Trusting God is an experience

Readings: Exodus 17:8-13; Psalm 121:1-8; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:2; Luke 18:1-8

"Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth." Dramatic Bible stories, like the one found in our reading from Exodus, make trusting God seem easy and the results immediate. As the passage from 2 Timothy intimates: Christ is King. ¡Viva Christo Rey!

Our Gospel, the center figure of which is again a sketchy person, dispels the easiness of trusting God. The lesson our Lord teaches is that of persistence. Not only persistence in prayer but persistence in life. In dealing with my insurance company over homeowner's claim (the second I've made in nearly 30 years of being a homeowner, I am learning this.

Persistence both requires and builds resilience. As I am sure you know- life ain't easy. The Lord walks with us through life's dark valleys. He doesn't provide a magic carpet for us to fly over it to the other side.

Servant of God Msgr. Luigi Giussani, in and address to high school seniors way back in 1982, set forth what he calls "this formula," for following Christ: "Expect a journey, not a miracle that dodges your responsibilities, that eliminates your toil, that makes your freedom mechanical" (see "The Journey to Truth: An Experience").

As any long time follower of Christ can tell you, it is not a good criticism of Christianity to insist that it is an attempt to take the easy way out. People looking for a magical solution and who turn to Christ for that are either soon disappointed and leave or have a true conversion borne from an experience of just how Christ walks with us. To lose faith as a Christian due to Christ's refusal to keep you from the vicissitudes of life makes no sense. Why? The Cross and the Lord's summons to His followers to take up their crosses.

In the Collect for this Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time we pray, "that we may always conform our will to [God's]." Easier said than done. "Doing" is a painful process.

But given the above, maybe the question Jesus asks at the end of our Gospel passage- "But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"- isn't rhetorical.

"Defend us, O Lord, from all peril and dangers of this life"

Fall is beautiful. I love the transitional seasons. But you have to have winter and summer to have fall and spring. I believe this experientially communicates something about life.

I read somewhere recently that joy is the overcoming of sorrow. I think it's the best definition of joy I've ever read. For one thing it disentangles joy from that slippery and largely facile word happiness.

And so, you can't experience joy without having experienced sorrow. Many psalms bear this out. Take Psalm 22, the opening words of which are placed on the lips of Jesus as He hangs on the Cross by the inspired authors of Mark and Matthew: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34). Verses 1-22 of this psalm are a song of deepest lament.

In Psalm 22, things begin to turn around starting with verse 23, with the plea: "Save me from the lion’s mouth, my poor life from the horns of wild bulls."

Saint Olaf church after evening Mass Monday, 13 October 2025, by Deacon Scott Dodge

From verse 24 on, Psalm 22 goes from being a song of heartrending lament to a song of praise, even an ode of joy! Or, in words from Psalm 30:12- "You changed my mourning into dancing; you took off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness."

At present, there is a lot to lament. It can easily overwhelm. But hope, which, just as joy needs to be differentiated from happiness, needs to be distinguished from optimism, sustains. Hope sustains because it is a theological virtue, a supernatural grace.

Hope remains when optimism has long since left the building because hope, like true joy, comes from God. As in all things that matter, Jesus Christ shows us this through His life, passion, death, resurrection, and sending the Spirit.

It bears noting that today we observe the Memorial of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr. Hence, one can use the Common of Pastors or of One Martyr. I always prefer the latter when these are the choices. Antiphon 2 for this Common, riffing off Saint Paul's Letter to the Romans is fitting: "The sufferings of this life cannot be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us in the life to come."

Or this from the first reading for the Office of Readings from the same Common, from 2 Corinthians (see 2 Corinthians 4:7-5:8): "We are afflicted in every way possible, but we are not crushed; full of doubts, we never despair... Continually we carry about in our bodies the dying of Jesus, so that in our bodies the life of Jesus may also be revealed." This is hope!

Our traditio for today reveals my Anglo-Catholic heart. It is from Greg LaFollette's lovely album Songs of Common Prayer: "Lighten Our Darkness."

Year 1: Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Romans 1:1-7; Psalm 98:1-4; Luke 11:29-32

If the sign of Jonah the Lord referred to in our Gospel this evening is His resurrection from the dead after three days in the tomb, then the Lord extends this sign to us through the Eucharist. In this context, let us not forget that Jonah’s ministry to the Ninevites began after his three-day sojourn in the belly of “a great fish.”¹ This is true, too, of Christ’s ministry.

Pentecost, the beginning of the Church, the birth of the Body of Christ, is when the Gospel began to spread beyond the confines of what was then the Roman province of Palestine. This is when, like Jonah’s proclamation, the basic kerygma began to be preached to Jew and, shortly, Gentile alike: “Repent and believe in Gospel!”

Unlike the Israelites, first with the prophets and later with Jesus, the Ninevites repented upon hearing Jonah’s preaching. But, as the Lord says, referring to Himself, “there is something greater than Jonah here.”² Yet, at least in this scenario, He sensed no urge to repent, just the desire for a spectacle. But no repentance means no faith.

For an adult, being baptized without repenting, without changing your life, is like trying to run a marathon and then trying to train for it. While there are usually other factors, this is a major reason why so many adult converts, most of whom were not even taught the five precepts of the Church, fall away fairly fast.

Hearing the Gospel requires a response. This Good News requires a definitive yes or no. If yes, repentance is required. Apart from this, one is just going through the motions, perhaps acting based on some kind of religious sentiment.

Especially now, many people want to understand before s/he believes. But love is never without risk! According to an insight Saint Anselm of Canterbury wrote down long ago: you don’t understand in order to believe, you believe to understand.³ One repents to believe. To conceive of faith as mere belief is to reduce it to dust. Repenting is what it means to walk by faith and not by sight.

Jonah and the Whale, by Pieter Lastman (Dutch), 1621, Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Germany

To summarize an insight by John Calvin, who got many things right and few fundamental things quite wrong: all true knowledge of God is born out of obedience.⁴ Or, as C.S. Lewis pointed out: “Obedience is the key that opens every door,” including the door of belief.⁵

As Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote:

It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact… Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith⁶

Yet, like those who sought a sign from Jesus, it’s easy to want to walk by sight and not by faith. And so, they demand a sign. Not being able to grasp the sign of Jonah when it is presented to you should not lead you to demand a better or more convincing sign. After all, you’re encountering someone greater than Jonah, even greater than King Solomon in all his splendor.

Hence, your “Amen” before receiving the Body and Blood of Christ should never be thoughtlessly uttered. This moment is always an encounter with the Risen Lord. In that moment, you behold the very sign of Jonah about which Jesus spoke.

Rather, your “Amen” should be a firm statement that you believe, even if you don’t understand. It should also be a firm commitment to repent, to allow yourself to be increasingly conformed to the image of Christ. This is the “obedience of faith” set forth by Saint Paul.⁷

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1 Jonah 2:1.^↩
2 Luke 11:32.^↩
3 Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, trans. M.J. Charlesworth (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), 1.^↩
4 John Calvin. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Book II. Chap. 8, “Exposition of the Moral Law.”^↩
5 In Thomas A. Tarrants. “Obedience: The Key That Opens All Doors.” from Knowing and Doing, Winter 2011.^↩
7 Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov, Part I, Book I, Chapter 5, “The Elders.”^↩
7 Romans 1:5.^↩

Year C Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Kings 5:14-17; Ps 98:1-4; 2 Tim 2:8-13; Luke 17:11-19

Rather than my entire homily, this week I am only posting the final five paragraphs

We give God thanks because, as our reading from 2 Timothy tells us, once we truly belong to Christ, he remains faithful even when we are unfaithful, which happens and is why we have the sacrament of penance.¹ Our infidelities require us to acknowledge that we are incapable of saving ourselves and to express gratitude to God for what He has done for us through Christ. Spiritually speaking, a Christian is a healed leper.

Genuine gratitude like that expressed by the Samaritan in today’s Gospel and the Assyrian general in our first reading is the Spirit-driven response to God’s goodness. As Catholics, we adhere to the truth that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. How could we profess otherwise? Doesn’t our Lord tell the Samaritan "your faith has saved you"?² Why would He say anything different to you or me?

Jesus with the one leper who returned to give thanks, by William Brassey Hole

Worshiping God in gratitude, not race, ethnicity, sex, or anything else, is what makes you a member of God's chosen people. While the moniker is a bit anachronistic, the reality that by his act of worshipful thanksgiving the Samaritan cured of leprosy became a Christian is not.

