The Friar Podcasts - preaching prayer and spiritual reflections

Today’s readings touch on the importance of following God and his word no matter how difficult it may be.

In the first reading from Isaiah, the Lord says through the prophet, “If you would hearken to my commandments, your prosperity would be like a river”. In this verse, God explicitly explains how if one follows his commandments, prosperity will flow from them like a river. However, doing so is often very difficult, and changing oneself to follow these commandants can require a great deal of courage and willingness to be uncomfortable.

Jesus reflects this sentiment in the gospel when he talks about how both He and John were rejected for the message they brought to the people. For John they said, “He is possessed by a demon”, and for Jesus they said, “Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” Ultimately, these are excuses from the people to justify themselves not listening to the life-altering messages of Jesus and John because changing would have been difficult and uncomfortable to them.

We do many of the same things every day. We make up excuses for why we are not going to help someone or do something Jesus would want us to do because it would challenge us or make us uncomfortable. To prepare our hearts for the coming of Jesus this Advent, I am challenging myself and those reading this to make a change or do something in your life for Jesus that will be difficult and get you out of your comfort zone. As Pope Benedict XVI said, ““The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness”.

-- Manny Hamer, Class of 2022

Two days. Two seemingly impossible events. Two outstanding examples that with God everything is possible. Yesterday the Blessed Virgin Mary said yes to being the Mother of God. Today, Juan Diego, despite his best efforts to avoid it, shows us that ordinary people can be vehicles of God's grace.

Readings for Today

Two days. Two seemingly impossible events. Two outstanding examples that with God everything is possible. Yesterday the Blessed Virgin Mary said yes to being the Mother of God. Today, Juan Diego, despite his best efforts to avoid it, shows us that ordinary people can be vehicles of God's grace.

Readings for Today

Commentary on The Reed of God, Part One: Fiat

How it is that we like the story of an underdog coming out on top. Life does not always have many such stories, but when we become aware of one, it helps us to believe in something wonderfully good. Things seem more right with the world. And we are filled with hope that we can enter the same story where despite our weaknesses and failures, those ways in which we are small ourselves, there can be the hope that God can make something wonderful of us.

This is the observation Houselander makes in the next section of The Reed of God. But more important than the hope we feel is why we are able to feel it. Namely, that in Our Lady’s yes to God, the yes we celebrated yesterday on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception that all of this is even possible. “When she surrendered herself to God, there was indeed a miraculous New Heaven and New Earth.”

Jesus tells us the Kingdom of God belongs to children. And in Mary’s yes a child, the child-God, enters the world. Mary’s powerful word, “yes”, enables the Word to become flesh. Mary’s yes makes it possible for us to say yes too.

If we are to become and be saints, we too must say yes to God. It can be thought that if we are called by God to do what we would rather not, the fact it does not appeal to us means God could not call us to do that thing. After all, doesn’t God want us to be happy?

But when God calls us to do something, because God loves us unconditionally, God knows that by answering the call we become more who we were created to be. And that makes us truly happy and fulfilled.

Houselander admits the difficulty with this. “The world has set up a new set of beatitudes. They run something like this: “Blessed are the comfortably well off, the cheerful, the highly respected. Blessed are the flattered. Blessed are those who are bored for a good salary on six days in the week and can overeat on the seventh. Blessed are those who are satisfied by the Beverage plan and are always willing to compromise; blessed are they when all men respect their rights as citizens and forget that they are men for their reward will not be very great but they will never be unduly disturbed and they will never disturb the complacency of others.””

The truth? Sometimes seeking the truth, or rather the Truth who is Jesus, will cause us not only to make others sometimes uncomfortable, but might do the same for us. And even harder, sometimes we will be made most uncomfortable by those we love and care about the most.

And we live this call out in the Church. The Church that was founded by Jesus. But the Church is filled with imperfect humans who sometimes do evil things. “We know perfectly well that there are often scandals in the church, that despite her pure heart, her children sometimes grow worldly and base and dress her up with tawdry  golden garments which they have woven with black and cunning fingers; sometimes we see nothing but ugliness in her. Yet, even so, she is the refuge and hope of all sinners, the joy and hope of all saints, the life and hope of every living creature; And this is because under this aspect the church is still Christ, Christ in His passion, Christ crowned with thorns, His face covered in blood and dirt and the dust of the road on which we flung him down. He still remains the one ultimately irresistible person.” ...

Today is the feast of St. Juan Diego, and the readings for his memorial speak both  to his character and challenge us evaluate our own character during this time of Advent. In the first reading, we hear some powerful assertations from St. Paul. He reminds the Corinthians that they are not necessarily the greatest by “human standards.” Most of them are not wise, not powerful, and have little affluence. However, because of their calling as Christians, they are the ones who, through their failings, can be lifted up as an example to others.

Often, we can find ourselves measuring our worth against others. In our society – and in high school –, it is easy compare ourselves to others based on what they wear, their academic or athletic success, or simply their “popularity.” By choosing to set our standards based upon those around us, we can lose sight of the values by which we truly are defined. By choosing to judge ourselves, we ignore the fundamental truth that our worth comes from being made in the image and likeness of God.

