The Friar Podcasts - preaching prayer and spiritual reflections

So, we first encounter Stephen in the Acts of the Apostles, really, as we hear today, as one who was chosen to wait on tables. If you remember, there was this controversy brewing because there were some ethnic divides among widows, and the Greek widows felt they were being neglected. And they probably were, because the church thinks about the problem and really begins the diaconate.

But it's interesting because after we hear that that was what Stephen was chosen for, and after the problem of waiting on tables, the only instance we get of Stephen is not waiting on tables, but preaching the Word of God, which was what the Apostles said they didn't want to neglect to wait on tables.

It's interesting that these two things always come together, isn't it? You see, service of others is always first and foremost something that comes from the Word of God. It's not just us thinking, hey, this would be a good idea, I'll do this. It's responding to our baptismal call. It's responding to what it is that Jesus wants us to do and who it is that Jesus wants us to be.

Now, Stephen encounters a group. Judaism at the time of Jesus and of Stephen was really filled with a lot of diversity of Judaism in the sense that much like today, there were some who tried to make peace with all.

There were some who threw their lot in with the government. There were some who really sought to reform Judaism, Jesus, John the Baptist. And there were those who felt that the absolute solution to authentic Judaism would only happen when the entire world was Jewish. And they believed strongly in the way of life of the Jews. Their interpretation of the law was strict indeed. They didn't tolerate anything that went against the Jewish law.

And this is the group that Stephen encounters. This is also the group that Paul was associated with. His Judaism was serious, hardcore Judaism. He did not say, well, we can fudge on this or we can fudge on that. Thanks be to God for us, Stephen encounters Jesus and his life changes. Paul encounters Jesus and he finds the fulfillment of everything he has been looking for.

N.T. Wright, the Anglican bishop, says that it's not so much that Paul was converted, but rather that Paul discovered his fulfillment, that he didn't consider himself really being some dramatic new standard bearer for a new religion, but as a Jew who found the fulfillment of his covenant. And of course we see here that Stephen's life was predicted.

I don't know about you, but I think as I hear these things, and especially at the end of today's Gospel about being hated by all and all this kind of thing, I think when was the last time really? Now it's become more common because we're such a divided country, but when was the last time I really had to stand up for my faith?

People all over the world are standing up for their faith. We live in the age of martyrs, not in the United States, but around the rest of the world. You've probably heard the statistic that there were estimated to have been more martyrs in the 20th century than the previous 19 combined.

These are hard days to be a Christian, and so the prediction of Jesus might very well be intended for us. Whatever it is though, the most important thing about Jesus, about Paul, and about Stephen was not the way they began their life, but how they ended. As Stephen is being killed, he prays for those who are killing him. He seeks their forgiveness, just as Jesus did. How tirelessly did Paul work with those who wanted nothing less than to have him killed?

As we celebrate the incarnation of Christ, let us ask the Lord to help us to see more fully and more clearly the ways in which the divine Son of God wants to make us who we were meant to be.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

We tossed the word miracle around a lot. When I was a junior in high school, the fact that the United States Olympic hockey team beat the Soviet Union hockey team was referred to by Al Michaels as a miracle. As a long time Red Sox fan, the fact that in 2004 they won the last eight games of the regular season to end an 86 year drought from winning the World Series, we thought of that as a miracle. When people go to the hospital and modern medical care helps them to become better, we sometimes refer to that as a miracle.

Now, I'm certainly not comparing the health of a human being to the Red Sox winning the World Series, which as an aside doesn't look likely any time soon. But what I am saying is this, we've lost the sense of what a miracle is. See, a miracle is like the man in Montreal, I believe in the 40s, who had been asking for the intercession of Blessed Andre Besette, a brother, whose job, whose role, whose ministry and religious life was simply to answer the door, which seems to be a rather popular way to become a saint.

We have a lot of saints who became saints because they answered the door. And they shared their faith and they prayed for people and they were kind and hospitable. This man was at the end of his life. He had seen the doctor on a particular day and the doctor told him, you've only got probably a few days left to live. The cancer that you have is spread throughout your entire body and there's nothing more we can do. This would be a good time to get things in order.

And so as he left the doctor's office, he went and stopped at the oratory of St. Joseph, which is on Mount Royal, which is the mountain for which, it's hardly a mountain, but anyway, it's a hill for which the city of Montreal is named. Montréal is in fact Mount Royal in French.

And he asked for the intercession of Brother Andre. He asked him to pray for him. The next morning he felt so amazingly well that he had to go see the doctor again because he just was that well. He hadn't felt this well in a long time and he went to the doctor and they ran all kinds of tests that day because he said, I just feel great. Great. They found not a trace of cancer. Not a trace.

Modern medical care is good and maybe someday we will be able to treat cancer overnight, but that was not true in the 1940s and there was no way it could be true. It was this miracle in fact that was used to justify canonizing Brother Andre Bessette.

Now, what's my point? There's no natural explanation for what happened to this man. The doctor was not being overly dramatic. What happened to this man was miraculous. And what Christmas is really about for us is to recognize the miraculous.

See, I think in our Western world, in our Western time, I would say our post-enlightenment, post-modern world, we really want everything to have a rational and reasonable explanation. But that's not the way it is for people of faith. We need to leave room for the miraculous, the truly miraculous. And Christmas is about celebrating the truly miraculous, the belief that because Jesus has come into the world, miraculous things are possible.

And we can be a part of that miraculous work of God. I would like to talk about the greatest miracle, which is the Son of God coming into our lives, and to share really why that matters. See, sometimes in our modern world, we don't always see the intersection between science and faith. Sometimes, in fact, when it comes to science, we think it can answer everything. . .

It's interesting when we read the Scripture because there are some things we might read that seem just a little odd. Take, for example, this story of Hannah and Samuel. Hannah has been barren. She hasn't had a child. Particularly culturally, that was a sign of great shame.

It was a sign that somewhere God was not blessing Hannah and her husband because they didn't have any children. There was a practicality in the midst of this as well because children were the ways in which the elderly were cared for. Children had an obligation to care for their parents. Not just a moral obligation, but an obligation under the Jewish law.

And so finally, she is blessed by God and has this son Samuel. And what immediately does she do? Gives him back. Gives him back to the Lord. Gives him over to Eli. Gives him to service of God totally and completely.

We don't know what happens in the life of Hannah and her husband. We don't get a sense of what their emotions may be. But we're reminded always that our task in life can sometimes be complicated when we think that it's up to us to figure out how things should be.

It's an American problem. We look at a situation and we say, we know exactly what should be done in this circumstance. We look at other cultures in the world and we say, how could they be so backwards? Why can't they be more like us?

I'm working on the insert for Holy Family. And one of the things that's interesting to me, there are more single families, single parent families in the United States than anywhere else. Than anywhere else. Is that something worthy of imitation? Or is it, in fact, something where we have to think that our lives are much more about figuring out what God wants and asking and seeking the grace to do it?

Isn't our faith really about seeking the wisdom of God? Where we think in our own lives, why does God believe this? Or why not believe? But why does God teach us this? Why does God want us to live this way or to do this thing? How many times have we read something in Scripture that we didn't agree with and easily dismiss it?

How easy is it for us to dismiss the word of God? Because it doesn't make sense in our modern culture. Both Hannah and the Blessed Virgin Mary saw the world through the eyes of God. Samuel is going to go on to be a phenomenal prophet with great difficulty. He's even going to need to work on correcting the very man with whom he has left Eli.

Mary is going, of course, to go on to do great things in raising her son Jesus. But it's going to be difficult for her as well. When was it that we had an experience where we recognized something that God wants us to do, but we just simply didn't listen, or didn't like it, or didn't want to do it? It's easy, in fact, to do those things that seem to make sense to us.

On a human level, it makes sense to help the poor, to give them drink and food and so forth. But what of other areas of our life? What about other moral decisions? What about the parts of the world that live life completely differently than we do? Let us ask the Lord as we prepare on the very precipice of Christmas to seek the Lord Jesus with all of our hearts, to place ourselves in his presence constantly, and to search out the wisdom that only God can give.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

I've said it over and over again, but it is just over and over again true that the New Testament is something that helps us better when we can see how it was foreshadowed in the Old Testament. And today's gospel is one tremendously rich example of that. John the Baptist leaps in the presence of Jesus, the unborn child in Mary's womb.

