Dear brothers and sisters in Christ of the Archdiocese, and all who are joining us this evening. 

At the start of tonight’s Gospel, St John relates: “Having loved his own in the world, he loved them to the end”... he loved them to the end.... Over the course of the next three days, what we are going to see what it means, that Jesus ‘loves us to the end’.  Jesus’ dying and rising - the paschal mystery - is where we believe God speaks God’s own self to us most fully.  Tonight we enter into this mystery, beginning with the last night of Jesus...

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

We gather this evening in great joy, surrounding our candidates for the permanent diaconate with our hopes and prayers.

Before anything else, I would turn our thoughts to my predecessor, Archbishop Daniel Bohan, who had a dream for diaconate in our Archdiocese. For him it was about implementing Vatican II. Bishop Dan felt the need for explicit diaconal ministry in order for the Church to be fully the Church. He brought Brett Salkeld in as Archdiocesan theologian specifically to build and lead a local diaconate formation program. He hoped...

Today’s celebration marks three important things. It is the Octave of Christmas and the Feast of Mary the Mother of God; it is the World Day of Prayer for Peace; and it is New Year’s Day, a day to give thanks for blessings of the past year and to look forward to the year to come.

At the heart of today’s celebration, from today's gospel, we hear these gentle words of what the shepherds of Bethlehem saw: “they hurried away and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger.”  In Matthew's gospel, which speaks not of shepherds but of magi from the east, there is a similar...