On God's mountain

I am on a self-imposed preaching hiatus. As a result, it was a bit of conundrum whether to compose a reflection on this week's Sunday readings. I decided to wait and see how I felt today. And I feel like doing one. Good thing reading blog posts is a voluntary activity! At times, I focus on the second reading, sometimes called "the epistle reading." Today, I am taking our first reading from Isaiah as my text.

Isaiah 26:6-10a

"On this mountain," our reading from Isaiah tells us, God will establish his kingdom. From this prophetic description, God's kingdom sounds like a glorious place. Like Terry Jones longed for Finland, God's mountain is where I long to be. One feature of God's mountain is that there is enough, more than enough for everyone. This bounty, provided by God, is not earned. It is given freely.

Each time we gather for worship, we say together the Lord's Prayer. This is the prayer Jesus gave when he was asked by his closest disciples to teach them how to pray. It is the prayer the Lord has placed on lips of his Church. He did not teach us this prayer for it to remain on our lips. It needs to sink down into our hearts.

During my visit to New Mexico last month, I had the wonderful privilege of once again hearing my former bishop, now-Archbishop John Wester preach. He preached on forgiveness. He said that in a lot of instances it really makes no sense to forgive, at least not from a logical point of view. He then stated perhaps the longest distance imaginable was from our heads to our hearts. In our Gospel reading from several weeks ago, in which the inspired author of Saint Matthew's Gospel sets forth the Lord's teaching on forgiveness, Jesus says clearly that you must forgive "from your heart" (Matthew 18:21-35).

Try as some might to alter this, Christanity is always more of a matter of the heart than it is of the head. This is true as long we keep Jesus' teaching at the center. I was reading last night about one of Frederich Nietzsche's best friends, the theologian Franz Overbeck. There can be little doubt that Overbeck's theology influenced Nietzsche's philosopy.

Published in 1873, Overbeck's most influential work was Über die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie (How Christian is Our Present-Day Theology?). His conclusion was theology in his day was not very Christian. I doubt his assessment of Christian theology over the ensuing one hundred fifty years has seen much improvement. But then, Overbeck's main assertion was that constructing a Christian theology, by which I take him to mean a systematic one, is impossible, at least if we take the Gospels and early Church seriously.

When we pray the Lord's Prayer, the second of the seven petitions, is asking that God's kingdom come. In the following petition, we ask that God's will be done on earth as it is heaven. It's glaringly obvious that these two petitions are related. What else and where else is God's kingdom except the time and place where God's will is done? When God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven, doesn't the kingdom become a present reality? Who, if not the followers of Jesus, are to do God's will on earth?

Letting the Lord's Prayer move from our lips to our hearts is the only way to answer the Marxist critique of Christianity. What is that critique? In a nutshell, the critique is that oppression and injustice are to be endured in this life without complaint and certainly without revolt to earn one's eternal reward. Christian charity then aids unjust social conditions by treating symptoms while ignoring causes. This is why Marx called religion "the opium of the people."

We have the witness of holy women and men who have let the Lord's Prayer move from their lips to their hearts. There is oft-quoted observation made by Dom Hélder Câmara, who, as Archbishop of Olinde and Recife in Brazil, along with Saint Oscar Romero, was an episcopal champion of the Gospel: "When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When ask why they're hungry, they call me a communist." It is not a critique without a great deal of merit. In section twenty-sic of his first encylical, which remains a document well worth reading, Deus caritas est, Pope Benedict takes on this critique.

In an essay entitled, "The Kingdom of God and Theological Dimension of the Poor," theologian Jon Sobrino observed: “Forgetting the poor has gone hand in hand with forgetting the Kingdom of God.” Then, since the essay was written from conference on Christology, in reference to the Church’s early conciliar history, which age marked the time the Church began to become entwined with the empire, Sobrino asserted: “By the time of the fourth-century conciliar debates it is clear that the Kingdom of God plays no role whatsoever in Christology." Maybe seeking to recover the central role of the Kingdom of God might be a way to challenge Overbeck's thesis.

