On the night we blessed the new confessionals, the man who rebuilt them shared his testimony publicly: “In my life, I have known the challenge of habitual sin. For the majority of my life I had dealt with an addiction to pornography. This silent and secretive behaviour has caused so much pain and destruction for me, my wife, and my family and most importantly with my relationship with God. I was a hypocrite, I use to put on the face of being a good Catholic but in reality I had been hurting my wife deeply, and I had failed to uphold our covenant that we made to God in our marriage. And I failed to be the father that our daughter and our son needed me to be.” Can you imagine admitting that you’re a hypocrite, in this church, in front of 150 people, in front of your wife, children and friends?

For some months now, God has revealed my own hypocrisy. Sometimes when I’m at Mass, I think about this, how far away I am from God, and how good He is and how He’s drawing me closer.

The passion narrative today is fascinating because it involves so many characters. One thing that many Catholics do when meditating on the gospels is they put themselves in the position of one of the characters. This way, when we’re listening or praying over the passage, they imagine they’re St. Peter and that Jesus is talking to them. Or they’re in the crowds and visualize how Jesus is interacting.

The question for all of us is, “Which character are we?” How do we relate to Jesus at this point in our life? How close are we to Him? Are we like St. Peter, who loves Jesus, but follows Him at a distance? Many of us have a relationship with Jesus, but it’s not that strong and we’re not as close as we should be. We’re hesitant about becoming more ‘religious,’ or afraid it’s going to be hard. Are we like St. Simon of Cyrene, who’s living a regular life, then gets called by Jesus to carry His cross with Him? Are we a spectator in the crowd? We see Jesus carrying His cross but we don’t want to get involved or we’re not interested. We may be apathetic in our relationship to God. Are we the Good Thief? We’ve made a lot of mistakes in our life, but we admit it, are sorry for it, and we feel so loved by Jesus.

Here’s the beautiful message: we get to choose who we’ll be. We can choose how close we want to be with Jesus.

St. Peter is my favourite saint because I love Jesus with my whole heart but I feel like I follow Him from a distance, and God reminded me during prayer that there’s a part of me that is afraid of living a more radical life. But I don’t have to be like that, and more importantly, I don’t want to be like that. I know God is calling me to be more like our Blessed Mother Mary. We don’t hear her in today’s passion narrative, but she’s there. On Good Friday, we’ll hear how she’s right at the foot of the cross. She walked the whole journey with Jesus. I want to be more like her! I want to offer Jesus everything and not hold back!

When Leonardo Da Vinci was painting his famous Last Supper, he looked for men would be the models for Jesus and the twelve apostles. “He wanted each of his models to look exactly as he envisioned Jesus and each of the disciples to have looked” (Matthew Kelly, The Rhythm of Life, 235-7). One day while in church he heard the choir singing and turned around and found the man who looked exactly how he thought Jesus should look. He went to the man, explained the project and the man agreed to be his model. Da Vinci then looked for models for the apostles: Peter, James, John, Andrew, etc. It took him 11 months to find them, except for Judas.

“Leonardo could not find his Judas. He looked everywhere. He would walk through the streets of Milan, some days for endless hours, searching the nameless faces in the crowds for a man who embodied how he envisioned Judas to have looked…. Years passed… when he finally realized he had been looking… in the wrong places. Leonardo thought, If I am to find a man who has the qualities and appearance of Judas, I must look where such men are gathered. With that in mind, Leonardo went to the prisons in and around Milan, searching for a man with pain and anger in his eyes, with harsh impatience on his face, with the scars of pride and bitterness on his cheeks, and with the marks of brokenness in his features.” He eventually found the man, explained the project and arranged to have him brought to his studio under guard. During the painting, however, something happened: the prisoner got more and more restless as the time passed by, looking at Da Vinci, then at the painting, and had a look of great sadness and remorse. This went on for a time until Da Vinci asked, “What is it?” The prisoner looked up and said, “Do you not recognize me?” “No, have we met before?” “Years ago I posed for you, for this same painting, as the person of Jesus.”

There is a Jesus and Judas in all of us. We can choose to grow closer to Jesus or fall away from Him, and back again.

One of the greatest gifts God gives us is free will and a certain self-determination. We can’t be close to Jesus by our own strength, but we do get to choose if we’re going to imitate Him and receive His grace. No one forces us to be proud, lustful, angry, resentful, etc. We can choose if we’re going to be honest, self-controlled, wise, courageous, etc. We choose if we’re going to be negative or positive today.

Three months ago we talked about knowing someone’s name means we care. This can be very uplifting to a person; Not to know their name can very hurtful. It’s a way of offering dignity, which is why the Nazis took away prisoners’ names. And Jesus said, “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me” (Mt 25:35). We each tried learning four names in four weeks, for a total of 4,000 names—it was very successful, and there was great feedback: people said it gave them permission to get to know other people. And we all felt more comfortable being friendly and welcoming. We’re starting this initiative again today for the next four weeks. This is critical because next week is Easter and many non-practicing Catholics will be with us. We can choose to be friendly or not, welcoming or not.

What Pontius Pilate did was horrible: he gave the orders to have Jesus crucified; he killed God because he was trying to please other people. But did you know that there are some Eastern Christians with very old traditions that say that Pilate converted to Christianity and eventually became a saint!? Wow! It’s not our tradition, but the tradition is instructive: with God’s grace, anyone can change!

The man who rebuilt the confessionals was a hypocrite, but, with God’s grace, has chosen to follow Jesus more closely. He said, “Three years ago our son was preparing for his first confession. On the day of the event he looked up at me and said that he was scared and nervous. He then took me aside and looked me straight in the eyes and asked me when was the last time I went to confession. In that specific moment I felt God’s loving presence, God’s deep desire to soften my hardened heart with His love. Here was my opportunity to speak the truth or continue to mislead our son with dishonesty. God helped me in that moment to tell him the truth; I told him that it had been so long that I couldn’t remember when was the last time that I went to confession and that I too was very scared. I remember him saying to me in the most loving way possible, ‘It’s ok, Dad, God is waiting for you.’ So with the help of God’s strength I lead the way to the confessional. Now the moment I came out of that confessional, our son yelled out very lovingly, ‘Wow, Dad you look so different!’ I responded with an affirmative, ‘I am.’ All I remember after that is our son running to the confessional with a joyful and trusting heart. What an authentic gift of love our Heavenly Father showered down on me and our family. It’s a moment that has and continues to change my life.

I now know what spiritual tools I need to be able to have a genuine personal relationship with God: I stay close to the sacraments, I work on having a deeper daily prayer life, I read the Gospels, I work on developing virtues like chastity, obedience, and poverty, I admit my faults and I reach out in ministry to others.

But most of all I am sharing this to you all today because I desire to be a better man. A man that can live his faith with genuineness, a man who can be the husband that I am called to be and promised to be, a man who can be a true father to his children and, most of all, live as God has truly called me to be.”

Let’s pray for strength. With God’s grace, we can be like our Mother Mary. We can choose to be closer to Jesus.