Now, how does this have anything to do with the Old Testament? King David. David was not, did not make the kind of first impression, I suspect, that King Saul's daughter thought he should by dancing naked in front of the Ark of the Covenant. He was so overwhelmed and overtaken by the joy of God and all that God had accomplished and done for him.

What do we have today? John the Baptist leaping for joy in the presence of the Ark of the Covenant. Mary. So much of our spiritual life is successful to the degree that we can recognize that we really live in a spiritual world.

Yes, there are ordinary, everyday material things. We're human beings. We're made of material. So, of course, there are all kinds of things that are important related to who we are and how we were made. But our eternal destiny is something far more important.

Sometimes, I think the temptation is to seek to start first with ourselves and then to understand God. But the reality is it's always the other way around. We seek to understand God and then find how it is that the presence of God, the action of God, the love of God, the commands of God, the spiritual life, we then see how those are made visible in our ordinary lives.

The first reading is like that too. It had some difficulty getting into Hebrew Scriptures, I'm told, because it's a very earthy kind of reading. It describes a wild love affair. But why did it make it? Not because it describes in an earthy way a wild love affair that only refers to something in this life, but far more important because it describes to us the relationship that God has with us.

God is the one who leaps like a stag, a gazelle, so excited, so eager to reveal Himself to us, so happy and so desirous to have this relationship with us. It also lets us know what it's like between God and God's people. Also this powerful relationship, it reminds us that God always is the one who initiates and we respond.

God is the one who comes into our life and we then in turn respond to the love that God gives to us. And of course we are on the precipice of Christmas, the great event of the incarnation of our God into our midst.

It is not just that symbolically God is eager to come to us, but far more important in the incarnation itself we see concretely how it is that God is eager to save us, what it is that Jesus longs to do for us, how it is that Jesus takes on our sinfulness so that we can experience the new life of God. Let us pray today that we might be as excited to meet God as He is to meet us.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

Do we expect to encounter God? Do we expect to have an experience of Jesus? Do we expect that the Spirit will become real in our own experience, in our own life?

I suspect that, at least for many of us, it is not a regular occurrence that we are going to have some kind of miraculous encounter with the divine. Even Zechariah, who we hear had been observing all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blamelessly, who was righteous before God, even Zechariah is caught off guard. And he is a person of his own faith, because like Mary, who was afraid when the angel comes, so too is Zechariah.

Now why? Because to see God meant you died. No one sees the face of God and lives. That is the core of this belief. And he really struggles. He doesn't immediately say, oh, that's so clear. Thank you very much. I'm so glad that you've come to see me. Isn't this wonderful?

He doubts. How can this be? I'm old. My wife is old. We haven't had any children at this point, and we're not of the age of childbearing. How can this be?

Now what's interesting is that both the Gospel we hear in the first reading are against the backdrop of what was known as the Nazarite Vowel. The Nazarite Vowel was a vow that was taken sometimes for a period of time, sometimes for a lifetime.

But what the Nazarite Vowel meant was that you didn't take strong drink and you didn't shave your head. It was a sign of deeper dedication to God. It was an outward sign of deeper dedication to God. In fact, the word Nazareth comes from this notion of a Nazarite Vowel.

In the first reading, this vow comes through to Samson. And we know the story. He's got long hair and amazing strength until he doesn't. John the Baptist, very similar, not surprising. He looked a little bit crazy. But what was the purpose? To remember that the power to do what we needed to do comes from God.

When Samson remembered this, he was strong and could do many things. When he didn't think it was a big deal, he couldn't. John the Baptist is able to do amazing things because he trusts in God right to the end, really. In this kind of miraculous, divine, tremendous moment that are these days before Christmas, do we anticipate something really spiritually deep? Do we anticipate that the Lord Jesus will come into our hearts in a special way for this Christmas?

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

So one of the things that I try to do with some success and some failure is to exercise on a regular basis. I know it's good for me, I know I feel better physically, I sleep better, and quite honestly my mental health is better. So there's all kinds of good benefits from it.

