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• 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time  (June 26/27)
• 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time  (June 19/20)
• 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time  (June 12/13)
• Corpus Christi Sunday  (June 5/6)
• Trinity Sunday  (May 29/30)

“Prayer Works”

A Homily for the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Cycle B)
By Deacon Paul Coderre

Jairus, the Synagogue official was in a panic.  His 12-year-old daughter was very sick and near death.  This is the worst possible thing that a parent can experience so he pleaded with Jesus to come and save her, and Jesus quickly responded.

You have to try to imagine the scene.  Here we have Jesus in a rush with this very distraught father trying to push through a huge crowd who were all trying to get close to Jesus.  And then, suddenly, in the press of the crowd a woman reaches out.  We don’t know her name, but we do know that she is suffering from a severe bleeding disorder.  The Gospel tells us that this woman had tried everything.  She has gone to various doctors and spent all of her money desperately looking for help.  So she reaches out through that crowd and touches Jesus’ cloak.  She touched him in faith, and Jesus felt the power flowing out of him to heal the woman.

Now this was a delicate situation.  Ancient Israelites believed that blood defiled, and therefore this woman was ritually unclean.  She was shunned by everyone else, but Jesus was not put off by her condition.  While the Pharisees and Temple leaders saw this poor woman as unclean.  They believed that anyone touched by her would also be defiled.  But Jesus wasn’t interested in that.  He looked at her and saw what she had suffered – how she had suffered at the hands of many doctors who did horrible things to her and demanded whatever money she had.  She was still suffering, and Jesus saw her and felt for her.  He saw that she was a good woman, a woman of faith who was putting her last hope in him.  He didn’t see the sickness.  He saw the person and he healed her.  What beautiful story of compassion.

But that is just part of today’s Gospel story.  The little girl was the main reason for Jesus’ rushing away.  But part way to the house of Jairus, people stopped them and told Jairus, “Don’t bother rushing she’s dead.”  Again, we have to try to imagine the anguish as the man probably screamed out his grief.  But Jesus quietly says, “Do not fear, only believe.”  And the people at the house mocked Jesus when he said, “She not dead, but asleep.”  But then Jesus went into the child’s room with three disciples, Peter, James and John, and the terrified parents.  Calling her, he raised the girl up, and then in one of the most tender moments in the Gospels, he turned to the parents and said, “She’s hungry.  Give her something to eat.”  The Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Savior of the World, tells the parents to continue caring for their child.

Wow!  What a Gospel.  A defiled lady, a dead child and our compassionate Lord are all highlighted in this one short reading.  His care, love and healing were far more powerful that the prohibitions of the Jewish Law, far more powerful than the forces of nature, and far more powerful than the forces of death.

Now there are two ways to look at this Gospel reading.  We can, and should, look at these healings from a personal point of view, as we consider the needs of our families and ourselves.  We too can ask the Lord for help and healing.  “Ask and you shall receive,” says the Lord.  This reinforces the fact that prayer does work.  Many doctors and nurses can tell stories about the times that they were convinced that a person was healed more by prayers than by medicine.  In truth, many prayerful doctors, nurses and medical professionals allow the healing hands of the Lord to work through them as they use their intelligence and skill.  God does heal people.  There are shrines throughout the world, shrines like St. Joseph’s Oratory and the martyrs’ shrine in Midland Ontario where crutches and wheelchairs are silent witnesses to the miraculous healings that have taken place.  There are many people who have been told be their doctors that it is a miracle that they are alive.  It is quite correct and reasonable for us to call on the Lord for healing and to be healed. 

The second way we can, and should, look at these healings is from the viewpoint of the Lord.  We are all called to be followers of Christ.  We are called to love as He loves.  We are called to have compassion for all who are hurting.  We are called to not judge the cause of a person’s pain.  We are called to care for them.  Yet sometimes when we look a person afflicted with a dread condition like HIV/AIDs or Hepatitis C, or another addicted to drugs we may think, or say that a person’s condition is his, or her, own fault and take steps to move away from them.  It is so easy to see the cause of the sickness and not the sick people.  To see the effects of an addiction and not see the addict.

