Good evening, Everyone! Oh, we have some second graders amongst us!
Let us give all our second graders who are here a big round of
applause. The Church teaches that the three days of the Triduum, this
night, beginning at sunset, all the way through Good Friday and the
celebration of the Vigil, is one liturgy. And so, our attempt, in
part, to express that unity is in this booklet. But the liturgy
itself begins as (Did we begin “In the name of the Father and the Son
and the Holy Spirit?” We didn’t!) ... You did! Brian Joyce drives me
crazy at times. He’s very Roman! Have you noticed that? I’m a bit
more Roman than he is. Anyway, you’re supposed to begin “In the name
of the Father and the....” No! Did you see? They all start to bless
themselves immediately. I am telling you! I am not telling you to do
it. So, we are supposed to start (Aidan is doing it on his own. “In
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”) And
then we end after the liturgy on Easter Saturday night, “In the name
of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” That closes
the liturgy at both ends. Please leave this in your seats. If you
have religious artifacts at home, you know, little things that you
don’t know how to get rid of.... We are going to have an Easter fire
and it’s a good way to.... (Lots of laughter!) ... Why are you
laughing?! OK! You tell me what else you would do with them. This is
an invitation for you if you have religious artifacts, old books or
things that you wouldn’t want to throw out. In the Easter fire, you
can put it there. It’s a way... It’s a religious holy way of
disposing of them.

Tonight, we celebrate this wonderful expression of our faith and
actually you would begin to think, why would the Church choose to use
this particular gospel, when in actual fact, this is the first
Eucharist. It feels a little crazy, doesn’t it? Really, we used the
Exodus readings and then we talked about foot washing, or feet
washing, or hand washing. So is the Church making a mistake?
Sometimes, our understanding, we all make mistakes sometimes and we
know, over two thousand years, our Church has made a few mistakes
along the way, and a lot of changes. And, I want to tell you about a
few mistakes that have happened to me recently. Barbara Doane is not
here. That’s good. She’s our parish secretary. Do you see that
projector up there on the wall? Well, Mary Jo, one of our sacristans,
said, “Father, they are a little bit off.” And I, being a little bit
of a perfectionist, said “Oh...” Well, I got up on a ladder two days
ago and she is sitting up at the front and we are going through all
of these power point things. So I get up there and, you know the way
you’re not supposed to stand on the top step? I’m six foot, one, but
the only way I could get up there was to actually stand on the top
one. So I am holding onto that ledge up there and I’m turning around
to look at the wall to see that it’s right, and I’m holding on. Guess
what happens? The ladder went away! So there I am swinging between
heaven and earth, and Barbara starts screaming laughing. Now, did you
think that she would be concerned for my safety? There’s not many
priests in the diocese left, and getting rid of another one..... So,
she gets up there. She thinks she is going to break my fall. I’m two
hundred pounds. (I am, unfortunately.) And the ladder is on the
ground. And Tim Manning comes out of there, lifts the ladder up and
puts it right under me and I get down. I’m a little (upset) at her
laughing at me. But she told me when I got down the ladder that she
gets really hysterical when funny things happen and nerves make her
laugh. So I was immediately thinking the wrong thing about something
she did. Yeah? Can you identify?

When I was in the carwash this morning. (Sometimes our perception
could be a little off too.) I was on the cell phone and I hadn’t
washed my car in a long time and I thought this was the day to do it,
in the morning. All of a sudden, I looked up and I felt like the car
was moving. Have you ever had that feeling, when the automatic car
wash is going this way? You have your hand break on.... Hello, are
you all awake? Don’t you wash your car? Or do you have somebody do it
for you? So, here it is and I suddenly thought, “Oh, my God. I
haven’t my hand brake on.” But I did have it. Our perceptions can be
really off sometimes and sometimes even, as for example, a few weeks
ago, I found an old box with videos in it from maybe ten years ago
and I got them converted to DVD so I could watch them. One of them
was a tape of ten years ago, at home in Ireland, for Easter Sunday
dinner. And my brother had been playing with the videotape recorder
and had left it on just as we started dinner. So, it was my mom and
my dad and my brother and his two kids. It just was a little jarring
to watch because the three of them have gone to heaven. My first
thought was, “Oh, my God! You didn’t once tell them you loved them.
You didn’t once get up and lift up the dishes or serve anything. You
just sat there, and at one point, you even thumped your brother on
the arm, even though it was in fun.” In reality, there was very
little in the way of verbal communication. And, all the way through
the hour of watching this thing, I really saw all the things that I
could have said and wanted to say and didn’t, and I really felt kind
of guilty about it. Then a few days ago, I watched it again. And I
realized that my first instinct was wrong. What I actually saw was
my mom who had depression for a number of years, my father making
the dinner and making sure that she was OK and that I was OK and that
my brother had his little one-year-old sitting on his knee and he was
making sure that he had his dinner. When I looked at it a second
time, my first perception was wrong. Sometimes, our perceptions can
be a little off.

But today, on this evening, our perception and the Church’s
perception is not off! We have a beautiful, vivid, and very clear
example of service, service of our God, Jesus, and his humanity,
Jesus serving us and asking us and giving us a model to serve one
another. There’s something very powerful about these second-graders
serving us and everyone serving one another. There’s something very
beautiful about the Church and the way that we do this, all of the
people of God, we as Church, serving one another. And we do this here
at Christ the King because we have fifty-seven different ministries,
right from the guy that does the ministry of one that does weed
abatement to Vi Murphy that almost runs the place, (Where are you,
Vi?) to all of the different people in between who serve in very
powerful ways, people who make rosary beeds, people who do things
that are unseen and unsung and the things that we do in our
ministries from RCIA to just all of the different helping ministries.
We are constantly washing the feet of one another. It is a non-
negotiable, the “Mandatum.”A few weeks ago somebody called,
complaining about Father Brian and I and the other priests always
talking of social justice. They just wanted to come to Mass and hear
Mass and that was it. But serving one another is non-negotiable. You
have to wash the feet of your brother and your sister. You have to
wash the feet. You have to wash the feet. This is what it’s all about.

My hope and prayer this evening is that the love that Jesus had for
his disciples and his friends and the love that he has expressed for
us in the Eucharist gives us the desire and the love to share with
one another. Amen.