And so I was a little surprised when I started on the elliptical machine that we have in our basement how hard it was. Now I've been on elliptical machines before, I mean I know that there's supposed to be some work, but I'm telling you this was really hard. I was all out of breath, I thought oh my gosh I can't possibly endure this, so how is this going to happen?

But I did, I stuck with it and put my half an hour in even though it was hard and it was on the lowest level. I thought my gosh, this is one demanding elliptical machine. Well the other night I was on the elliptical machine and we fortunately have a little television because I'm going to tell you, anybody that tells you that exercise is not boring is lying to you.

And I'm on this and I've been at this for about 26, 27 minutes and one of the other brothers comes down, he's doing his laundry, he said oh I see you're using the elliptical machine, I probably should tell you something, we don't know how it happened, but it's flipped. So even though you see it, you might think oh I'm on level one, that's actually level 20. And level 20 is actually level one.

So I immediately put it up to 20 because I thought well I've been 28 minutes, I'm exhausted, I don't want to die on this thing. But I was thinking about it over the weekend as I was preparing for my homily these past few days, this image struck me as a good one for where we are in the season of Advent.

See I'd done a lot of hard work, but then I got a little reminder that maybe there was joy at the end of the tunnel. And that's kind of where we're at with Advent.

Now there was a period of time I would suggest not really right in the long history of the church, that tried to push aside from Advent the notion that it was a penitential season. There was color changes and so forth, but quite frankly that's not accurate when we look at the texts for the Mass, when we look at some of the things that change during this particular season.

It's not as penitential as the season of Lent. But there are hints that it is intended on some level to be penitential. What do I mean by that? Well, for example, we don't sing the Gloria during Lent. We don't sing the Gloria during Advent.

There's a little bit of time where we're called to recognize why it is that God has made this great promise to us. Why it is that we have the season of Advent at all. It's not just because we need something spiritually to do before Christmas, because we'd be bored otherwise. It's because we need to recognize the reason why God made promises to us in the first place.

What is the biggest reason? Well, we need a Savior. And if we need a Savior, we need something from which we are being saved. We need to be reminded that even though we sin, even though we fall short, we need to change. We need to convert. But more than that, we need to know that God still loves us. That God still cares for us.

It would have been just if God had left us in our sin. But God's justice is tempered by His mercy. And that indeed is the good news. That indeed is the good news that we are not left alone, that we are not condemned, that Jesus did not come into the world to condemn us, but to save us. Look at our world today. It's a mess.

We've got more wars than I can possibly keep track of. And as Pope Saint Paul VI said, every time there's war, it's a failure. It's a failure. War is not a solution. And it's a sign that whatever we should have been doing, we've failed. Look at our world. . .

And so there's a very definite shift in the readings that starts on December 17th. We are now moving away from the readings which emphasize the coming of Jesus at the end of time and our need to be conscious and aware of being ready always for that, to the historical coming of Jesus in time.

Our focus now is on the Incarnation. Our focus now is specifically on remembering Christmas, why it matters, why it's important. And we're going to see over the next few days a whole bunch of things that help us to recognize that this circumstance and situation is such that indeed we need to know a number of things about the Lord.

I was skipping ahead because I thought it began with the genealogy of Jesus, which it does. That was yesterday if we had not had a Sunday on yesterday. We might think, what's the big deal? Why all these names and why is it important and why are there kind of two different focuses in terms of these names? Well, there are two theological points that are being made about the genealogies of Jesus.

The first is that he's human, which is really important. That was a real struggle for the early church for centuries to figure out how those things could work together. And so there is the tracing in one genealogy all the way back to Adam. It's also important that there is a significant and real connection to King David because it was to King David that the promise was given for a Messiah.

And so in the second genealogy, there is definite attempt to show how it is that Jesus is related and connected to King David. Both were essential theologically. It was important that Jesus be fully human. And there was an awful lot of heresy flying around about the fact that Jesus was either not fully human or not fully divine.