We should ask ourselves, do those who are sick due to their own sinfulness merit less care from us than other people?  Of course not!  At least not if we are true followers of Christ.  One of the situations many of us fall into is dealing with someone who may now be sick, but have always been difficult to love.  These may be relatives or neighbours or business associates who we are required to see, or maybe just endure.  And now, they need our help.  These are the ones who are really never easy to live with.  Those who we would much rather ignore completely, but we need to remember that although they might be a pain at times, they are also in pain.

And when people are sick, or hurting, they sometimes lash out at those who are trying to help them.  But when we get upset over how someone who is hurting is treating us, it indicates that we might be more concerned about ourselves than about that person who is hurting so much.  That wasn’t the way Jesus reacted to the sick.  He didn’t care if the woman who touched him was ritually impure.  He didn’t care that the Temple leaders might declare him defiled.  He didn’t care if curing a person would get him in trouble with the authorities if he performed that miracle cure on the Sabbath.  He didn’t care if he had to drop everything and rush to the bedside of what the world would see as an insignificant little girl while enduring mockery in the process.

Jesus was the one who was concerned only about those who were hurting and who needed his healing.  How can we be any different and still call ourselves his followers?

“The Storms of Life”

A Homily for the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Cycle B)
By Deacon Paul Coderre

Two fellows were sitting on a park bench.  One of them said to the other, “I’m afraid of flying.  I take the train on all my long trips.”  The other said, “That’s silly.  Didn’t you read about those 300 people who got killed on a train last week?”  “Three hundred people?” asked the fearful one.  “How could 300 people die in a train crash?”  “A plane fell on it,” said his friend.

You know, many people are uncomfortable flying.  Perhaps if we imagine ourselves in a small plane in a thunderstorm, we can appreciate the terror that seized the disciples when a terrible storm came up suddenly on the Sea of Galilee.  The wind and the waves threatened to swamp their little boat.  This must have been quite the storm, because these disciples were seasoned fishermen – they knew the Sea of Galilee well.  They obviously thought that they might die.  They were so frightened that they woke Jesus, who was sleeping in the stern of the boat and asked him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  I wonder how many of us at times have asked Jesus the same question, “Jesus, do you not care that we are perishing?”

We cry out at times because the storms of life can sometimes threaten to overwhelm us.  One storm might be a problem marriage.  I read recently about a grandmother who was celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary.  She told the secret of her long and happy marriage.  “On my wedding day,” she said, “I decided to make a list of 10 faults which for the sake of our marriage, I would over look in my new husband.”  A friend asked her to tell her some of those faults.  The grandmother replied, “To tell you the truth, I never did get around to listing them.  Whenever my husband did something that made me hopping mad, I would say to myself, ‘Lucky for him that’s one of the 10.’”

A marriage counselor asked one couple, “When things go wrong, do you blame each other?”  The wife answered, “Not always.  Sometimes we blame the children.  Sometimes we blame the government.  Sometimes we just slam doors.”  And that is the truth.  There are a lot of door-slamming marriages – marriages in which communication has broken down – marriages in constant turmoil.  And so, some marriages don’t make it through the storm and the resulting wreckage can be devastating.  No one wins in a divorce.

The author Judith Wallerstein wrote “Divorce is deceptive.  Legally it is a simple event, but psychologically it is a chain – sometimes a never-ending chain of events, relocations and radically shifting relationships strung through time.”  Like the way that Dr. Spock’s advice on raising children has proven to be defective, marriage counselors who a decade ago were advising couples to go ahead and part are now recommending couples to hang in there and try to make it through the storm.  Of course, this has been God’s plan all along.  Marital problems are a storm that many people are going through.

Another storm occurs when we lose someone we love.  A study titled “Broken Heart,” looked into the mortality rate of 4500 widowers within six month of their wives’ deaths.  Compared with other men the same age, the widowers had a mortality rate 40% higher.  What greater storm can we go through than the loss of a loved one?

The pandemic has created a financial climate in which many people are facing the storm of a temporary or even a permanent job loss.  I know from personal experience that a layoff can be devastating.  It hurts because it is a direct attack on one’s self esteem, and leads to a period of upset and unrest as financial worries become the most important issue in our lives.  Then we all wonder where is God when we need him?  Is he sleeping in the stern of the boat while we are in danger of being swamped and sunk?  Does he care if we are perishing?

