on in the world and our personal lives, we can have supernatural peace and joy when our lives are lived in Jesus Christ. We can have that, because God has come down from heaven in the divine person of Jesus Christ, to give us His Catholic Church, His Word, the Sacraments, communion with Him, and consolation from Him. So let us give thanks and praise to God for the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace; a peace the world cannot give or understand.

All too often we reject, out of hand, things of a supernatural nature. To be sure, we need to discern things that aren’t normal; and while God usually operates within the laws of nature, laws he created, he is not limited by them. God does occasionally perform miracles that nature or science cannot explain. Years ago I heard about the holy house of Loreto in Italy. It is supposedly the house that the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph lived in while they lived in Nazareth.

For the past 65 years, religious vocations have been few and far between. To address this shortage some bishops and religious superiors, in searching for future priests and religious, have mistakenly taken on some bad apples to offset that shortage. Thinking that anyone is better than no one, some have let wolves into the sheepfolds with very bad consequences. Then swinging in the opposite direction, some bishops and religious superiors have turned away good candidates because they weren’t talented enough.

This Thursday, December 8th, we mark The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, one of only three Marian Feast days that are so special that we observe them as holy days of obligation. To get some idea of how important the Blessed Virgin Mary is to God and thus to the Church and us, look at the list below of Marian Feast days throughout the liturgical year.

This Sunday, the 20th, we celebrate the annual feast of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. You will have heard some of what I am writing here in my homily yet even more here. As the staff will be out of the office for some of Thanksgiving week, we are running the same bulletin for the weekends of November 20 and 27. That means that this pastor’s column will be the same one for both weekends in a row.

The word King or Kings comes up over 3,000 times in the Bible! It is simply God’s default setting for Him and for us. Jesus is a King and not just any king, but as revealed in Sacred Scripture, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Mt 2:2; Lk 22:20; Jn 18:37; Rv 19:16; etc.). God is a monarch, ruling all His subjects in heaven in infinite perfection.

I write this pastor’s column on the day of the election, November 8, not knowing the outcomes. The people of the world, and I mean people all around the world, are filled with anxieties of one kind or another. Most of that anxiety is personal and familial, and some of it is societal.

Anxiety began in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned; out of fear they hid from God and didn’t answer Him immediately. They were afraid of what God might do to them – kill them – because that’s what God said He’d do if they would touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Of course, God, always the promise keeper, did eventually take their lives, just centuries later.

November is traditionally the month of the year where we pray for the dead. Why would we do that? Aren’t all the dead in either heaven or hell? The souls in heaven and hell don’t need our prayers, so why are we praying for the dead? Answer: because a huge number of the deceased are in Purgatory, and a smaller number of the dead haunt the earth. Consider the following account of such an incident.