God's kingdom is present now only in the form of a mustard seed. But it is made whenever and wherever God's will is done. Because it derives from the same source, namely the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, we can be sure that the pathway from our lips to our hearts is paved by the Beatitudes.

Establishing a new normal

Okay, it's the second Friday in October. A lot is happening. Too much, in fact. Today, I am not inclined to go into detail.

Once again, it's a year of transitions for me. Now that I've made the big changes, it's time to tweak some things. The need for tweaking arises from my desire to live more fully. This requires having fewer responsibilities and commitments. I've written in detail about what doing less means for me.

At this point in my life, I'm not looking twenty years into the future. Right now, I am focused on the next 4-5 years. This prompts me to consider how best to live these years. One thing I know, I can no longer sustain what I've been doing for the last 20+ years.

In July, when I took some time away from weekend duties, I realize how much I need an actual weekend. I need two days a week when I am off. Looking back, it's amazing to me how adapated I'd become to effectively working seven days a week most weeks. Honestly, for much of that time I was fine doing that. But this year it's hit me pretty hard.

I have some health issues to which I need to attend. While I am blessed that I don't suffer from anything serious, nothing that can't be dealt with by making lifestyle changes, taking care of myself needs to be more of a priority. Spiritually, I need more time and space. I'm excited about and looking forward to having Sunday and Monday off.

That's a lot about me, I know. Hopefully, one benefit of these changes is an increased ability to post more things of substance, as I am accustomedtp doing.

Part of my job now is to write. I enjoy this aspect of my work. Rather than deplete my desire to write, writing makes me want to write. My main reason for posting today is to get back to the Friday traditio.

Back in July, for some reason, I listened to the Bee Gees singing one of their big hits- "Nights On Broadway." Subsequently, I was surprised how many covers there are of this song. I was a bit torn about which version to put up as our traditio. In the end, I decided to stick with the original, selecting a video of a live performance the Brothers Gibb did more than 50 years ago in 1975.

The deaconing: a travelogue

Yesterday at about 11:00 AM, I finished a very taxing but exciting two months. Starting on Monday, 17 August, and ending yesterday, I have been busier than I have been at any time since before the pandemic. This included five trips. Four of these were for work.

I traveled to Mount Angel, Oregon (for my work with the seminary), Darien, Illinois (just outside Chicago- for Catholic Relief Services), Tampa, Florida (for the National Association of Deacon Directors), and Albuquerque, New Mexico (my second home- to lead the deacons of the Arcdiocese of Santa Fe on retreat).

In between Mount Angel and Darien, I slipped in a trip to see my eldest son, who lives just outside Fort Collins, Colorado, and his wife. Married in June, I hadn't seen them since their wedding.

Finally, this past weekend, along with my wonderful associate director of the Office of the Diaconate, I hosted the deacons of my diocese, along with their wives, on our annual retreat. Since this year we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the ordination of the first men ordained to serve the Diocese of Salt Lake City permanently as deacons, we did not have an outside presenter. We only had "inside" presenters.

I gave the first Conference on Friday evening and our bishop gave the final Conference yesterday, immediately following Mass. I admit I was a little nervous. But it could not have gone better.

I also led Morning Prayer on Saturday morning. So, I gave a short reflection on the reading from the office. This is what follows below.

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Reading: Romans 12:14-16a

The essence of today's reading for Morning Prayer strikes me as rather diaconal. This includes the first sentence, which urges us to bless those who treat us poorly, even those who persecute us. As human being but particularly being deacons, we know what it is to be treated poorly.

Being a deacon means occupying a pretty strange space. As deacons, we inhabit the space between the Church and the world. In the Church, we straddle the gap between the clergy and the laity.

In his recent book on the diaconate, Empowered by the Spirit, historian, theologian, and our brother deacon, Hilmar Pabel, points out something very important. Deacons, he insists, seek to serve the marginalized. We must do so by at least pointing out their situation, even if it just means noting their absence from our assembly.

But, he goes on to point out, that this is often made possible and perhaps given some urgency by the fact that, as deacons, we ourselves are often marginalized. He calls us "marginalized ministers."¹ This gives us something to ponder, an important connection to explore and even to make in our own lives and ministries.