When the disciples roused Jesus from his sleep, he spoke to the wind and the waves.  “Peace! Be still!” and the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.  Then he turned to his disciples and said, “Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?”  Storms in our life will come.  They will also be severe at times, and will seem to be life threatening.  And yes, sometimes it may feel like God has forsaken us.  But it is at times like this when our faith is critical.  These are the times when we need to look deep into our hearts – into our souls.  These are times when we should ask ourselves if we truly believe in a God who loves us and has promised to never forsake us.  Do we believe that however dark the clouds may be, behind those clouds, the sun still shines?  Do we believe that beyond every cross, there is an empty tomb?  If we do, we can weather the storm, no matter how severe.  If we don’t, now is the time to pray to God for that wonderful gift of faith.

There is a book titled “Stay Alive All Your Life.”  This was written by a Dr. Norman Vincent Peale.  In this book, he speaks about encountering a hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean which they managed to sail around.  Afterwards, Dr. Peale and the captain of the ship were visiting.  The captain said he had lived by the philosophy that if the sea is smooth, it will get rough, and if it is rough, it will get smooth.  Then the captain added, “But with a good ship you can always ride it out.”

What happens, though, if you are in a tiny ship in a terrible storm.  This was the predicament that the disciples faced.  This is the situation that many of us have faced at times, or will face.  At times like this all we can do is rely on the faith that we have nourished and nurtured all our lives.  When we do then we can turn to Jesus with trust in his love, because then we will hear a voice that calms the storms within our own souls saying to us, “Peace! Be still!

“God Gives Growth”

A Homily for the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time
By Deacon Paul Coderre

Who was Homan Walsh?  In 1847, the people of the city of Niagara Falls decided that if there was a bridge which would span the gorge, it would greatly enhance their economy.  They had the technology to build the bridge, but they couldn’t figure out how to get the first line across the gorge.  The steep cliffs, rapids, and winds hindered any conventional methods.  They finally decided that if someone could fly a kite across the gorge, they might be able to get that first line in.  A prize of $10 was offered to the person who could land a kite on the other side of the gorge.  Ten-year-old Homan Walsh succeeded in landing a kite on his second attempt.

The engineers then tied a rope to his kite string that they pulled across the gorge, and then used it to pull a heavier cable across.  On August 1st 1848, the first bridge was completed and eventually a rail and road bridge was completed in 1855.  All this happened because of a small boy and his kite.

What shall we say the kingdom of God is like?  Jesus said it is like a mustard seed.  The kingdom of God is like a tiny insignificant mustard seed.  But that tiny seed will germinate, and grow and grow until it becomes a large bush.  In this analogy, we see that God looks at things from a very different perspective from yours and mine.  This is one of the major characteristics of Jesus.  He had an ability to see the possibilities and potential of an individual.  He viewed others, not such much as what they were, but what they could become.  Peter was an ordinary fisherman who became the rock on which the Church was built.  Matthew a corrupt tax collector was to become a trusted friend and disciple.  An angry Pharisee named Saul was to stop persecuting the early Church to become a great apostle to the Gentiles.  It was not that these men were great in themselves, it is God who uses small beginnings to do great things.

In our First Reading from Ezekiel, we hear the prophecy that God would take a sprig from a tree and turn it into a noble cedar.  The ancient Israelites could see in the promise of this prophecy the reality that growth is always in God’s hands.  God would do more for them than they could ever imagine.  When Ezekiel spoke this prophecy, the Israelites were in bondage and exile.  They needed these words to give them hope that God would return them to Jerusalem – that their time of exile would someday end.  They believed the promise that Israel would eventually become a nation that the whole world would respect.

The people who heard Jesus tell the parable of the farmer’s life understood his analogy as they were close to the land and shared the wonders of the soil.  They knew from experience with the land that although the farmer works hard during the day, he doesn’t the power to make the seed grow into a plant, and to force that plant to produce fruit.  It is God who causes the growth.  

