Holy Family Catholic Church Gold Mass (Feast of St. Albert) Wis 13:1-9 Mk 9:2-10 How many of you have heard of “Tiktaalik?” Do you know what a “Tiktaalik” is? I’ll say the word again: Tiktaalik. Tiktaalik is the name of an animal that lived 375 million years ago. It was a fishlike aquatic creature that was among the first to evolve the ability to crawl out onto dry land. Tiktaalik’s fossils were found by paleontologists Ted Daeschler and Neil Shubin twenty years ago in the arctic on Ellesmere Island, in Nunavut, northern Canada. Tiktaalik is called a “transitional fossil,” which embodies a transition from one major evolutionary stage to another. A second example of this is archaeopteryx, which embodies the transition of dinosaurs to birds. Tiktaalik is sometimes referred to as “a fish with wrists” having fish-like qualities, but limbs that could support its weight as it crawled onto land, as an early ancestor of the amphibians....
These posts are the collected homilies of Deacon Ned Berghausen, permanent deacon of the Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville, assigned to St. Agnes Catholic Church. The title "Foot Washer" refers to the Last Supper (John 13:1-20) in which Jesus washed the feet of the apostles and challenged them, "“Do you realize what I have done for you? If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow."