The Friar Podcasts - preaching prayer and spiritual reflections

Readings for Today. Listen to our other podcasts.

Today Jesus tells us the truth about marriage, and from this comes the Church's teaching on annulments.

The Teaching on Annulment

From this gospel and also a parallel passage in the Gospel of Matthew, we get a glimpse into the Church's understanding of marriage. And the difference is not insignificant. In civil law, marriage is considered a contract. Both parties, in fact, say, "You do this and I'll do that," and so forth.

But in the Catholic Church, marriage is a covenant. A contract is 50/50. A marriage is 100/100. You can't hold back in your gift to another person. It's a complete and total self-gift. This gospel also helps us to understand something that I would suspect that most Catholics don't understand, and that is the topic of annulments.

But there are certain instances where the Church can declare that the necessary components to enter into this covenant were not present. It's not a divorce. It's rather a statement that says the essential elements of a marriage were not present. Hence, there was no marriage.

Now, what are those essential elements? Pope John Paul II wrote Canon 1095. It's actually the one--it's seared into my mind because it's the canon on consent. What makes consent? And why does it matter? It matters because consent makes marriage. In order for there to be consent, there are three components that need to be present.

One, I need to know what I'm consenting to. It can't be something where it's a complete and total surprise to me who, in fact, I'm marrying. I have to know what I'm consenting to, and I have to know in that consent that, in fact, marriage is for a lifetime and requires fidelity.

Secondly, one has to be free. If one is at the altar getting ready to be married because there is a person in the congregation that will shoot them if they don't get married, well, that wouldn't be free. Now, of course, that's an extreme example, but there are a number of things that could limit my ability to be free.

For example, I'll pick something that was probably more true years ago but not as true today-- a young girl who becomes pregnant, and her father says, "You have to marry that guy." Okay, that's not necessarily freedom. She's not freely choosing to do that, and there are a number of other factors that can impact freedom.

Lastly, one has to have the ability to consent. So, for example, we don't hold a 3-year-old to the same level of ability to make a choice as we would a 23-year-old. One has to have the ability. One has to be mentally competent. One has to be able to actually give consent.

And again, there are a number of factors that could impact one's ability to do so. This lack of consent can be temporary or permanent, depending on the situation, but the important thing to note is that it is a way of keeping faithful to what Jesus says in today's Gospel.

It is a declaration, not a breaking of the contract. That's what divorce is, and for those who have gone through the painful experience of divorce, the notion of it being a contract is pretty well understood, because you get lawyers in the room, and you say, "Okay, well, this is going to be this way and that way, and both parties have to agree to what it will take to break up the marriage, to break the contract."

Most importantly, the first reading tells us in whatever commitments we've made, we have to be able to say yes to God and no to sin, and we have to ask God for the grace of perseverance.

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.

Readings for Today. Listen to our other podcasts.

Standing up for God

Those who gave Saint Paul a challenge and beat him thought they were preserving their right in Rome to worship as Jews.

This first reading needs a little bit of context in order for us to understand it, I think.

So, the Jewish people had worked out kind of a deal with the Romans so that they could worship their god while everyone else in the Roman Empire worshipped the emperor who was a god. So, there were many among the Jewish people that worked very hard and very zealously to guard this agreement.

The fear that is being portrayed here is that if it is seen that the Jewish people are not living up to their bargain, but in fact accepting Jesus as the Messiah, that this could unravel the whole freedom that the Jewish people enjoyed to worship the one god. And so, that's part of the context behind this and it would seem that that is also the reason why this case is being tried in Roman courts.

The Roman judge does not in any way want to get in the middle of this. He is not going to make decisions on matters of Jewish religion, which is how he sees it. Simply a conflict among the Jewish people, nothing more.

Not unlike, quite frankly, when it comes to questions of religion. The Catholic Church and in fact all religions enjoy what is known as the ministerial exemption, which means that in hiring and firing and so forth, rules of religion can be applied that would not be allowed in any other employment context.

The court does not want to get in the middle of what is the definition of a minister and it has repeatedly avoided making such decisions. So, this is not a thing that we also don't do in our own instance today. So much so, does the Roman official want to be removed from this situation that even the beating of a synagogue official, this poor Sosthenes, is not enough to get his attention. He simply won't deal with it.

In our own lives sometimes we can be like that too. There can be matters of faith that we simply don't want to deal with. There can be things that we simply don't want to challenge.

I would say for Catholics, one area is that we don't generally speaking like to talk about our faith if we don't know what other people believe. We tend to want to leave it alone. But Jesus tells us that sharing with the world the good news that God has saved us from our sins is worth talking about. It's worth sharing.

Let us ask the Lord to help us to share the good news of our own faith with those who need it so that we might be good disciples of the Lord Jesus, following him wherever he leads, and sharing with people all that he has done for 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.

Readings for Today. Listen to our other podcasts.

The readings today come from the 6th Thursday of Easter.

Sometimes the stories in the bible, especially the gospels, are so familiar that we lose the sense of wonder about them.

Don't Lose Wonder

We've probably all had the experience of seeing either babies or very, very young children. And if we're careful and pay attention, we notice that they get terribly excited over things that we long ago decided were ordinary. Because we got so used to them, we didn't notice them with the same sense of awe and wonder.

It's why, for instance, a child can watch the same silly TV show over and over and over again. Because in some ways, the TV show is new all over again. I was listening to a podcast that was talking about babies when they knock things off their high chair. They're little scientists.