In more modern terms, the farmer creates the best environment for growing, but it is still God who causes the growth.  Jesus’ point is that the Kingdom of God, like the plants, is in God’s hands.  The workers in God’s fields are tasked with the creation of the best possible conditions for spiritual growth.  Do you think it is hard to be a good Christian?  The people of the Early Church had it really rough.  They took comfort from this story, while the devil did his very best to try stop the spread of the faith.  

Persecuted on every side, these early Christians had to trust that God would give growth to his Kingdom on earth.  And God did, and does, give growth.  The Church lives on despite the persecution of the Romans, despite early internal fights about dogma, despite the Fall of Rome and the conquest of the barbarians, despite corruption from within, and without, in the Middle Ages, and despite the too many scandals of clergy abuse in our days.  Despite these challenges, and others, God does give growth.  He does wonders with our feeble efforts to till the ground - He turns that which is insignificant into that which is substantial

The parable of the mustard seed reminds us that God’s beginnings may be small, but his results are great.  Just think.  We are members of the greatest society the world has ever seen.  We are members of the Kingdom of God.  We are members of Christ’s own Church.  No matter what the media may print or show, we are part of the only truly relevant organization in the world.  No matter what you might read in the papers, the Church continues to grow.  It is the Lord, not people, who gives the growth.  

Therefore, when you are confronted with media attacks upon our Catholic religion. when you are confronted by those who compare the number of priests and parishes without priests to their numbers 50 years ago, just remember the Church is forever.  It will adjust and flourish in the future just as it has in the past.  And it will grow, for God gives it growth.

Therefore, when you are confronted with immorality on all sides, when the skeptics call you foolish, when you are convinced that the world is coming to an end because so many people are behaving immorally, when you are so often tempted to join them, do not despair.  The Church not only lives on through the muddle and the mire.  Despite almost continuous attacks, it still actually grows.  You and I can also grow spiritually as long as we do what we can to remain united with the Church.  For in the face of internal and external turmoil, God is still working and giving his Church growth.

Jesus in this Gospel for the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time is giving us all an invitation.  It is an invitation for us to look at the Kingdom of God with new eyes.  The outside appearance may seem insignificant and so small you can hardly see it, but the results are great.  If you believe that this is how God does things, then you will not be too quick to dismiss the small and insignificant.  You will not give up on yourself, on others, on the Church, or even on the world, when all you can see are signs of weakness and insignificance.  Instead, you will believe that with God all things are possible, even if all that you see is a tiny mustard seed, something small and insignificant.

“Love Fest”

A Homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ -
Corpus Christi (Cycle B)
By Deacon Paul Coderre

I was once told that when one looks back to their earliest memories, one only remembers the sunny days.  When I think back on my early years, and in particular, my teenage years, I do remember the good times first.  One memory that is particularly vivid is of the times when we had large family dinners.  Now, as some of you know, I come from a large family – I am one of 10 children.  Even a normal school day evening meal would be a large family dinner.  But what I remember in particular are the times when my father’s family would gather at our place for a special meal like Thanksgiving.  I’m talking about 25 or so for dinner.

My Mom would start cooking pies, and other dessert things, about a week early, and the preparations would continue for the whole week leading up to the event.  We lived in a relatively small home – a story and a half – maybe 1100 square feet.  So big events were held in the unfinished basement.  We would put a tablecloth on the ping pong table, and add odd-sized tables to each end.  I remember one particular Thanksgiving, when we had so many people that we also used a doll’s table at one end of the main seating area.  My grandfather, my Dad, and two of my uncles sat at this little table with their knees higher than their plates.  Grandpa joked with his three forty something children about behaving at the meal.  I remember these events as filled with laughter and talking.  Stories were shared and newcomers introduced – particularly new girlfriends – just ask my wife Nancy.  And after a great deal of talking and storytelling, the food would be brought down from the kitchen in a seemingly endless stream.  The ‘piece de resistance’ usually being a 25-30 lb turkey.  These are wonderful memories of happy times and family love.