While Billy Joel sang, "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints," as deacons, we are called to laugh and cry, to celebrate and mourn with saints and sinners alike, even if, as Billy insisted, "the sinners are much more fun."² In imitation of Christ, who called himself "the deacon," we do this without making distinctions like "saints" and "sinners," deserving and undeserving, etc.³ We are to serve everyone. As Pope Francis often said: ¡Todos, todos, todos!

In harmony with our reading this morning, as deacons, we are called in a profound way to closely associate with those on the margins, the lowly, the lost, so we can serve them in the name of Christ and for the sake of God's kingdom. Who knows, even participate in the Kingdom through and with them?! We are the ones, unlike those the Lord rebuked in last Sunday's Gospel, who recognize that the sinners, the tax collectors and prostitutes, "are entering God's kingdom" ahead of those who think themselves righteous.⁴ A deacon needs to understand the difference between true righteousness and self-righteousness!

Ordained to serve permanently as deacons, our ministry is to show that service must both precede and proceed from sacrifice. Deacons need to grasp that worship that doesn't lead to service is not Christian worship. By putting away ambition, especially ecclesial ambition, identifying with the lowly, and taking our lumps in a spirit of Christian charity (i.e., practicing the spiritual work of mercy that bids us to bear wrongs patiently), deacons live in persona Christi servi.

One of the great theologians of the Second Vatican Council, Herbert Vorgrimler, noted that the deacon "makes it clear that the liturgy must have consequences in the world with all its needs." He went on to insist it is the deacon who also shows "that work in the world that is done in the spirit of charity has a spiritual dimension."⁵

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1 Hilmar M. Pabel. Empowered by the Spirit: Deacons and Ministerial Communion in a Synodal Church. Liturgical: Collegeville, 2026, Introduction.^↩
2 Billy Joel. "Only the Good Die Young" off The Stranger album from 1977.^↩
3 Luke 22:27.^↩
4 See Matthew 21:28-32.^↩
5 Herbert Vorgrimler. Sacramental Theology. Trans. Linda Maloney. Liturgical Press: Collegeville, 1992, page 270.^↩

"Then I'd turn myself to face me"

Things have been quiet around here lately. This is because I have been very busy. Between 17 August and 20 September, I was travelling every week. Only one of those trips was a personal family trip. Boy, did I enjoy being with my family!

Another couple of highlights from this time is leading the annual deacon retreat for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. Spending time outside Chicago with the Catholic Relief Services Global Fellows was also incredible. As always, I have a lot to be grateful for. Being more grateful, as well as being more patient, even with myself, are a few of the things I've been focusing on.

Another thing that gives me joy is teaching theology to a small group of motivated high school students each week. This year, we are tackling the New Testament. Last year, my first doing this, was Old Testament.

In particular, I haven't been putting up the Friday traditio While I was very happy to have been diligent in doing that for virtually all of 2025, looking back, I realized that when I get busy, it is usually the first thing to go. And that's as it should be. Life over blogging (there's that faux verb again!). I posted fewer times during September than any month since November 2024.

As both of my readers know, 2026 has been a year of big changes and transitions in my life. While it's been difficult and taken a lot of adjusting, on the whole, these changes have been good. A little more than six months in, I feel like I have my sea legs. So, I am now making adjustments based on the big changes about which I wrote a lot early this year.

There have been some strange difficulties I've faced this year. I've also written, if vaguely, about these. All of these things have really made me seek the Lord with a renewed fervor and have sparked some personal changes. Not superficial, but deep changes, you know, those you know you need to start making but remain reluctant to do so. Why? Because not only is it work, it's work you can't accomplish on your own.

In short, interior renewal that is centering and isn't dependent on externals. Saint Ignatius of Loyola had one word for this: indiferencía. As another spiritual teacher has taught me, I am learning to practice more consistently "benevolent detatchment."

At the present moment, I am finding one book in particular very useful. Jim Finley's Merton's Palace of Nowhere. Finely's masterwork on Merton, who was Jim's spiritual director for the six years he spent at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, as well as his novice master, was originally published nearly fifty years ago, in 1978.

I don't think this book would've "worked" for me until this year. But it's just what I need right now. Perhaps at some point I will share precisely how Finley's exposition of Merton's spirituality has helped me better appropriate Merton's teachings (it isn't a method). It's also been way too long since I've seriously engaged Pater Tom. Grace abounds.

One fruit of all of this is my need to not be busy seven days a week. Manning several demanding positions in my fulltime work for the diocese made me realize that, at least for the next several years, I don't have the time or the energy for parish ministry. Six and a half years ago, when I accepted a demanding part-time position with the diocese (this while still working a fulltime job), I was given the option not to be assigned to a parish.

I don't regret continuing to serve the parish to which I've been assigned between then and now, but it's past time for a change. Once this transition is complete, there will be more news to follow in terms of what's next for those who care.

While I will be transitioning out between now and Easter, I am already mostly out. My transition began in July. Pastoral necessity put me back in the thick of things for the month of September. At this point, I am pretty sure I will be around for Christmas and Holy Week.

This discernment has been six months in the making. I've done this is in collaboration with both my current pastor and my bishop. I am also blessed with a wonderful spiritual director, who's helped me immensely this year. I've been through enough iterations of back-and-forth to know it's the right thing at the right time and for the right reasons. I have that peace that Saint Ignatius insisted is the confirmation of having discerned wisely, led by the Spirit.

I am preparing to leave for the annual deacon retreat for my diocese. It starts this evening and goes through Sunday morning. Please keep us in your prayers.

It's been way too long since our Καθολικός διάκονος Friday traditio has been something by David Bowie. Fittingly, Bowie's "Changes" is our traditio for this first Friday of October.

Year 2 Monday of the Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Job 1:6-22; Psalm 17:1-3.6-7; Luke 9:46-50

The Book of Job teaches that sometimes bad things happen to good people. It teaches us that these bad things are not God’s punishment for sins and failures. After basically losing everything, Job declares, in the midst of his lament: “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21). Job did not grow angry and shake his fist at the heavens, demanding God explain himself. He blessed the Lord.

A long time ago, someone told me that God doesn’t care as much about what happens to you as he does about how you receive it and how you handle it. That's hard to process. I still think God cares about what happens to me. But God certainly cares about how I handle what comes my way.

It’s never a question of God “cutting you off” from himself. Rather, it’s a question of your attitude towards God when experiencing dark and troubling times. God seeks to use everything that happens to draw me closer to himself. Do I trust him to let him do this, or do I withdraw, certain or maybe worried if God is somehow angry with me? This is an important question.

It’s important to trust God, our Father, with childlike trust, especially when dealing with life’s inevitable struggles, disappointments, and difficulties. More often than not- though not in Job’s case (his friends and even his wife are convinced Job did something wrong for which God is punishing him- they tell him this)- God reaches out to us through other people.

Sometimes God reaches out to us through the most unexpected people. Maybe the person who shows you God’s face, brings a ray of sunlight to your darkness, and encourages you is an unbeliever. Perhaps this person’s beliefs are very different from your own.

Maybe, like a lot of people these days, the person doesn’t really know what s/he believes and practices no religion. Still, such people see you suffering and, like the Good Samaritan, show you compassion, care, and kindness. As with Jesus, so with us: “whoever is not against you is for you” (Luke 9:50)

Unlike Job’s friends, let’s not get so carried away trying to be right that we neglect to be kind, caring, and compassionate. Foster hope in others. Be for others. Be that friend who offers encouragement.

Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist

Readings: Ephesians 4:1-7.11-23; Psalm 19:2-5; Matthew 9:9-13

Today the Church celebrates the Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist. Fittingly, our Gospel reading is Jesus calling Matthew to follow him. In doing so, the Lord invites this tax collector to join his core followers: the Twelve.

Our reading from Ephesians, referring to spiritual gifts, insists, “grace was given to each of us.”¹ It is a grace to follow Christ, who calls everyone. I say he calls everyone, even though in our Gospel he says, “I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”² Like Matthew, none of us are called because of our own merits. And some the Lord calls, like Matthew, like Paul, are surprising, to say the least.

