In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, The Roman Catholic Diocese of Calgary has decreed all weekday and weekend Masses are cancelled for an unspecified period of time. For more information please click here
Fr Nathan will privately celebrate the Holy Mass daily for requested Mass intentions and for the well being of our parish, our local community and all impacted by this pandemic. For an important letter concerning the Dedication Mass of the Shrine Church of Our Lady of the Rockies and other important parish announcements and updates, please click here To financially support our parish operations and building fund in the absence of the regular weekend collections can donate via the DONATE section of the parish website, mail donations to: Our Lady of the Rockies, 2 Silvertip Trail, Canmore, AB, T1W-2Z7, or bring them to the parish office Tuesday-Friday 9:00am to Noon. Click here for the current parish financials. Please scroll down this home page for spiritual reflections and homilies by Fr. Nathan. May Our Lady of the Rockies intercede for us all and bring an end to this pandemic. I remain yours in Jesus through Mary, Fr. Nathan Siray SACRAMENT OF RECONCILIATION The regular confessions times have been cancelled and the Sacrament of Reconciliation will be available with Fr. Nathan by appointment. Please contact him at frnsiray@gmail.com to arrange a time to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Anyone requesting the celebration of the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick and the Last Rites for the dying can contact Fr Nathan via the emergency parish line at 403-675-5044, please do not hesitate to do so! |
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Spiritual Reflections from a Priest in the Rockies
To watch the Mass of the Lord's Supper from St. Mary's Cathedral at 7:00pm tonight, please click here
Fr. Nathan's Homily for Holy Thursday (2020)
For a PDF version of the below homily, please click here
Due to a mechanical failure, the atomic bomb which was supposed to be dropped on military facilities outside the city of Nagasaki, exploded above the Urakami district of the city which is home to St. Mary’s Catholic Cathedral. In the blink of an eye, 8000 Catholics who lived near the Cathedral were called to God (around 70,000 died upon the bomb’s impact), and at midnight the cathedral burst into flames and was consumed.
Among those who survived the blast was Dr. Takashi Nagai, a Catholic convert and renowned radiologist who was working in one of Nagasaki’s hospitals when the bomb detonated. After 3 excruciating days of caring for the dead and wounded, Dr. Nagai was finally able to go to his home to see if his wife Midori had survived. In his heart he knew that that she had died, and standing before the wreckage of his home, he found what remained of his beloved: a few charred bones and the fragments of a rosary that had melted into a solid metallic heap.
Amidst his tears he prayed: “Dearest God, thank you for allowing her to die praying. Mother of Sorrows, thank you for being with faithful Midori at the hour of her death. . . . Ah, gracious Jesus our Saviour, you once sweat blood and bore the heavy Cross to your crucifixion. And now you have shed peaceful light on the mystery of suffering and death, on Midori’s and my own.”
Dr. Nagai received further insights into the reason for Midori’s death after he was asked by the Archbishop of Nagasaki to give a speech following a Requiem Mass that was to be offered before the ruins of the Urakami Cathedral.
He found himself standing in the broken cathedral, asking God for inspiration for his speech, and happened to see the altar that remained standing amongst the ruins. As he looked upon it he thought of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, whose sacrifice was sacramentally celebrated upon this altar, and of the countless generations of martyrs who had died for their faith in this Holy Lamb. He then realized that the sacrifice of Calvary and that of the Holy Mass were united to the holocaust that took place in Nagasaki.
In his speech, Dr. Nagai asked the people to consider if it was mere coincidence that Urakami Cathedral was near the epicentre of the atomic blast or that it exploded into flames at the very moment on August 9th when the Emperor of Japan decided to surrender and end the war?
Dr. Nagai suggested that the Cathedral and her city were in fact “a chosen victim, a lamb without blemish, slain as a whole burnt offering on an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all the nations during World War II?” He reminded the Christians of Nagasaki that they had ceaselessly prayed for peace and so “here was the one pure lamb that had to be sacrificed as a holocaust on His altar, so that many millions of lives might be saved…Let us be thankful that through this sacrifice, peace was given to the world.”
It was not surprising that Dr. Nagai’s speech was not well received by one and all. Both Catholics and non-Catholics took offense at the suggestion that Nagasaki (and notably its Christian population), had to die in order for God to bestow peace on the world. Why would God demand such a gruesome oblation and did Dr. Nagai have any right to suggest that the Lord had willed this to be so?