Can you imagine what an event like the Thanksgiving I have just described would be like, if my Mom has just placed food and drink on the table with no lead up or conversation, and we each individually fed ourselves?  That is what the Eucharist can be if we don’t realize all that is involved with this marvelous sacrament.

Let’s consider the words:  Party, Celebration, Feast, and Eucharist.  They are alike in many ways.  They are not something you can do on your own.  A party of one would be boring to say the least.  These words are all nouns, but they are also action nouns.  You can celebrate at a celebration, and feast at a feast.  You can party at a party, but how does one Eucharist?  What I would like to talk about with you today, is the need to make the Eucharist a verb instead of a noun – an action instead of a thing.  Bread and wine are just things – food and drink.  Bread and wine become the Body of Blood of Christ through action, through celebration, through community and through sharing and storytelling.

This is the day of the Church Year when we celebrate the Body and Blood of Christ in a special way.  It is a feast – a party.  As the readings for today highlight, the Eucharist is the blood of the New Covenant.  A covenant is a solemn promise between God and humankind.  And such covenants are always concluded with a sign.  The rainbow is a sign of the covenant between God and Noah -Circumcism, the sign of the covenant with Abraham.  We heard in our first reading today that the sprinkling with blood was the sign of the covenant with Moses.  And as the Gospel tells us, the sign of the New Covenant is the Eucharist.  When, therefore, we receive Communion we are renewing that covenant - making a solemn re-commitment to our faith.

When we receive Communion, it is so much more than just eating and drinking.  When we participate in the Eucharist, we are committing ourselves, as members of this community, to continue the fight against the evil of our world.  We are telling God that we will remain active members of the Church with our brothers and sisters in Christ.  This is serious stuff.  It is not just a ‘fast food’ encounter.

I started with a memory of my youth.  And trust me, I am coming to a point.  The Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, gives us an opportunity to re-dedicate ourselves to the Eucharist.  All aspects of the Eucharist – not just the objects – but the activity.  Not just the noun – but the verb.

When we gather for a family meal like Thanksgiving, we don’t just eat and run.  The meal provides the occasion, but we come for the feast – for the party and for the family celebration.  We also come to renew our friendship with those we do not see every day, to share stories of current, and not so recent, events.  

I am here to assert, that the Eucharist is also a feast and a family celebration.  The family includes all your sisters and brothers in Christ.  The celebration should start earlier in the week as we prepare.  We might not be making pies, like my Mom, but hopefully, we are reading the Gospel and pondering what message God might have for us this week.  

It is now Sunday, and when we arrive at the doors of the Church, we encounter our friends and our brothers and sisters.  If it wasn’t for the pandemic restrictions this is a time for sharing, for greeting, for talking.  There is laughter, hospitality and community.  We gather, we listen to the Word of God in the Scriptures.  We share with each other, and the less fortunate, through our gifts.  We pray and sing together, and then we share our meal, the Body and Blood of Christ.  And then, we leave this place having renewed our commitment to each other and the covenant we have with our God.  We go forth to live the Mass in our schools, homes, and workplaces.  That is how our Eucharist is supposed to be.  This is how it becomes an event not a thing and how it become a ‘Love Fest’.  It becomes a festival of the love of God for us, and our love for him and our brothers and sisters.

As a ‘love fest’, the Eucharist is much more than just bread and wine.  It is an action of the Presider, and all of us here in this place, done together as one family in Christ.  Just receiving Communion is not enough.  We need to actively participate, actively listen, actively share and actively praise our God.  Then we are dismissed to actively practice our faith in Jesus.  This is what makes our Eucharist a feast and a wholesome family meal which will sustain us until we return next week.

“How Does God Work?”

A Homily for Trinity Sunday (Cycle B)
By Deacon Paul Coderre

Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday and this important feast raises the question in my mind.  How does God work?  We live in a high-tech society here in Canada, and we normally are not really concerned about how things work.  Our questions these days might be more like “What button do I push?”  Or “how do I install Shopify on my phone?”  It’s strange, but these days we take for granted so many things that our ancestors would have really questioned.  Take electricity for example:  for most of us it’s just something available in the walls.  We put in a plug and electricity comes out.  We turn on a tap and out comes the water.  We don’t ask why or how, we just assume that someone else knows and we think to ourselves, “Why worry about it?”