What Saint Paul wrote to the Church in Corinth, I believe, still applies today: “Consider your own calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world…”³

Jesus Calls Matthew To Be His Disciple

Both the call and the response are grace. Grace is a word we hear, read, and perhaps use a lot. Like a boat too long at sea, words used too often can acquire barnacles, taking on so many meanings that the core meaning is muted or even lost.

In his recent novel Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar provides a stunning “take” on grace:

What distinguishes grace from everything else? Grace is unearned. If you’ve moved through the world in such a way as to feel you’ve earned cosmic compensation, then what you’ve earned is something more like justice, like propriety. Not grace. Propriety is correct. Justice is just. There’s an inescapable transactional quality: perform x good, receive y reward. Grace doesn’t work that way. It begins with reward. Goodness never enters the equation⁴

The economy of salvation is non-transactional. Its structure is “gift-return-gift.” This exchange is not about redistributing goods or services. Rather, it’s about imitating God’s self‑gift and living out that gift concretely.

Grace begins with the reward. Christian life begins with the reward. The rest is living in loving gratitude for the gift given and received. This is what Saint Matthew did, transforming from a tax collector into an apostle and evangelist. This is how “to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received.”⁵

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1 Ephesians 4:7.^↩
2 Matthew 9:13.^↩
3 1 Corinthians 1:26-27.^↩
4 Kaveh Akbar. Martyr! Vintage: New York: 2024, page 279..^↩
5 Ephesians 4:1.^↩

Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Readings: Numbers 21:4b-9; Psalm 78:1-2.34-38; Philippians 2:6-11; John 3:13-17

Today the Church throughout the world celebrates the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. This feast marks the day when, in AD 326, the true cross, purportedly discovered by Helena, Emperor Constantine’s mother, was lifted up (exalted) for veneration in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Today marks the 1,700th anniversary of that event.

Like a few other major observances, such as the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, this feast is observed today not only by Roman Catholics but also by Eastern Catholics and most Eastern Orthodox Christians. Today is also Pope Leo’s seventy-first birthday. It is due to the importance and universal nature of this feast that the Liturgy of the Word features three readings.

The readings for today’s feast seem to me perfectly harmonized. Elsewhere in Saint John’s Gospel, Jesus also alludes to our first reading from the Book of Numbers. This happens when, during the Passover celebration in Jerusalem, some Greeks asked his disciples to meet him. In declining their request, the Lord says, referring to his death, “And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself” (See John 12:20-36)

Indeed, far from being a humiliation, Jesus being lifted on the cross is his exaltation, the revelation of who he really is. This is made wonderfully clear in our reading from Philippians. Saint Paul likely took this passage from what New Testament scholars agree was probably an early Christian hymn, now known as “the kenotic hymn.” This inspired passage shows us who Jesus really is. It does so by giving us a deep glimpse into God’s very nature.

“Because of this,” we hear in the passage, “God exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name” (Phil 2:6). The “this” that is referred to is his emptying himself (“to empty” is what the Greek word kenosis means) to become a slave and to be subjected to an unjust and, in the ancient world, deeply humiliating death. He did not use divine omnipotence to save himself. Rather, for our sake, he commended himself to the Father- this same Father who did not take the cup of his passion away from him.

It is on the cross that Jesus shows us the height, depth, and width of God’s love. On the cross, Jesus shows us that genuine strength is made manifest in weakness. He demonstrates that real power, which is the power of divine love (i.e., agape), is made perfect through weakness (2 Cor 12:9-10). Nearly two thousand years on, the cross of Christ remains a scandal not only to many non-believers, but to many Christians as well.

Returning to history, let’s not forget that the Church’s lowest ebbs came when she either exercised or sought to exercise worldly power. It is during such times that God sends saints, like Francis of Assisi, the 800th anniversary of whose death the Church is celebrating this year as a Jubilee, who remind us of the power of the Holy Cross.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you,
   By your holy cross you have redeemed the world
(Lectionary, Gospel Acclamation, Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross)