"Then I would 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)

Year A Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Sirach 27:30-28:7; Psalm 103:1-4.9-12; Romans 14:7-9; Matthew 18:21-35

In today's Gospel, we are faced with one of Jesus’ most difficult teachings. Harmonized as it is with our first reading from Sirach, the Lord’s teaching about not just the importance but the necessity of forgiveness is set forth in a very direct way. In a word, today's teaching is provocative.

I dare say, forgiveness is a challenge to us all. It doesn’t matter whether it is about big or small things. And, in this passage, Jesus doesn’t leave wiggle room. This is what makes his teaching on forgiveness one of his most challenging , if not his most challenging.

What does it mean to forgive someone who has wronged you? It means intentionally choosing to let go of resentment, bitterness, and anger towards that person. Quite literally, as we see in the parable Jesus gives, forgiveness means choosing not to collect a debt owed.

Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting. Neither does it mean making wrong into right. While forgiveness is required for reconciliation, it isn’t the same thing. In many instances, though not all, forgiveness opens the door to reconciliation.

In recent years, much psychological research has focused on forgiveness. Far from weakness, forgiveness requires a great deal of emotional strength. Forgiving wrongs reduces your own negative emotions and cultivates compassion and understanding toward the one you are forgiving.

The person most freed by forgiveness is the one who forgives. Just as it is physically easier to smile than to frown, forgiving others is easier than being weighed down by anger and resentment.

From a Christian perspective, forgiveness is a grace. A grace is something you don’t deserve. You can’t earn grace. This is where Jesus’ teaching begins.

Perhaps the best way to approach the parable found in our Gospel is as an allegory. In this allegory, God is the merciful king who forgives an enormous debt owed to him by his servant. The servant, who has no way of repaying the debt, stands in for us sinners. The king graciously forgives his servant's huge debt.

You would reasonably expect, as the merciful king in this parable clearly does, that someone who has been shown great mercy would extend that same mercy to others. It’s almost shocking that the forgiven servant is so utterly merciless to the person who owed him a very small debt. If we stick with the allegory, the parable shows the predicament of the Christian who, as the old bumper sticker said, is not perfect, just forgiven, but who nonetheless refuses to forgive.

Just as we can truly love only because God first loved us, we can truly forgive because, through Christ, God has forgiven us.¹ We even pray this, also from Saint Matthew’s Gospel, together at each Mass: “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”²

Jesus’ parable serves as an illustration of his teaching about forgiving as many times as I am wronged. It also further explains our quite pointed reading from Sirach. True forgiveness, as the Lord teaches it at the end of our Gospel, must be from the heart.³

As C.S. Lewis observed: “Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.”⁴ In other words, it’s easier said than done. But forgiveness is not merely done for the love of a neighbor but is also done out of a just love of oneself and for one’s own salvation.

Because God is infinite, his mercy is infinite. As Pope Francis taught: “God always forgives us. He never tires of this. It’s we who get tired of asking for forgiveness.”⁵ This is good news!

To be like God is to be like Jesus, who shows us the face of the Father. To be like Jesus is to forgive. While it’s hard to be like Jesus, by God's grace, it is not impossible. As his followers, the Lord calls us to follow him; not only to do what he taught but to do as he did.

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1 1 John 4:10.^↩
2 Matthew 6:12.^↩
3 Matthew 18:35.^↩
4 C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity. Book III, Chapter 1, Section 7, "Christian Behavior.^↩
5 Pope Francis. Vatican Radio via America magazine: “God Always Forgives Everything: ‘He never tires of this. It’s we who get tired of asking for forgiveness.’” 23 January 2015.^↩

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

Readings: 1 Corinthians 5:1-8; Psalm 5:5-7.12; Luke 6:6-11

Today is Labor Day. Somewhat ironically, our Gospel is about “working” on the sabbath. It is always the work of a Christian to do good and certainly to save life.

From a narrow perspective, like that of Jesus’ interlocutors in our reading, the Lord’s relationship with the Law can seem complicated. But it isn’t, really. Before the time of Jesus and even during his time, for many rabbis, adherence to the Law was not just about keeping a list of rules, avoiding what was forbidden, and doing what was prescribed.

What is at stake in these kinds of incidents found in the Gospel is our relationship with God, both personal and communal. It is very human to make my relationship with God transactional. I do this or don’t do that. As a result, God does something for me in return. Conversely, when I fail to do what I am supposed to do or do what I’m not supposed to do, God will punish me.

Try as we might to make him that way, God isn’t like that. God loves us. His disposition towards us doesn’t change. His love is not conditional, dependent on our often-whimsical behavior. Jesus shows us this repeatedly.

Detail from Christ healing an infirm woman on the Sabbath, by James Tissot, 1886-1896,in public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

By curing the man with a withered hand on the sabbath, in the eyes of at least some of those in the synagogue, Jesus violated the commandment forbidding work on the sabbath. He did the very thing some of those present were hoping he would do. They came looking for a reason, any reason, to condemn him.

He blatantly did what those looking to accuse him hoped he would do: cured someone on the sabbath. They were not swayed by the mercy to which the Lord appealed. Jesus is the Mercy King. In our epistle reading from yesterday, taken from his Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul asserted that to love your neighbor by doing good to her/him is the fulfillment of the Law (see Romans 13:8-10).

Of course, Paul takes this directly from Jesus’ teaching. You see, the Law was given to provide a means to the end of loving God with your entire being by loving your neighbor as you love yourself. There is no higher commandment. All other rules are subordinated to the Two Great Commandments (sticking with Saint Luke's Gospel see Luke 10:27-37).

I can genuinely love because I am first loved (see 1 John 4:10). Far from a transaction consisting of a quid pro quo, obedience is my loving response to God, who is love.

Careful now

Readings: Ezekiel 33:7-9; Psalm 95:1-2.6-9; Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 18:15-20

The first part of our Gospel today is one of those passages that can easily cause more harm than good. It's a passage that requires careful handling. Being juridical in nature, it sets forth a procedure for resolving disputes within the primitive Christian community.

These procedures set forth in the passage pertain to serious matters, the kinds of things that today would lead to excommunication or serious ecclesial penalities, matters now codified in the Code of Canon Law. In other words, it doesn't green light providing grist for the rumor mill. It doesn't promote division within the community.

Nonetheless, the injunction to go to the person against whom you have a grievance privately with an eye towards reconciling is, on the whole, good advice. Now, there are situations, like instances of sexual or other kinds of heinous abuse, to which this does not and cannot apply. But then, the penal section of the Code of Canon Law and, in some cases, even criminal law are brought bear on such egregious matters (see first paragraph).

When dealing with everyday kinds of disputes or offenses, real or perceived, seeking to work it out person-to-person and then perhaps with a mediator is a good way ahead. It also cuts gossip off at the source. Ideally, we seek reconciliation, not judgment, and certainly not retribution.

During Ordinary Time, effort is made to harmonize the Gospel reading with the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures. Today, this could easily compound the problem. Not only can misreading and mishandling this passage cause harm, it can lead to abuse.

I think our reading from Romans provides us with much-needed perspective. It provides us with a Christian perspective. "Juridical" refers to judicial (i.e., legal) proceedings. Any good and well-ordered community requires such things (see first paragraph). What our "epistle" reading, which seems well-harmonized with the other readings, reminds us is the basis of Christ's law, namely the second of his Two Great Commandments.

Saint Paul stated it quite simply when he wrote: "the one who loves another has fulfilled the law" (Rom 13:8). Even more to my point, "Love does no evil to the neighbor" (Rom 13:10). In this passage, "love" is a translation of the appropriate form of agape.

By way of reminder, agape refers to self-giving, self-sacrificing love. Sometimes efforts are made to distinguish between liking and loving someone. This means that you can love someone and really not liking them. While I suppose this can be a useful distinction in certain circumstances, pressing this distinction too hard can make Christian love (agape) cold and mechanical, procedural and not personal. While love is a choice, not merely a feeling, it has an indispenable affective dimension.

Later in this same chapter of Saint Matthew's Gospel, in teaching about not the importance but the necessity of forgiveness, Jesus clearly states you must forgive your brother from your heart (Matt 18:35). Depending on the perceived offense or actual injury, this can be very difficult and take time, maybe a lot of time. But for Christians, it must be a matter of the heart.

Yesterday I read an article about the experience of an Evangelical pastor in a church he had pastored. Because of the way he was treated, he wound up leaving that Church scarred and somewhat broken. Several years later, while pastoring another Church in a different state, the current pastor of the Church he left, knowing what happened, invited him back to preach.

Reluctantly, the ousted pastor accepted. At the start of one of the meetings he was preaching at while visting his former church, in walked a man who had made him miserable while he served there. He wrote,

No, the man did not apologize for the torment he brought to my family, but it didn’t matter. God gave me peace. Forgiveness at that time was not conditional on what he did. Instead, it was a gift from God to me

Then it became a gift from the pastor to the man. Indeed, "love is the fulfillment of the law" (Rom 13:10).