This past Monday evening, many of you came to our parish Reconciliation service, some of you carrying knots that have been pulling tight for a very long time. I want to thank Jim Arena for presiding so beautifully at the service and to every priest who offered his time. Jim’s reflection on the prodigal son using Rembrandt’s artwork was stunning. It was genuinely moving to witness so many people step forward for reconciliation. Something was untied in that room. Something real. It is fitting, then, that this Sunday’s Gospel brings us to another tomb.
The story of the rising of Lazarus is the longest continuous narrative in John’s Gospel outside of the Passion, and what is remarkable is where John places his attention. The miracle itself takes only two verses. What John lingers over is everything before it: the delay, the sisters’ grief, the journey, the tears.
When Mary and Martha send word to Jesus that their brother is dying, Jesus stays where he is for two more days. He does not rush. This is one of the most disorienting moments in all of Scripture. Why wait? He offers a brief, almost opaque answer — something about the glory of God — but he does not explain himself. He simply stays. Then he goes.
Martha comes out to meet him, direct and honest: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus does not defend his timing. He does not lecture her about Providence. He stays with her question. He asks her what she believes and lets her faith wrestle itself into words.
Then Mary comes, and she falls at his feet and says the same thing Martha said — word for word. But this time she is weeping. And the text says Jesus was deeply moved. The Greek word is almost visceral, a kind of shudder in the depths. And then comes the shortest verse in all of Scripture: “Jesus wept.”
He does not explain. He does not fix it yet. He enters the darkness before he speaks into it. He is present before he is powerful. This is who God is: not a distant problem-solver who bypasses pain to reach the solution, but a God who sits down in the grief and lets it matter. Then he acts. He goes to the tomb. He prays. And he says: “Lazarus, come out.”
And Lazarus comes — bound hand and foot, face wrapped in burial cloth, stumbling toward the light. This is where the story does something unexpected. Jesus does not unwrap him. He turns to the community standing there — the mourners, the skeptics, those who have been weeping — and he says: “Untie him and let him go.”
The miracle is not complete until the community participates. Resurrection requires witnesses willing to unbind. That line has stayed with me all week. Because I think it describes one of the most important and most difficult things we are called to do for one another: to stop holding people to the person they used to be.
We do this in families more than we realize. A child who made serious mistakes and has genuinely turned around walks into the room — and with a look, a comment, a silence, we remind them of who they were. A family member in recovery shows up clear-eyed and present in a way they haven’t been in years, and we offer a sideways remark, or a suspicious glance, or just a little too much caution. We mean well. We are protecting ourselves. But we are, without realizing it, keeping the stone in front of the tomb.
Ezekiel speaks in our first reading of God opening graves and bringing people out of them. Paul tells the Romans that the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is already living in us. The power of resurrection is pressing outward from within us every time we choose to unbind someone rather than keep them wrapped in who they used to be.
So here is the question this Gospel leaves with us. Who do you need to untie and let go? Is there someone in your life — a family member, a friend, perhaps someone in our wider community — whom you are still holding to an older version of themselves? Someone who needs you, simply and without qualification, to say: I see who you are becoming. I am with you.
This is not easy. It requires something of us. It requires a willingness to let people surprise us, to believe that God is still at work in them. But that is what resurrection means. It is not only something that happened to Jesus on Easter morning. It is something pressing outward in every life — including yours, including mine — right now.
Last week, I shared a poem that resonated with many of you. Several people asked me for a copy. I am including it below. It is my attempt to give language to what it feels like when we finally allow Christ — our Guest — into the rooms we have been afraid to open. May it serve as a bridge into Holy Week. “The Guest” poem.
On behalf of all who attended the St. Patrick’s Day celebration, I would like to thank Tina Lipscomb, Lee Panec and the entire St. Patrick’s Day team for all their work for a truly, wonderful evening last Saturday — the dinner, the band, and the Irish dancers made for a truly festive celebration! Thank you as well to the Eucharistic Adoration team (Teresa Giovzana, Elaine Bakan, Mary Bubak, Raymond Burkley, Joanne Chao, Keeth Courpet, Mary Jane Molina, Jean Rosseau, Carmen Vigor) for a beautiful morning of prayer and adoration with Fr. Dat last Saturday. What a gift, bringing our community together in prayer and fellowship.