One virtue we can strive to grow in this Advent is humility. Especially today on the feast of St. Juan Diego, we can realize that God can lift us up from the most ordinary circumstances. By recognizing our gifts – both our worldly talents and the divine gifts of grace and salvation –, we can choose to grow in humility, and by doing so, realign our vision with God’s vision. Through our humility, we can free ourselves from selfish ambition, enabling us to give more generously and be truer in our relationships this Advent.

-- Brendan Benigno, Class of 2022

Glass half-empty or half-full? I think that is the wrong question. Isn't it more important to be aware of what is in the glass? In our lives, our souls can be filled with clutter and mess, things that block the Holy Spirit, or like Mary, a soul ready to be filled with the Holy Spirit of God.

Readings for Today

Glass half-empty or half-full? I think that is the wrong question. Isn't it more important to be aware of what is in the glass? In our lives, our souls can be filled with clutter and mess, things that block the Holy Spirit, or like Mary, a soul ready to be filled with the Holy Spirit of God.

Readings for Today

Part One: Emptiness

Emptiness. The first chapter of Houselander’s book states that emptiness is the beginning of contemplation. See, when we consider a reed, we recognize that a reed has a hollow emptiness. It is this emptiness that makes a musical reed produce beautiful music. Nonetheless, it is empty.

We live in a world today where it is not difficult to see emptiness. But how is it we think of emptiness? Do we focus on what is missing? Or, do we focus on what can fill emptiness? Do we consider what used to fill the emptiness, like how a cold beverage used to fill a now empty glass, so we see something no longer there, or do we consider how an empty glass can again in the future be filled with something that brings joy.

Today, like so many ages before we are filled with emptiness. But, asks Houselander, is it an emptiness with a purpose, like the emptiness in the hollow of a cup, or the emptiness of a bird’s nest? Or is it an emptiness that is simply devoid of meaning, “a void, meaningless, unhappy condition?”

For the emptiness of the Blessed Virgin was the purposeful emptiness waiting to be filled with the incarnate Jesus, the Son of God who would become human through the fullness of the Blessed Virgin.

When we imitate the Blessed Virgin in our purposeful emptiness, we do not desire to fill our lives with meaningless things. We do not seek to have this or that material object, nor do we seek to fill each second of silence with noise to distract us.

No, if we are to imitate the Virgin, then we recognize the emptiness is waiting for its purpose to be fulfilled. Music fills the reed, water fills the glass, bird’s eggs fill the empty nest. Yet all lead to something beautiful and new. For this emptiness is not simply a cold lonely emptiness that can never satisfy, but rather an emptiness that longs to be filled with the Spirit.

For if emptiness is the beginning of contemplation, of that ability to see the world the way the God sees the world, we must first become a vessel of emptiness. We must empty ourselves of those things which do not lead to life. “At the beginning it will be necessary for each individual to discard deliberately all the trifling unnecessary things in his life, all the hard blocks and congestions; Not necessarily to discard all his interests forever, but at least once to stop still, and having prayed for courage, to visualize himself without all the extras, escapes, and interests other than love in his life: to see ourselves as if we had just come from God's hand and had gathered nothing to ourselves yet, to discover just what shape is the virginal emptiness of our own being and of what material we are made.”

It is not unlike the generous process my brother undertook in cleaning out my mother’s house, sifting through many things to discard the trivial and hold onto the valuable. It is not unlike the search of a child on a beach to find those beautiful shells and to throw back those ordinary shells of no beauty.

For us, this spiritual quest is one where we look to find nothing less than God himself, who though we may not always realize it, has always dwelt deeply in our inmost being. Our quest is simply to fulfill our purpose: to know, love, and serve God in this life and live forever with him in the next. For we know the eternal, we love the divine, we serve the infinite. And the eternal, divine and infinite have no room for limits of time and space. . .

The Church presents us with the stories of two women – Mary and Eve – both conceived without the stain of original sin but with two entirely different responses to what God is asking of them. First, we look at Eve’s response to God when the serpent questions her about the limits God has put on her and Adam. “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.”  She thinks that God is trying to control her - that He does not have her best interests at heart. That she could not trust God. Contrast that with Mary’s response to what God is asking of her. First, she is frightened and confused. “How can this be since I have no relations with a man?” She did not understand, but still she stepped out in faith. “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word.”  She decided to trust God even though she did not understand, because she knew that God was trustworthy.

Because of Eve’s sin, death entered the world and condemned us. Because of Mary’s trust, Love entered the world and saved us.

God’s Mercy is unfathomable. And for this I am eternally grateful.

-- Mrs. Lynn Kelly, registrar

Today’s message from Isaiah is one of hope and comfort. It comes at a time in Israelite history when they had been exiled from Israel by the Babylonians. A time when hope was desperately needed. The Israelites are called to do this by making straight the path for the Lord. This is a great message for us today.

We all experience times when things seem hopeless, and God seems far away, especially in these last couple of years. Yet, we know when we look back at difficult times in our lives, we recognize how God was actually right there with us the whole time.

That is still true today, but we must make straight the path for the Lord. I often make it difficult for the Lord to come into my life by focusing on the wrong things. Usually, it is focusing on myself instead of others. When we focus on what we can do to love others we no longer focus on our suffering, and we participate in the love of God. This brings us comfort and joy.

--Mr. Ed Hamer, Religion Teacher