Our parish is in a good spirit, with a good outlook. We have to look at why: every week at Mass, and daily in our own ways, we join Jesus in the pattern of his suffering, death and resurrection, and it’s bringing us life. This is the spirit of the whole week ahead of us. This week is unique in all the year, to focus on, and walk with Jesus in his death and resurrection. Today we enter Holy Week and the Sacred Easter Triduum, the Three Days. It’s the wisdom of the church, I gu

The three Sunday Gospels of these weeks are endlessly fascinating. Between them they portray people with all of the trials and discouragements we can have: drudgery of work, unfulfilling relationships, religious questions (the Woman at the Well), physical disability, a feeling of not fitting in family or community (the Man Born Blind), and this week, in the Raising of Lazarus, death—our own, and grieving the decline and loss of dear ones, and the anger and blame that comes in