 For those of you guys who don't know of me, I'm Father Chris O'Connor from The Great Dice of Brooklyn. And this year, just not that many of us, we still have a very large presence here, right, Frank? There you go. So, I started good, that was good, there you go, okay. So, Holy Week last year, you know what, Holy Week last year, you don't want another one like that, right? I was in my office writing a letter to the parish and I was sitting here, I heard an ambulance. Now, that might not seem unusual, especially in New York City. I mean, we hear sirens all the time. Actually, it's weird we don't hear the sirens. But it sounded louder than usual and I have a severe hearing loss on completely deaf my left ear. And so, for me to hear the sirens was kind of loud. And then, I heard another ambulance and was loud. And then I started realizing part of it, maybe because it was no traffic, because New York City, just seeing it in every sleet, is pretty much dead at this moment, nothing was happening. And then, I'm typing the letter and hearing another ambulance and it's loud. And then another one and then stop typing. Lord, have mercy on them, what's going on? Lord, help us. And I found out later that the reason why the sirens sounded louder to me was that New York City didn't have enough ambulances to take all the COVID patients to the hospitals. We had ambulances come from out of state. And in New York City, our sirens only use 100 watts, but once we're out of state, we use 200 watts. And the reason why I heard the ambulance is so loudly is because less than a mile away from my parish was Elmhurst Hospital, which was the epicenter of the entire country for COVID at that moment. They ran out of beds. Then the messages started coming. Father, can you go to the cemetery? Because we have no funerals. We have no wake services. So I go to a cemetery, which is not one of ours, and they get there and the funeral director texts me and says, do you want you to get out of the car? Do you want you to do the prayer or some inside the car? What? How am I gonna pray for these people inside the car? Do you want me to bless the coffin if it's in my car? What's that the heck with that? I got out of the car, but they had the coffin. I can build the driveway to the cemetery, and the family is in their car watching me, and the cemetery workers are dressed in practically hazmat suits. This is the very beginning. No one ruined what's going on. And then went, I just shrugged at the family, like my hands and hearts, I'm sorry, and just blessed the body and got in the car. Couple of days later, my funeral home close by me says, Father, we have two. Can you go with us to St. John's Cemetery? One of them ran by my diocese, that's sure. We go and we get there. And so I go and, guys, it was awful because there was a new section at cemetery. It looked like France in World War I. It was like trenches, because in New York City at that moment, there was a two-week waiting list to get buried, three-week waiting list to get cremated. In New York City, on average, before COVID, 110 people died a day. At the height of COVID, 580 people were dying every day. If you wanted to get buried in New York City, you had to wait two, three weeks. Funeral homes are actually telling people we couldn't take you anywhere. So there I am at the cemetery, and I bury my parishioners, and they're going, Father, we're gonna go back and pick up the next one. Can you wait? Sure, so I'm waiting. And then there's this other family sitting there and they're crying, and they come up to me, and I know what they're gonna ask me, and they say, Father, we have nobody to pray with us. Can you pray with us? Absolutely. So I go there, and I said, I did three burials that day. And then I got to the point, though, because they were so backlogged, like, I could go to the cemetery and wait two hours to do the five-minute service. So the funeral home and I, we talked and said, we're gonna do, which is not a good term to use in New York City, but we did drive-bys, where they would text me, Father, we're on the way, I'd be in the church, ready, invested. The hearse would pull up in front of the church, I'd ring the funeral bells, and then I would go out, and the funeral director opened the back of the hearse, pulled the coffin out a little bit. The family would gather, six feet distance, I was wearing a mask. I'd go to the family and I'd just apologize if I couldn't do a funeral mask. My heart really hurt for them, because my own father, my grandparents, friends, we had to wait, and we could mourn, we could cry, we could laugh, we could tell stories. The funeral mass, like nobody does funerals, nobody does death better than Catholics. I mean, our funeral