And it's very important that Jesus be the fulfillment of the promise of God, which is why it's so critical that things are connected to King David. Now, all of that leads us to today because in the book of the prophet Jeremiah, who quite frankly did not have a great time as a prophet, he was known actually as the weeping prophet because things had gotten so bad.

But he was deeply committed to the people, staying with them right until the very end and ultimately not being exiled to Babylon, but being exiled to Egypt with the least of the least. His dedication and commitment was complete and total and entire.

But it comes from this belief that we begin to see exercised here, that God will not leave his people abandoned forever, that there is this great hope that is coming. And we can see throughout the Old Testament and even into today's gospel where Joseph has a dream that God's hand is very clearly in action throughout history.

That it is very and critically important that we recognize that everything is according to God's plan. No one could fault Joseph for being a little upset, shall we say, at the circumstances as they've unfolded. But more important than his being upset is his faith in God.

Let us ask the Lord today that we might search and seek with his help more clearly his activity in our lives so that we too might celebrate the coming of the Lord Jesus.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

What a powerful phrase at the end of today's gospel. Wisdom is vindicated by her works. You know, throughout the Old Testament, there is a trend or a type, a genre of literature that we do refer to as the wisdom books.

Now, it's not wisdom in just collecting a lot of facts. It's much deeper than that. We can conclude something pretty quickly if it's only a matter of fact. My former student master said that we should never argue about matters of fact, because we can just look it up and see what is true when somebody did this or whatever. Facts are easy to accumulate.

Wisdom, however, is something much deeper. In many respects, it's not just a collection of facts. It's knowing what to do about the facts we collect. It's about seeing the world not as we see it, but as God sees it. Because God's way of seeing things is not always immediately obvious.

Here's what I mean. You know, it could be the case where we have to stand up for something that's right, and if we do, horrible things will happen. And so we say, well, you know, I think I'm just going to kind of stand aside. I'm not going to say anything, or I'm not going to do anything, or so forth. And from a human perspective, keeping the peace might be a value.

But what if someone is harmed because of our unwillingness to stand up for something? You know, there's a well-known crime trend that if there are a lot of people who witness a crime, people are much less likely to step forward to prevent it. Because the feeling is, well, somebody else will do it. There's all these people around here.

Sometimes standing up for what we believe is a challenge. Sometimes recognizing what it means for us as individuals to follow Jesus can be a challenge. It's not always easy. There was a priest one time who said in a homily, if it seems always easy to follow Jesus, then perhaps the question needs to be asked, are we really following Jesus at all?

If there's never a challenge, Jesus helps us, though, to see something else. Wisdom also recognizes that each one of us is called to do what God wants us to do, and two people in the same house might be called to do two different things.

The role of John the Baptizer, I think, was to shake people up and to get their attention. And he did. He was an odd duck. Father Benedict Groeschel says he was a classic example of a borderline personality, and there's probably some truth to that. But by shaking people up, he prepared the way for Jesus, which was his job. It was his vocation. It was his role.

Conversely, Jesus has a different mission in some ways. There is certainly harsh language, but at the same time, there's a desire to go out to the margins to offer the good news there. Let us ask the Lord today that we might use this day to think about the wisdom of God, to see what it is that we need to do to obtain it, and to allow our works to vindicate what wisdom has called us to do.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

There was a period of time where there was a great concern about the self-esteem of children. But they weren't feeling very good about themselves. And so the solution was to boost their self-esteem, to make them feel better about themselves.

The problem wasn't so much that the issue was identified, it was the solution. Which was simply to tell children they were wonderful without any real evidence. So if you didn't do so well on a test, well you're wonderful. But if they didn't study, and if they didn't put forth any effort, well they weren't really wonderful.

And what was the result of such language? Well, it was that we see when children are surveyed around the world, our children think they are absolutely the best in the world. But when we look at data of any kind, we find that our children are not the best in the world. They're good, but not great.

I would suggest that it goes even further than this though in terms of the problem. What do we see today among young people and men? Real mental health crisis. It's a crisis. It was bad enough before COVID. It is even worse now. Why did such a thing happen? Why do we find ourselves here?

I'm going to suggest that one of the reasons is exactly what I'm talking about. Indiscriminately, we told children they were wonderful. If you played a game and you lost, well you still got a trophy because you were really good. All you had to do was show up.