They knock something off and want to figure out what happens. Oh, it falls on the floor. And then they want to see if it happens again and again and again. Then at some level, they learn that it's kind of annoying and fun, so they keep doing it.

Think of the way a very young child thinks of a dandelion. We tend to think of dandelions as weeds. And for some good reason, because they ultimately take over your lawn if you don't get rid of them. But for a little child, dandelions are pretty yellow flowers. I can certainly attest, growing up in Vermont, you'd see whole fields of dandelions.

And they were gorgeous when they were in bloom. And they're tasty. Before they go in bloom, I remember as a child, my parents would bring me out and we'd be digging up the dandelion greens for various things.

When things become ordinary, they can lose their importance for us. And so we might, quite frankly, not fully appreciate the challenge of the ascension. Today, Jesus has this kind of cryptic phase, "A little while, you will no longer see me, and a little while, and you will see me." And we see that the disciples are thoroughly confused by what Jesus could mean.

It would seem, on a human level, that it makes all the sense in the world for Jesus to remain on earth forever. I suspect at one time or another, we have all had the desire to have lived when Jesus lived so we could have seen him and talked with him and interacted with him.

But this life is not really the ultimate focus for us as Christians. It's not to say that we don't try to do our best in this life and enjoy the good things of this life, but it's not the end. Heaven is the end.

And that is what Jesus does in the ascension. By going to the Father, he and the Father then pour out for us the Holy Spirit.

Let us ask the Lord today to help us to recapture the wonder of our faith, that the miraculous events that are so ordinary to us because we've heard them so often might cause our hearts yet again to be filled with wonder.

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.

Don't Lose Wonder

Readings for Today. Listen to our other podcasts.

Note: These readings are for Thursday, the 6th week of Easter.

Sometimes the stories in the bible, especially the gospels, are so familiar that we lose the sense of wonder about them.

We've probably all had the experience of seeing either babies or very, very young children. And if we're careful and pay attention, we notice that they get terribly excited over things that we long ago decided were ordinary. Because we got so used to them, we didn't notice them with the same sense of awe and wonder.

It's why, for instance, a child can watch the same silly TV show over and over and over again. Because in some ways, the TV show is new all over again. I was listening to a podcast that was talking about babies when they knock things off their high chair. They're little scientists.

They knock something off and want to figure out what happens. Oh, it falls on the floor. And then they want to see if it happens again and again and again. Then at some level, they learn that it's kind of annoying and fun, so they keep doing it.

Think of the way a very young child thinks of a dandelion. We tend to think of dandelions as weeds. And for some good reason, because they ultimately take over your lawn if you don't get rid of them. But for a little child, dandelions are pretty yellow flowers. I can certainly attest, growing up in Vermont, you'd see whole fields of dandelions.

And they were gorgeous when they were in bloom. And they're tasty. Before they go in bloom, I remember as a child, my parents would bring me out and we'd be digging up the dandelion greens for various things.

When things become ordinary, they can lose their importance for us. And so we might, quite frankly, not fully appreciate the challenge of the ascension. Today, Jesus has this kind of cryptic phase, "A little while, you will no longer see me, and a little while, and you will see me." And we see that the disciples are thoroughly confused by what Jesus could mean.

It would seem, on a human level, that it makes all the sense in the world for Jesus to remain on earth forever. I suspect at one time or another, we have all had the desire to have lived when Jesus lived so we could have seen him and talked with him and interacted with him.

But this life is not really the ultimate focus for us as Christians. It's not to say that we don't try to do our best in this life and enjoy the good things of this life, but it's not the end. Heaven is the end.

And that is what Jesus does in the ascension. By going to the Father, he and the Father then pour out for us the Holy Spirit.

Let us ask the Lord today to help us to recapture the wonder of our faith, that the miraculous events that are so ordinary to us because we've heard them so often might cause our hearts yet again to be filled with wonder.

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 need to see the world also through the eyes of faith. You can't see the covenant with Abraham using the senses alone. And it had to be quite difficult for Abraham to believe hearing about all these descendants he was going to have, when especially at this point in his life, he had no children. It required him to see with the eyes of faith.

Full transcript: https://thefriar.org/2024/03/21/see-the-world-through-faith-thursmar21/

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 are to seek holiness in our ordinary lives. We can forget that the saints were fully human. Mary, Joseph. They had to discover and develop this relationship with God in the same way you and I do. They had to figure out who was this Jesus. Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/03/19/holiness-in-ordinary-life-tues-mar19/

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.

"Where are you?" That was the question in the book of Genesis when Adam and Eve sinned. Where are you? They hid. In fact, it's what we all do, on some level, when we are confronted with our own sin. We hide. We hide from God, and we often find ourselves hiding from each other, presenting one image, but knowing deep down inside that's not who we are. Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/03/18/dont-hide-homily-for-monday-march-18-2025/

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 need a savior. And if we are like St. Dominic, we recognize this best when we are occupied with speaking to God or about God. Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/03/17/why-do-we-need-a-savior-homily-sun-mar17/

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.

Probably the least favorite word, the first least favorite word that we learned in our lives was the word "no." But nonetheless, tell a toddler "no" and that often results in a great difficulty. There can be a meltdown, there can be anger, they can say things like "I hate you" because they don't like the word "no."

Full Transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/03/15/our-least-favorite-word-no-fri-mar15/

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.

Today's readings remind us to keep God close. Moses is delayed and the people are discouraged. They take matters into their own hands, which ends badly. Do we sometimes do the same?

Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/03/14/keep-god-close-homily-for-thursday-mar14/

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.