My Grace Is Sufficient
April 2026 • About a month into my language studies, a priest from the Diocese of Fianarantsoa approached me and said that they needed priests to celebrate the Easter Triduum in the bush. He asked if I’d be willing to go. After a week of prayer, I came to a simple conclusion: a foreign priest who spoke Malagasy poorly was better than no priest at all. I asked the priest to explain to the curé in Fianarantsoa that I only had one month of Malagasy under my belt and that if he still wanted me, then I’d go. The answer came back quickly. “No problem, see you for Holy Week!”
Fr. Christophe dropped me, Sr. Anjara, and Sébastien, a Malagasy seminarian, off in the village of Vohitsoa on Thursday morning. During the previous month, Madame Elizabeth and I had spent countless hours preparing for the Triduum. We had read through every liturgy together, and I had underlined the accented syllable of every word in my missal so I’d know where to place the stress. She recorded every prayer I would pray, every Gospel I would proclaim, and every homily I would preach. Each evening, I listened to the recordings and repeated them over and over again.
D-Day had finally arrived, and I was nowhere near ready. No matter how many times I repeated the prayers, I still stumbled over words, stuttered through sentences, or misplaced an accent. My conversational Malagasy was still very limited, and to say that I was a little ball of stress would be a huge understatement. The catechists and the leaders of six villages had gathered in Vohitsoa for the Triduum. As we met them, I understood very little of what was being said. I simply tried to remind myself of the discernment that had brought me here: the priest had asked for me, the people had asked for me, and there was no one else available. So, Lord, here I am.
The Holy Thursday liturgy went smoothly as, with the exception of a long dialogue explaining the meaning of the Lord's Supper, it was one of the easier liturgies of the Triduum. Soon we came to the washing of the feet. Even before I was a seminarian, I had longed for the day I would wash the feet of my parishioners on Holy Thursday. It's not simply Christ's humility that has always touched me, but how this single gesture seems to encapsulate His whole earthly ministry. The One who is Lord and Master kneels before His disciples. The first becomes the last. The greatest becomes the servant of all. It’s a beautiful summary of the vocation of every priest, indeed of every Christian. We are called to be found at the feet of the people entrusted to our care, not only on Holy Thursday, but every day.
So it was with great emotion that I moved slowly from one pair of dusty feet to the next. I washed them. I dried them. I even soaped them up! As I washed the first pair of feet, the altar server handed me a bar of soap. Lost in the moment, I simply assumed it was part of the rite and began carefully soaping up every pair of feet. It wasn't until later that evening that I realized he’d probably handed me the soap so I could wash my hands, not their feet! But perhaps what touched me most was that, for those few moments, I didn't need words. There was nothing to mispronounce, no syllables to accent. The liturgy spoke for itself, and it was beautiful.
Unfortunately, the grace of Holy Thursday didn't make the stress disappear. If anything, it had deepened. Good Friday was a more demanding liturgy. They wanted me to bless each of the cardinal directions with the cross, but I didn't know which way was north. They wanted me to sing, but I didn't know the melody. And to make matters worse, I couldn't hear that gentle interior voice that had accompanied me all along the way. Truthfully, I felt empty. Empty, empty. Christ had promised that He would be with me every step of the way, yet I couldn't hear Him. I couldn't feel Him.
Towards the end of the liturgy, I tried to turn that stress into an offering. I offered Christ my mispronounced words and imperfect Malagasy. I offered Him my fatigue and my frustration. I offered Him my disappointments and my doubts. I offered Him my weakness. And I felt nothing. Empty. Looking back now, I can see what I couldn't see then. Christ was walking with me, but on Good Friday He was asking me to walk with Him. Yet it was difficult to see, and I went to bed a very grumpy priest.
By the time the Easter Vigil arrived, I was completely exhausted. As the church sat in darkness and we listened to the long succession of readings tracing the history of salvation, something in me finally gave way. I had spent the previous days trying to hold everything together, worrying about every word, every accent, every mistake. But somewhere in the sweet darkness of the Easter Vigil, I stopped trying to simply make it through the liturgy. I stopped trying to carry it. Instead, I allowed the liturgy to carry me.
It was a moment of pure grace. My Malagasy hadn't suddenly improved. I was still the same foreign priest who mispronounced words and stumbled through prayers. But none of that seemed to matter anymore. The liturgy had become a prayer once again, and I found myself praying with the people instead of merely trying to stay one step ahead of them.
The Gloria came. The church burst into light, and every voice was lifted in praise of our God. Christ was risen! He was risen indeed! In that moment, all the stress of the previous month simply melted away. As I looked out over the people, I realized that they didn’t care about my inadequacies. They had simply been waiting for a priest. They were overjoyed to celebrate the Resurrection, and I was overjoyed to celebrate it with them.
The silence of Good Friday had not been God's absence. God's grace had been quietly at work all along, carrying me further than I could ever have gone on my own. As St. Paul writes, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." Throughout the Triduum, I had spent so much time trying to offer Christ my strength. In the end, He asked me for only one thing: my weakness.
Photos, starting at the top left: Good Friday; baptizing 40 catechumens; Easter morning (Mass was celebrated outside the church because so many people attended); with Sr. Anjara and Sébastien; with Fr. Christophe.
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