Please keep our OCIA candidates and elect in your prayers today as they gather on retreat with our dedicated OCIA team. They are journeying toward full initiation into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil, a beautiful and sacred milestone for them and our whole parish family.
Finally, a reminder that we are hosting a Stanford Blood Center Blood Drive this Sunday, 8:00 am – 1:00 pm in Spooncer Hall. Please consider giving the gift of life — every donation makes a real difference. You can walk-in or make an appointment to save time HERE.
God Bless,
Fr. Brendan
The Guest
By Fr. Brendan McGuire
He came to the door on an ordinary evening,
no thunder, no angels, no announcement of light,
just a quiet knock
and a face I half-recognized
the way you remember a dream
only after waking.
I let him in.
What else could I do?
He asked for nothing much:
a chair by the window,
a meal at the table,
a room down the hall.
He was a good guest, I’ll say that.
Took his meals quietly,
kept to himself,
never rearranged my furniture
or commented on the dust.
I could almost forget he was there.
Almost.
Slowly, the way light fills a room
before you notice the sun has risen,
he became a friend.
I found I didn’t mind his company
in the living room, reading by the fire,
or in the kitchen, where he’d pour the tea
and listen without rushing me.
He moved gently through the dining room,
the hallway, the study.
Each room he entered grew a little warmer,
a little more like a home
and less like a place I was hiding in.
But there were rooms I kept locked.
The garage, piled high with the junk of years,
broken things I swore I’d fix,
boxes I couldn’t name
and didn’t want to.
And one room in particular,
the room at the end of the hall
where I had stuffed
every hurt, every wound,
every shame I couldn’t speak aloud,
the door swollen shut
with the weight of what I’d pushed inside.
He never forced the lock.
He just stood near it sometimes,
the way a shepherd stands near a gate
waiting for the lost one to come home.
In time, I let him into the garage.
Together we sorted through the wreckage:
old regrets, rusty resentments,
projects abandoned, promises forgotten.
He didn’t judge.
He just helped me carry things to the curb.
But that room.
That room.
He asked about it gently, once or twice.
I changed the subject.
He asked again, months later,
with the patience of someone
who has all of eternity
and is in no hurry to use it.
One night I opened the door.
I don’t know if it was courage
or exhaustion,
desperation or trust,
maybe all of these at once,
tangled together the way grace sometimes is.
He stepped inside and said nothing.
Just began.
Lifted the old wounds from the floor,
the ones I’d been stepping around for years.
Cleared the broken stories from the shelves.
Took the shame down from the walls
where I’d hung it like dark curtains.
He didn’t ask permission.
I protested at first.
“Careful with that one,” I said.
“That one’s complicated.”
“That one still bleeds.”
He carried it all out anyway,
tenderly, the way a mother lifts
a sleeping child from a car seat,
and I realized:
I didn’t want any of it.
I never did.
I just didn’t have the strength
to carry it out alone.
When the room was empty,
we discovered something underneath it all:
a beautiful sofa, worn soft with years,
facing a window I’d forgotten was there.
He sat down.
Patted the cushion beside him.
“Sit,” he said.
And through that window:
a landscape I never knew I had.
Green hills rolling toward a still pond
where birds gathered to drink,
their wings catching the late light.
We sat together a long time.
Then he said, so gently
it was almost breath:
“This is what freedom looks like.”
Now when someone comes to visit,
I don’t mind where they go.
Every door is open.
Every room can bear the light.
The wounds of the past are healed
or healing still,
and the house is not perfect,
a mess here and there,
dishes in the sink sometimes,
a garden half-tended.
But all are welcome.
He cleaned my house
and taught me how to keep it clean.
And that room at the end of the hall?
It’s my favorite room now.
The sofa, the window, the pond, the birds.
That’s where I go to sit with him.
That’s where I learn
what I could never learn alone:
that the room we fear the most
is the room where love has been waiting
all along.
© 2026 Fr. Brendan McGuire. All rights reserved.