But within his speech on the reason for the destruction of Nagasaki was a profound and startling insight into the mystery that we encounter in Holy Thursday. The Last Supper participates in the sacrifice of an innocent, unblemished Lamb, offered on the Cross to His Heavenly Father for the sins of all, so that humanity could receive grace from His sacrifice and be compelled to turn away from sin and the suffering it brings.
To stand before the Lord’s holy altar, though on this evening not as a Community of Faith in our new Shrine Church, but united nonetheless in spirit, is to be humbled and reminded that this is no mere supper we attend. The Holy Mass is the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. At every Mass we are simultaneously present at the feast He shared with His Apostles while also standing before the Cross.
The reason we believe this is because the Last Supper is what puts Jesus’ Passion and Death into motion. Jesus declared that He would rise after 3 days. If He died at 3:00 PM on Good Friday and rose from the dead on midnight of Easter Sunday, we have only 2 days. This means that the first day, the one that begins His passion, is the celebration of the Last Supper.
It is here that Jesus begins to die and pours out His life in atonement for our sins. As He offered up the bread and wine, He emptied himself into them, transforming them into a living sacrifice of praise, His own Body and Blood. He reached into the following day as He was dying upon the cross and made it present in the Eucharist He celebrated with His Apostles. He commanded that they would continue to offer this sacrifice in memory of Him, to allow us to receive not only His Body and Blood, but also to participate in the sacrifice of the Cross that cost Jesus every drop of His Blood.
This is why we call the celebration of the Eucharist is called the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, for the bread we break is the same body that is nailed to the Cross, and the wine we share is the same blood that is spilt upon Golgotha.
When once again we can partake together of the sacrificial feast where we eat His Body and drink His Blood, we will bring His sacrifice into our lives, and even more profoundly now as we are unable to receive the Bread of Life and Chalice of Everlasting Salvation. To consume the Eucharist is to give ourselves as burnt offerings in being His disciples, and in those mysterious moments when the Cross comes without our seeking it, just as it came for the Catholics of Nagasaki who did not seek to die, but whose prayers for peace were accepted by God at so horrible a price.
To receive the Eucharist in this way is to realize we do not eat ordinary bread and wine or mere symbols of Jesus’ presence among us. To eat the Flesh of the Paschal Lamb is to allow the Lord to purify us from our sinful tendencies and make us ready for a life of service.
The Eucharist inspires us to wash one another’s feet, which not taking place within the Holy Thursday Mass this year, we nonetheless recalled in the Gospel reading this evening and discovered it not as a nostalgic memory of what Jesus did in the past. Instead, we realize that to receive the Eucharist, in this time through making a Spiritual Communion in the absence of Sacramental Communion, is to say yes to serve and not be served and to know that there is no greater love than this, than to lay down your life for one’s friends.
Tonight we have been given the greatest gift that Christ could offer us. Let us never take Him for granted, especially now when so many cannot receive Him. Let us make the resolution to never receive Him with mortal sin on our souls. Let us never treat Him with a lack of reverence or an all too casual attitude that fails to inspire others see the Eucharist as the source and summit of the Christian life.
Let us ask forgiveness when we have not treated the Eucharist with love. And let us receive the Eucharist, whenever the Lord wills that to be, as a yes to a life of sacrifice and service, perhaps even to lay down our lives if that be the will of God.
In this way we will continue the mission of the slain yet risen Lamb of God, united to the countless saints and martyrs who went before us (including those from Nagasaki), encouraged to face the joy and struggles of the Christian life, and ready for Good Friday tomorrow and the promise of Easter Resurrection. [i]
[i] The following are excerpts of Dr. Nagai’s speech to the Catholics of Nagasaki:
“On the morning of August 9 the world stood at a crossroads. A decision had to be made . . . peace or further cruel bloodshed and carnage. And just then, at 11:02 am, an atom bomb exploded over our suburb. In an instant 8,000 Christians were called to God, and in a few hours flames turned to ash this venerable Far Eastern holy place.
“At midnight that night, our cathedral suddenly burst into flames and was consumed. At exactly the same time in the Imperial Palace, His Majesty the Emperor made known the decision to end the war. On August 15, the Imperial Rescript, which put an end to the fighting, was formally promulgated, and the whole world saw the light of peace. August 15 is also the great feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It is significant, I believe, that the Urakami Cathedral was dedicated to her. We must ask: Was this convergence of events, the end of the war and the celebration of her feast day, merely coincidental, or was it the mysterious Providence of God?"
“I have heard that the atom bomb . . . was destined for another city. Heavy clouds rendered that target impossible, and the American crew headed for the secondary target, Nagasaki. Then a mechanical problem arose, and the bomb was dropped further north than planned and burst right above the cathedral. . . . it was not the American crew, I believe, who chose our suburb. God’s Providence chose Urakami and carried the bomb right above our homes. Is there not a profound relationship between the annihilation of Nagasaki and the end of the war? Was not Nagasaki the chosen victim, the lamb without blemish, slain as a whole burnt offering on an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all the nations during World War II?"
“We are inheritors of Adam’s sin . . . of Cain’s sin. He killed his brother. Yes, we have forgotten we are God’s children. We have turned to idols and forgotten love. Hating one another, killing one another, joyfully killing one another! At last the evil and horrific conflict came to an end, but mere repentance was not enough for peace. . . . We had to offer a stupendous sacrifice. . . . Cities had been leveled, but even that was not enough. . . . Only this holocaust in Nagasaki sufficed, and at that moment God inspired the Emperor to issue the proclamation that ended the war. The Christian flock of Nagasaki was true to the Faith through three centuries of persecution. During the recent war, it prayed ceaselessly for a lasting peace. Here was the one pure lamb that had to be sacrificed as holocaust on His altar . . . so that many millions of lives might be saved."
“How noble, how splendid, was that holocaust of midnight August 9, when flames soared from the cathedral, dispelling darkness and bringing the light of peace. In the very depths of our grief, we were able to gaze up to something beautiful, pure and sublime!
“Happy are those who weep; they shall be comforted. We must walk the way of reparation . . . ridiculed, whipped, punished for our crimes, sweaty and bloody. But we can turn our minds’ eyes to Jesus carrying his Cross up the hill of Calvary. . . . The Lord has given; the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Let us be thankful that Nagasaki was chosen for the whole burnt sacrifice! Let us be thankful that through this sacrifice, peace was granted to the world and religious freedom to Japan.”
I again invite you to take time today to make a Spiritual Communion, using the following formula or one of your own choosing:
My Jesus,
I believe that You are present in the Most Holy Sacrament.
I love You above all things, and I desire to receive You into my soul.
Since I cannot at this moment receive You sacramentally,
come at least spiritually into my heart.
I embrace You as if You were already there and unite myself wholly to You.
Never permit me to be separated from You. Amen."
St. Alphonsus di Liguori
In Jesus through Mary, Fr. Nathan
To watch the Mass of the Lord's Supper from St. Mary's Cathedral at 7:00pm tonight, please click here
Fr. Nathan's Homily for Holy Thursday (2020)
For a PDF version of the below homily, please click here
Due to a mechanical failure, the atomic bomb which was supposed to be dropped on military facilities outside the city of Nagasaki, exploded above the Urakami district of the city which is home to St. Mary’s Catholic Cathedral. In the blink of an eye, 8000 Catholics who lived near the Cathedral were called to God (around 70,000 died upon the bomb’s impact), and at midnight the cathedral burst into flames and was consumed.
Among those who survived the blast was Dr. Takashi Nagai, a Catholic convert and renowned radiologist who was working in one of Nagasaki’s hospitals when the bomb detonated. After 3 excruciating days of caring for the dead and wounded, Dr. Nagai was finally able to go to his home to see if his wife Midori had survived. In his heart he knew that that she had died, and standing before the wreckage of his home, he found what remained of his beloved: a few charred bones and the fragments of a rosary that had melted into a solid metallic heap.
Amidst his tears he prayed: “Dearest God, thank you for allowing her to die praying. Mother of Sorrows, thank you for being with faithful Midori at the hour of her death. . . . Ah, gracious Jesus our Saviour, you once sweat blood and bore the heavy Cross to your crucifixion. And now you have shed peaceful light on the mystery of suffering and death, on Midori’s and my own.”