But what do kids know deep in their heart? They're not perfect. When we gave this indiscriminate praise without any specific example, it was meaningless. And in fact, it was worse. Because they looked at their lives and said, everybody's telling me I'm wonderful, but I don't feel wonderful. Therefore, there must be something wrong with me.

Now I mention all of this because of the words that Isaiah uses in the first reading. Because sadly, it's not just a problem with children. I think Americans have a pretty high self-esteem. I think we think pretty much of ourselves. I think we're pretty darn good.

If you travel abroad, for example, it's easy to point out the Americans. We're loud, we're boastful, and we're obnoxious. And yet, we hear something in this prophet Isaiah. He uses language that quite frankly is far from flattering to describe the people to whom he is speaking.

O worm, Jacob. O maggot, Israel. You know, if we were talking about terms of endearment, I don't think either one of those would go very far in feeling very endearing. When it comes to God, we have to recognize that if we're going to call Jesus our Savior, then it means that there is something from which we are to be saved.

If we don't need a Savior, then it's silly to be calling Jesus a Savior. We sin. We fall short. The person we celebrate today, St. John of the Cross, first of all, was a very good friend of St. Teresa of Avila. They were spiritual companions, both Carmelites.

And they had a deep and persistent desire to know God. And isn't that really what the season of Advent is all about? It's to recognize that we have a persistent desire to know God. It was St. Augustine who said, Our hearts are restless, O God, until they rest in you. During this season of Advent, let us ask the Lord to open our hearts, to give us the grace to change our will, so that we might rest in God.

I have to say that this is my favorite apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Guadalupe. There's so many pieces to it that are just so wonderful and beautiful and real to life.

In the second reading for the Office of Readings today, we encounter, we kind of get a little picture of, okay, well what happened? What were the details? And what I like about it is that so many people in this account are so human.

There's Juan Diego. Juan Diego, who is not really an important person, he's not really significant. We likely would never have heard of Juan Diego, well we wouldn't have heard of Juan Diego, I suspect, were it not for the Blessed Mother and this miraculous experience he has. He is asked to go and he doesn't say, oh yes, I'm the perfect choice, thank you so much for choosing me.

Quite the opposite. He says, well I'm not really much of anything at all. Wouldn't it be better to pick somebody that's really important? He goes to the bishop in obedience and the bishop is very human as well. I have to say that I would not be quick to believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary had appeared to someone and then was telling me that I should do something really miraculous, like build a church.

I like, my favorite part of the story of Juan Diego is day three. So he goes day two, he's supposed to bring something back. Day three, his uncle is sick, his uncle sends him into the village and he says, you know, I don't have time for the Blessed Mary today. I'm going the other way. I'm going to avoid the hill altogether.

But of course we know she's the Blessed Virgin Mary and so she appears again. And that's such a human moment too. She assures Juan Diego first that his uncle is fine. He's cured. And she tells him to bring roses which don't bloom in the winter. It would be like living here in Minnesota and having bright red roses appear in the middle of the coldest time of the year. It would be kind of miraculous.

And he goes to the bishop and the image makes a difference. The image convinces him that Juan Diego is speaking the truth. But perhaps more important than all of that is the reason why the Blessed Virgin Mary wanted a church built. She wasn't saying, well, I'm, you know, a really wonderful and amazing virgin and you should build this church because I deserve it. It wasn't that at all.

She wanted people to become aware through this church that her son Jesus was the Savior and that she was an intercessor. In many respects, her wish has come to pass. I've never been to Guadalupe, but I've certainly seen lots of images of how deeply people's faith is impacted by this church in Guadalupe. I've read accounts of people who, scientists who have studied this tilde, which should not have survived, but did.

And there is something unbelievable about the scientific discoveries in it. I'm even told, for example, that in the original, when you look at the Blessed Virgin Mary's eyes, you see a little reflection of Juan Diego.

Whatever it is, it's a reminder to us that our lives are filled both with reason, the ordinary, everyday events of life that can be easily explained and powerful, tremendous, significant events of faith that can only be explained by the power and love of God.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.