What ought to bring us to our knees in gratitude is our personal experience of God’s mercy given us in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is why we kneel as we say, after being told to “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world…,” using the words of the hopeful Roman centurion, “Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and soul shall be healed.”³

As our Collect, or opening prayer, asks, may God’s grace always go before and after us, making us “determined to carry out good works.”⁴ Good works are the result of faith that saves.⁵

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1 2 Timothy 2:13.^↩
2 Luke 17:19.^↩
3 Roman Missal, The Order of Mass, sec. 132; Matthew 8:8.^↩
4 Roman Missal, Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Collect.^↩
5 James 2:14-18.^↩

Friday funeral

In twenty-one, nearly twenty-two, years as a deacon, I have never celebrated a Funeral Liturgy outside Mass. This morning I will be doing this for the first time. Over my years of diaconal ministry, I have celebrated countless Vigils and graveside Committal services, especially during my eleven years at The Cathedral of Madeleine. But, prior to today, not one funeral. In addition to preaching at quite a few funeral Masses, I've done many weddings and convalidations.

The person whose funeral I will preside at died in late June. Her mortal remains were cremated. Over the ensuing months, her bereaved husband did his best to gather together her family. Today is the day they all agreed on to hold her funeral. After the funeral, her remains will be committed to her resting place. One reason for not celebrating a Funeral Mass is that virtuall on one present will be Catholic. Most, like the deceased prior to her conversion a number of years ago, practice no religion.

My first first funeral rite as a deacon was on Good Friday of 2004. This was just few months after I was ordained. One of the local funeral directors, himself a Catholic, was going to bury a woman who was born and raised in Salt Lake City but hadn't lived here for many, many years. She had married but never had children. Her closest relatives were a great niece and great nephew. She had lived for many, many years in Portland, Oregon. Her relatives lived in Boise, Idaho.

So, I went to the cemetery and conducted my first Rite of Committal, which was the deceased's only funeral service. The people gathered around her grave with me were the funeral director and the men who were there to bury her, the cemetery workers. But gather reverently we did. This is a memory etched deeply in my memory.

The woman whose funeral I am presiding at today is someone I knew quite well. She was a dear, sweet, gentle person. Her husband, who I assisted in becoming Catholic (he had been Lutheran), is a friend. It is a privilege to serve them both in this way.

Photo by Brett Sayles. Used under the provisions of Creative Common License

Here is an excerpt from my homily for Nanci's funeral. The Gospel Scott, her husband, chose is John 11:25-26:

In our short reading from the Gospel According to Saint John, Jesus is speaking to Martha, the sister of Lazarus. Martha and her sister Mary had summoned Jesus several days earlier, when their brother Lazarus was still alive but gravely ill. Mysteriously, Jesus delayed going to Bethany until after he passed.

Martha expressed her disappointment, noting that Jesus could’ve come sooner and perhaps healed Lazarus, sparing him from death. Jesus assured her, saying “Your brother will rise.” To which Martha responded, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” No doubt, standing before her brother’s grave, that “last day” seemed to her a long way off, perhaps more a desperate wish than a present reality.

In kind of similar way, given the manner and circumstances of Nanci’s passing from this life to eternity, some of you have likely thought, “If I only I had…” fill in blank. Because physical death is an inevitability in a fallen world, in the end, there are no “avoidable” deaths.

Woody Allen once averred that he did not want to achieve immortality through his artistic work. Rather, he quipped, “I want to achieve immortality by not dying.” Funny as this is, what Allen gives comic expression to is something we all, or at least most of us, want. Sadly, in His infinite wisdom, God didn’t set it up to work that way.

Sorry, Woody.

A bit later, I included this:

A major difference between a Christian funeral and a non-religious “celebration of life” is the focus on the hope generated by Christ’s rising from the dead. “If there is no resurrection of the dead,” Saint Paul insisted, then Christians “are the most pitiable people of all.” But for those who have died, been buried, and risen with Christ is baptism, resurrection is a present, not a distant reality!

Our traditio for this solemn Friday is Paradisum from the traditional Requiem Mass:

The fruit of faith

Luke 17:5-10

Along with hope and love, faith is a theological virtue. Unlike natural virtues, which can be acquired through habitus, theological virtues are gifts from God. What Jesus teaches in our Gospel today is not how we earn faith but about excercising it. Faith, after all, is your response to God's unceasing intiative toward you.

Because the gift of faith is just that, a gift, it must not only be given but received. But like any gift, it can be lost. The scriptural reading for today in the Office of Readings consists of the the first twenty verses of 1 Timothy. In verse 19, the inspired author mentions by name two believers who "made a shipwreck of their faith"- Hymenaeus and Alexander.