Dr. Nagai received further insights into the reason for Midori’s death after he was asked by the Archbishop of Nagasaki to give a speech following a Requiem Mass that was to be offered before the ruins of the Urakami Cathedral.
He found himself standing in the broken cathedral, asking God for inspiration for his speech, and happened to see the altar that remained standing amongst the ruins. As he looked upon it he thought of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, whose sacrifice was sacramentally celebrated upon this altar, and of the countless generations of martyrs who had died for their faith in this Holy Lamb. He then realized that the sacrifice of Calvary and that of the Holy Mass were united to the holocaust that took place in Nagasaki.
In his speech, Dr. Nagai asked the people to consider if it was mere coincidence that Urakami Cathedral was near the epicentre of the atomic blast or that it exploded into flames at the very moment on August 9th when the Emperor of Japan decided to surrender and end the war?
Dr. Nagai suggested that the Cathedral and her city were in fact “a chosen victim, a lamb without blemish, slain as a whole burnt offering on an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all the nations during World War II?” He reminded the Christians of Nagasaki that they had ceaselessly prayed for peace and so “here was the one pure lamb that had to be sacrificed as a holocaust on His altar, so that many millions of lives might be saved…Let us be thankful that through this sacrifice, peace was given to the world.”
It was not surprising that Dr. Nagai’s speech was not well received by one and all. Both Catholics and non-Catholics took offense at the suggestion that Nagasaki (and notably its Christian population), had to die in order for God to bestow peace on the world. Why would God demand such a gruesome oblation and did Dr. Nagai have any right to suggest that the Lord had willed this to be so?
But within his speech on the reason for the destruction of Nagasaki was a profound and startling insight into the mystery that we encounter in Holy Thursday. The Last Supper participates in the sacrifice of an innocent, unblemished Lamb, offered on the Cross to His Heavenly Father for the sins of all, so that humanity could receive grace from His sacrifice and be compelled to turn away from sin and the suffering it brings.
To stand before the Lord’s holy altar, though on this evening not as a Community of Faith in our new Shrine Church, but united nonetheless in spirit, is to be humbled and reminded that this is no mere supper we attend. The Holy Mass is the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. At every Mass we are simultaneously present at the feast He shared with His Apostles while also standing before the Cross.
The reason we believe this is because the Last Supper is what puts Jesus’ Passion and Death into motion. Jesus declared that He would rise after 3 days. If He died at 3:00 PM on Good Friday and rose from the dead on midnight of Easter Sunday, we have only 2 days. This means that the first day, the one that begins His passion, is the celebration of the Last Supper.
It is here that Jesus begins to die and pours out His life in atonement for our sins. As He offered up the bread and wine, He emptied himself into them, transforming them into a living sacrifice of praise, His own Body and Blood. He reached into the following day as He was dying upon the cross and made it present in the Eucharist He celebrated with His Apostles. He commanded that they would continue to offer this sacrifice in memory of Him, to allow us to receive not only His Body and Blood, but also to participate in the sacrifice of the Cross that cost Jesus every drop of His Blood.
This is why we call the celebration of the Eucharist is called the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, for the bread we break is the same body that is nailed to the Cross, and the wine we share is the same blood that is spilt upon Golgotha.
When once again we can partake together of the sacrificial feast where we eat His Body and drink His Blood, we will bring His sacrifice into our lives, and even more profoundly now as we are unable to receive the Bread of Life and Chalice of Everlasting Salvation. To consume the Eucharist is to give ourselves as burnt offerings in being His disciples, and in those mysterious moments when the Cross comes without our seeking it, just as it came for the Catholics of Nagasaki who did not seek to die, but whose prayers for peace were accepted by God at so horrible a price.
To receive the Eucharist in this way is to realize we do not eat ordinary bread and wine or mere symbols of Jesus’ presence among us. To eat the Flesh of the Paschal Lamb is to allow the Lord to purify us from our sinful tendencies and make us ready for a life of service.
The Eucharist inspires us to wash one another’s feet, which not taking place within the Holy Thursday Mass this year, we nonetheless recalled in the Gospel reading this evening and discovered it not as a nostalgic memory of what Jesus did in the past. Instead, we realize that to receive the Eucharist, in this time through making a Spiritual Communion in the absence of Sacramental Communion, is to say yes to serve and not be served and to know that there is no greater love than this, than to lay down your life for one’s friends.