But what about that question – how does God work?  In the first reading for today, Moses speaks to the people, and he asks them questions, “Has anything so great as this ever happened or has it been heard of?” and “Has any people ever heard the voice of a god speaking out of a fire, as you have heard, and lived? Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself in the midst of others, by trials, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand?”  These questions were used to explain the one God to the people of the Old Testament, but it doesn’t address the question, “How does God work?”  

We learn some things through St. John, who received revelation directly from God.  He writes in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.”  It seems that our God sent someone to put a face on God.  Is that how God works?  The New Testament does clarify things for us a little bit.  According to John 14:9, Jesus said, “Have I been with you all this time Philip, and you still do not know me?  Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.  How can you say, ‘Show us the Father?” And then we have St. Paul in 1st Corinthians 5:18-19; who points us to the identity of God in Jesus with these words, “All is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us

Utterly powerless, Jesus hung on the Cross.  Strangely forgiving, he prayed for his torturers.  Is this how God works?  What we do know is that God works:  At the highest levels of power and the greatest distance from us.  By personally entering into human history in the person of Jesus – wholly human and wholly divine remaining with us and interacting with us through his Holy Spirit, yes.

We believe in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit - a powerful supreme being.  We believe in God, the Father Almighty and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord.  We believe in the Holy Spirit our Advocate and Guide.  This is how we profess our faith and how we think God works.  Do you know something?  We are unique!  Only Christians see God as the Trinity?  No other religion testifies to the three persons of the one God.  As Catholics, we proclaim this truth every time we make the Sign of the Cross.

But getting our minds around the Trinity is not easy.  It is a concept that theologians have spent their lives trying to grasp and to put into words.  Now I am not a scholar.  In fact, sometimes I wonder how my own mind works.  I get these strange ideas when I read the Gospel for a Sunday and sometimes a memory is twigged.  I remember as a youngster trying to wrap my mind around concepts like the Trinity.  You know, three persons in one God and the various symbols for God and the Trinity.  And here I am with the task of trying to bring the readings for Trinity Sunday to life for you.  If I were able to deliver this Homily in person, I would use a prop to try to explain the Trinity.  I have used triangle made of Styrofoam.  The triangle is a form most of us recognize as it is a standard symbol for God.  But the way we visualize and pray to God changes as we change and grow.  This imaginary triangle is three-dimensional with each side bearing the names of the three persons of the Trinity.  Looking face on we see the triangle and the word God, but turning it sideways we see the Son.  Now we are looking at God through Jesus, and all that we know about Jesus through the Gospels.  If we turn the triangle to the Holy Spirit side, again it is still God that we are looking at, but our experience of God is filtered through the Holy Spirit.  The third side is the Father – the Creator – the all-powerful, but it's still the same triangle, still the same God.  One God but three persons.  One God, but three perceptions of the same God.  

Our human lives are in the form of a trinity – Spirit, Body and Mind.  When we are born, we are almost all body.  Our mind is capable of meeting the demands of our bodies for food and comfort, but not much else.  But at the instant of our conception God grants us, a tiny spark of the Spirit.  This tiny spark is all that is needed to ignite our faith as we grow as a child of God.  In the three sacraments of initiation, Baptism, Eucharist, and Confirmation our Spirit grows, and ideally, when we reach adulthood, we are in balance – Spirit, Body, and Mind.  An ideal death then, for a Christian, would occur when our Spirit has grown to take up most of our existence in this world as our body and mind have given way to our burgeoning spirit.  Death then, becomes a simple and easy transition to pure spirit.  

Our perception of God changes as we age, and as our needs change.  When we are very young, we see God as a father, and sometimes as a judge in our thoughts and images.  As we age, we see Jesus Christ becoming more real to most of us.  We then see God as a friend and companion.  And then gradually throughout our lives we become more and more aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit continuous guiding and comforting us.  You see, our whole lives are wrapped up in the Trinity, and the love of God is wrapped around each of us.  Yes, the Trinity is a mystery beyond our human understanding, but God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is with us always from the instant of our creation and for all of eternity.  Now that is truly something to celebrate.