masses bring such healing for the family, but also for the soul of the deceased. And I told them, I'm sorry we can't do this, but once we can have mass again, let me know we could do a memorial mass. So then I would do the burial right in front of my church. And sometimes it was like, okay, Father, our next one's coming. Then there's this young lady from my last parish, text me, Father, it is now my dad dead, and I can't see him. Her parents were separated. His cousin went to pick him up to go to work. He wouldn't answer the door. He was fine the night before. And he's dead. So this poor girl couldn't see her dad one last time. They did a direct cremation. She closed me up, what am I gonna do? I didn't know what to do. I went to the Lord. What do you want me to do, Lord? He goes, you zoom. What? Zoom? I never used zoom before at that moment. I had heard about it. We started using CCD, so I went online, looked down on it. So I told Tatiana, I said, Tatiana, I said, I'm gonna do a zoom service for your family. So I'm gonna figure this out and send a link. We're gonna do that. So then I sent the link. And her parents were from Ecuador. So then we did it. I was in my bus sacrament chapel in the rectory. I had some nuns staying with me. We were musicians. And I did a prayer service on Zoom. I did a wake service. And we had people from Ecuador watching it, people from California, people from New York. Yeah, over 50 people in this Zoom wake service. And I said, I was so sorry. This is all I could do. And the sister sang some music and we did the wake service. And at the end, I said, if you guys wanna say anything about your brother, about your dad, about your friend, now's the time. And it all starts sharing stories. And even though we're all sheltering in a place at that moment, the Lord brought us all together in that moment. And I share these stories with you because it's been a hard year for all of us. And we're trying to figure out what to do to be with our people. To reach out to them, to love them. God didn't know they were not forgotten. He didn't know the doors are closed. He couldn't have masks. He couldn't have confessions, sacraments. The Lord took care of me in a certain way because before COVID, I heard about that book, A Consecrated State in Joseph. So I pre-ordered that on Amazon. I couldn't wait. I was gonna do it. I was gonna consecrate myself on March 19th, 2020. But then Amazon could never deliver the book. So after Christmas, I get worried. I'm looking. I'm still not available. I'm still not available because I wanna get it so I could do it in time. And I didn't get it in time to do the consecration March 19th. Eventually, I had to cancel Amazon. I knew it directly from the Mary and Simecha Conception. Then I got it. But the Lord knew what he was doing. Because I had to start that consecration in the middle of COVID and make my consecration on May 1st, Joseph the Worker. And every day, for those 33 days or so, I was praying with St. Joseph. In St. Joseph, it's been a great example to me because he's confirmation of the Saint name and so forth. But he had to handle such crazy situations. I mean, he had his whole life planned out. He was married to this beautiful girl in Nazareth. They're gonna have a bunch of kids, maybe expand the carpentry business. And then, boom, Mary comes and says, Joseph, I gotta tell you something. Turned his world upside down. And then they gotta go to Bethlehem, right? For the census. And they go there. He thinks, I'm going back to my ancestral home. This would be great. We're probably gonna have some great reception and all that. And they get there, and you can't find anything. They gotta go to the stable. And then they go to the temple. And this is a great moment of presenting to the Lord. And then Simeon says, and you, a sword of sorrow is gonna pierce your heart. And Joseph's probably like, what the heck is going on, God? And then they get back. And then the angel comes and says, oh, by the way, Herod wants to kill the mother and the child, tangled in Egypt. And his whole life is transformed again. But that guy went through so much problems and so many things, and life changed in events in that short period of nine months. So how did St. Joseph handle all of that? He had the real presence of Jesus. He was the first human being to see the face of Jesus. When he was born, he saw Him first and then he came to Mary. And then you can imagine St. Joseph, when he's freaking out, when he's worried, I'm not good enough, I'm not strong enough, I'm not smart enough, what am I gonna do? He's had a look at the Christ child and find that peace. He had constant adoration going on. He had the Lord, so I can imagine, and of course, he went