Tonight we have been given the greatest gift that Christ could offer us. Let us never take Him for granted, especially now when so many cannot receive Him. Let us make the resolution to never receive Him with mortal sin on our souls. Let us never treat Him with a lack of reverence or an all too casual attitude that fails to inspire others see the Eucharist as the source and summit of the Christian life.
Let us ask forgiveness when we have not treated the Eucharist with love. And let us receive the Eucharist, whenever the Lord wills that to be, as a yes to a life of sacrifice and service, perhaps even to lay down our lives if that be the will of God.
In this way we will continue the mission of the slain yet risen Lamb of God, united to the countless saints and martyrs who went before us (including those from Nagasaki), encouraged to face the joy and struggles of the Christian life, and ready for Good Friday tomorrow and the promise of Easter Resurrection. [i]
[i] The following are excerpts of Dr. Nagai’s speech to the Catholics of Nagasaki:
“On the morning of August 9 the world stood at a crossroads. A decision had to be made . . . peace or further cruel bloodshed and carnage. And just then, at 11:02 am, an atom bomb exploded over our suburb. In an instant 8,000 Christians were called to God, and in a few hours flames turned to ash this venerable Far Eastern holy place.
“At midnight that night, our cathedral suddenly burst into flames and was consumed. At exactly the same time in the Imperial Palace, His Majesty the Emperor made known the decision to end the war. On August 15, the Imperial Rescript, which put an end to the fighting, was formally promulgated, and the whole world saw the light of peace. August 15 is also the great feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It is significant, I believe, that the Urakami Cathedral was dedicated to her. We must ask: Was this convergence of events, the end of the war and the celebration of her feast day, merely coincidental, or was it the mysterious Providence of God?"
“I have heard that the atom bomb . . . was destined for another city. Heavy clouds rendered that target impossible, and the American crew headed for the secondary target, Nagasaki. Then a mechanical problem arose, and the bomb was dropped further north than planned and burst right above the cathedral. . . . it was not the American crew, I believe, who chose our suburb. God’s Providence chose Urakami and carried the bomb right above our homes. Is there not a profound relationship between the annihilation of Nagasaki and the end of the war? Was not Nagasaki the chosen victim, the lamb without blemish, slain as a whole burnt offering on an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all the nations during World War II?"
“We are inheritors of Adam’s sin . . . of Cain’s sin. He killed his brother. Yes, we have forgotten we are God’s children. We have turned to idols and forgotten love. Hating one another, killing one another, joyfully killing one another! At last the evil and horrific conflict came to an end, but mere repentance was not enough for peace. . . . We had to offer a stupendous sacrifice. . . . Cities had been leveled, but even that was not enough. . . . Only this holocaust in Nagasaki sufficed, and at that moment God inspired the Emperor to issue the proclamation that ended the war. The Christian flock of Nagasaki was true to the Faith through three centuries of persecution. During the recent war, it prayed ceaselessly for a lasting peace. Here was the one pure lamb that had to be sacrificed as holocaust on His altar . . . so that many millions of lives might be saved."
“How noble, how splendid, was that holocaust of midnight August 9, when flames soared from the cathedral, dispelling darkness and bringing the light of peace. In the very depths of our grief, we were able to gaze up to something beautiful, pure and sublime!
“Happy are those who weep; they shall be comforted. We must walk the way of reparation . . . ridiculed, whipped, punished for our crimes, sweaty and bloody. But we can turn our minds’ eyes to Jesus carrying his Cross up the hill of Calvary. . . . The Lord has given; the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Let us be thankful that Nagasaki was chosen for the whole burnt sacrifice! Let us be thankful that through this sacrifice, peace was granted to the world and religious freedom to Japan.”
I again invite you to take time today to make a Spiritual Communion, using the following formula or one of your own choosing:
My Jesus,
I believe that You are present in the Most Holy Sacrament.
I love You above all things, and I desire to receive You into my soul.
Since I cannot at this moment receive You sacramentally,
come at least spiritually into my heart.
I embrace You as if You were already there and unite myself wholly to You.
Never permit me to be separated from You. Amen."
St. Alphonsus di Liguori
In Jesus through Mary, Fr. Nathan
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