It seems these two shipwrecked their faith "by rejecting conscience." The author writes he has handed them over to Satan for correction, specifically that they might learn not to blaspheme. We are not informed as to the exact nature of their blasphemy. We just know that it had to do with a serious violation of their consciences, which presumably had been rightly formed.

I am not suggesting that sin, even serious sin, results in a loss of faith. But I think repeatedly doing what you know be wrong weakens your conscience and eventually your faith. There are a lot of things these days that the Church has pretty much always held to be wrong that some now insist aren't only not wrong but actually right. This calls for discernment and conscience formation.

There is probably no one who has a perfectly formed conscience. Conscience formation is an ongoing project, an aspect of spiritual growth and conversion that lasts a lifetime. In dealing with conscience formation, an important distinction has to be made between wrongdoing and sin.

Sin is knowing something is wrong and doing it anyway with a fair degree of freedom. Wrongdoing amounts to doing something wrong that you don't know is wrong or are at least mistaken about how wrong it is. Wrongdoing can reduce or even eliminate personal culpability.

In this, faith and reason are in play for sure. More importantly so are faith and will but will assisted by God's grace. It isn't enough to know what's right, we all need help at times to choose it.

It isn't so much about powerfully commanding a mulberry tree to be uprooted and fly into the sea as it is about having the faith to face yourself and, with God's help, the intercession of our Blessed Mother and the saints, uproot whatever needs to be uprooted.

Repentance is the fruit of faith. And so, we must have the faith to ask God, in the words of today's Collect, to "pour out your mercy upon us to pardon what conscience dreads and to give what prayer does not dare to ask."

Oh no! Discernment, again?

Here it is October and I am dealing with the same thing I was dealing with in January. Time's relativity becomes more pronounced when going through something like this. In other words, my how ten months can fly by!

So, 2025, among other things (it has been challenging in numerous ways) has been a year of discernment. Just when I think I'm set on what I am going to do, another tectonic plate shifts and I find myself reassessing. All along, my deepest desire is to do what God wants me to do.

I have never been one of those who thinks God will be displeased with me for making the best decision I am capable of making given what I have to go on and my own limitations. God is kind if not "nice," as a recent book pointed out. And so, I find myself again exploring a different course.

Good discernment requires me not to make a big change for the sake of novelty. It also requires me not to remain where I am because it's what I know and where I am comfortable. These concerns constitute for me the boundaries of discernment. Since I am responsible for the support of other people, I need to ensure that I can meet those responsibilities.

When it comes to money, it's important to do the math. As every true adult knows, life is expensive and it isn't getting any cheaper. In the present climate, getting the cost of living under control is on no one's list of priorities. Jesus alludes to the prudence of calculating the cost before undertaking a major building project (see Luke 14:28-30). Part of this consideration is really analyze my expenses.

Ending a reasonably successful career to embark on a new journey for the last 5-7 years of my working life is no small undertaking. Yet, I think that is what I just might do. This has been the back-and-forth of the past nine months.

In January, had two opportunities presented to me quite unexpectedly. One, the opportunity to teach at a seminary just wasn't possible for personal and family reasons. In all honesty, that would've been the fulfillment of a dream. The other opportunity keeps presenting and re-presenting itself to me in different ways.

It's the persistence of these re-presentations and the convergence of circumstances that have me once again discerning with an eye toward making a change. I am grateful I have had the time. Oftentimes, you have to make such consequential choices in far less time. But then, it may be the case that I have taken too long.

When it comes to my own affairs, I am very conservative, to state the matter mildly. I admire people who are willing to take risks. I think upbringing has a lot to do with shaping us in these matters.

With this, I have posted 121 times this year. That is as many posts as I had in 2021. In 2022, 2023, and 2024 Καθολικός διάκονος waned rather than waxed. Posting with this regularity feels normal. This small effort remains for me a labor of love. I also see it as an extension of my ministry. I am on track to post between 150-160 times this year.

I have been mildly surprised at the modest popularity I am currently enjoying. I'd be lying to say I didn't take some satisfaction in that. I hope those who read what I write find it benefical, encouraging, challenging, and, once in a while, amusing.

Things around here have been religious lately. This, of course, is far from a bad thing. I am spiritual because I am religious. Our traditio is an oldie but a goodie: The Clash "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" Since I needed a twist, I went with KT Tunstall's for our Friday traditio.