to our lady. And that's what we're supposed to do as priests, right? We're supposed to go to our lady and we're supposed to go to Jesus, truly present to us. One of the great gifts of my diocese is our two last bishops, most virtually mandated. We're highly encouraged that every rectory have a blessed sacrament chapel. And my two pastors, my first decision, each assignment was like, okay, we're a rectory church, wait, wait, I'm gonna find, where is the chapel going if you don't have one already? Because it was during COVID though, I would go to the Lord and he said, Lord, I don't know, Lord, I'm so tired. Lord, I can't figure this out anymore. What do you want me to do? He was like, just stay here. Guys, I didn't love doing holy hours, otherwise I'd spend time for the blessed sacrament. But sometimes I'd be in the chapel and I'd go in my room and I realized I'd been there for two hours. Sometimes I realized I was there for three hours. I'm not saying that to brag, I'm saying that because that's what got me through. I couldn't see my friends. I couldn't hug my mom for six months. I couldn't go out with my buddies. I couldn't see a lot of my parishioners. So I just went to him, like Joseph. And then I was able to meet that consecration of me first and it was just so powerful. It was so helpful because then I was like, just like Joseph, go see Jesus, go look at Jesus. Imagine just growing up in Nazareth in New Egypt and Nazareth and how Joseph would struggle and then he would just look at Jesus sleeping and he just remembered God trusted him. God trusted him of Jesus. And guys, especially the priest, God trusted us with him, son too. Like in our hands, we get to hold God. And sometimes we say mass so often we might sometimes forget the mystery that we're doing but to celebrate mass, to go to adoration. If you wanted to hurt me more than anything else, take away my faculties. You wanna destroy my heart, destroy my soul, tell me I can't say mass. But Joseph just helped me remind myself, sometimes you don't have to say anything. Sometimes you don't have to talk, just look at the face of Jesus. So go to Joseph and have a help you see the Eucharistic face of Jesus. You remember nothing else when it's homily. Go to Joseph and help you see the Eucharistic face of Jesus. Because great things happen before the blessed sacrament. I don't wanna pray the same way every time. Sometimes I listen to music, sometimes I listen to those of God's music, sometimes I listen to other music, sometimes I put a YouTube video on to help me or something like that. Sometimes I just read something, sometimes I read scripture, sometimes I just sit there and look at them. And then the Lord does interesting things for the blessed sacrament, does he not? Like sometimes I'm praying and then somebody I've not thought about in months will come to mind. And I'm praying, I'm like, why am I thinking about Monica? Why am I thinking about Monica? Why am I thinking about Monica? Wait, where's Monica coming from? So I'll take my phone out, I'll text Monica and say, hey, I'm with Jesus right now, I'm praying for you. And usually reply comes back, how do you know something was wrong with me? How do you know I was hurting right now? Said, I didn't know anything the Lord does. He loves you. Send her a text to someone, a friend of mine, Dominique. Praying for you right now for Jesus, he's put you in my heart. How do you know? I'm really struggling with work. I'm pulling my hair out of my head. How do you know? I didn't know anything. The Lord did. So the Lord wants us to go and know him in the blessed sacrament. And the Sister Mary has been quoting from Father Jacques Joliet, but I want to do the same thing. And it's in the book on priestly fatherhood. It's also at the feet of the blessed sacrament in daily faithfulness to the moments of Eucharistic adoration that a priest truly becomes a father, truly becomes a father. This is where the father of heaven communicates his true fatherhood, his compassion and his tenderness for all his children. This is where in a large part when it requires the attention for others, the one needs. So in front of the blessed sacrament, you're truly learning how to be fathers. Because we're bringing our children, our spiritual children, we pray for them, we love them. We pray and we love them like St. Joseph, love baby Jesus, and the child Jesus, and the teenage Jesus, and the young man Jesus. We love them that way. And I know what I'm saying is nothing new. And I know it's been thousands of books written on this. The guy sometimes is so simple. Just go to Jesus. So I invite you now just imagine St. Joseph leading you and pointing to you. To where he got his strength, to the face of Jesus.